What role do mobile devices play in CAE??

derrek.cooper — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:51:28 +0000

Feels as though technology is moving at the speed of light. Things are changing so much and so quickly, that it is easy to be overwhelmed. Many of us try and keep up, not an easy job. But, probably more of the world sit back and miss 90%+ of the “new stuff”.

It is challenging enough to stay up to date on the latest release of CAD or CFD software that you are driving everyday, much less begin to care about the future. However, I find myself fascinated with the up and coming tech that I feel will have a dramatic effect on my efficiency or ability to stay connected or quite frankly what I think is simply — cool. I find myself permanently attached to my iphone. I am away from my computer more and more with travel and a fast moving life in general. The apps I use most are twitterrific, facebook, evernote, dropbox, gmail, email and fotos (flickr). Common theme here, I like to feel connected.

I began to think, how could we at CFdesign, begin to leverage mobile technology? A bit too premature to speculate, I think. But, how about CAD? Obviously CAD is a “heavy” application, so how can CAD leverage the mobile device world. Enter – Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile and Dassault Systems 3DVIA.

These are drastically different tools that are geared to serve different markets. One thing that they have in common is conceptual modeling. The most amazing thing to me is that both are an example of how the CAE space is emerging into mainstream, simply by offering these tools via the App Store. One million plus downloads to date and recently has been named top ten best app of 2009 for its category. That is truly an amazing feat. There are 100k+ apps out there.

Check out what a totally non-artistic (in the classical sense) dude, like me, can whip out of Sketchbook in all of about 3-4mins. Below is a quick rendition of CFdesign’s logo.

Sketchbook’s interface is amazing. Really intuitive, immediately you get it. Sure, I can’t come close to doing what some of the folks out in the world are doing, but I completely understand the interface, it has a look and feel of Autodesk Fusion. Many of the images I have seen are more artistic in nature, but I can clearly see a place in the manufacturing space, where you want to sketch out a quick conceptual image, leveraging the iphone camera and different layers. The real testament will be how people will integrate these images into their daily lives inside Alias and Inventor, as well as other CAD platforms – only time will tell.

3DVIA is bit of a different animal altogether. It is targeted more toward the true 3D world. It actually has a closer connection to my world. It is a super simple 3D modeler, but it is taking 3D to a new place. It claims to be a “web based” tool. In reality the models exist online, only online. The idea is that you store, share and search 3D models from the online community. I just jumped on my iphone, did a search for “valve” in the 3DVIA mobile app, found the below model, snagged an image and uploaded to flickr, then linked to this post. All of the above happened in less than a minute, including download/upload time. Truly amazing.

So, what does this all mean for the CAE community? It’s just the tip of iceberg of where all of this will take us. It definitely takes the “early adopter” mentality to really get where all this is going. But, the engineering community is under siege of emerging technology that will absolutely change the way we design and engineer.

I am the first to acknowledge that not all the new technology being rolled out will stick and we haven’t even come close to seeing what’s to come. It is perfectly clear that engineering is crossing into the chasm of outwit and outsmart. Those that embrace new methods and new technology will have a massive advantage. Those that are conservative and afraid of change will struggle.

Is Dassault Systemes getting their house in order?

derrek.cooper — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:17:00 +0000

To me, Dassault Systemes always seemed to be this massive French company that owns a bunch of technology companies, but always just sat back and let these companies run as separate entities. Always known as having CATIA as the heart of their PLM inititative. They began a campaign of acquiring technologies about 10 years ago. Here is a quick list of the highlights.

SolidWorks (1997)
SRAC (2001)
ABAQUS (2005)
Matrix One (2006)
ICEM Surf (2007)
Engineous (2008)

DS has always done a great job acquiring some of the most successful companies. What they have also done well is just leave these companies to operate as a bunch of small profitable, successful entities. The CATIA/SolidWorks combination is a great example of two extremes that serve different markets and were allowed to continue doing what they do.

Small calculated decisions seemed to be made over the years. Years ago, there was a ton of buzz about the operability of CATIA and SolidWorks. But relatively nothing changed. Then a slight change to the SolidWorks logo that added a little “DS“. People acted as “this was it, now things will change.” Again, hardly any change.

But things seem to be changing recently. DS has recently re-branded ABAQUS to Simulia. But a bolder move is the buzz that SolidWorks is now, Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corporation. The Cosmos line is now SolidWorks Simulation. May seem like simple name changing, but I think it falls in line with the industry, in general.

Only a few years ago, there were numerous companies in the MCAD and FEA space, these numbers are dwindling due to acquisitions etc. In the not so distant future, there will only be a “few” monster companies that are able to offer us (the consumer) “everything”. Sounds relatively familiar.

Circa, 1995, the MCAD world seemed pretty set in stone in the pre “PLM” days. You had PTC, UGS, SDRC and DS battling it out in the 3D space. Autodesk was the master of its own domain in the 2D world. In the FEA market there was MSC, HKS and ANSYS along with some of the other players like SRAC and SDRC. But for the most part, this was the playing field. Then SolidWorks and others blasting into the market and simply changed the way we look at things. This was in the days when a 3D MCAD investment was on the order of ~$40k ($20k for software and $20k for a computer to run it).

Point of my rant here is that I love the fact that these massive companies are becoming powerhouses in their own right. No doubt there will be some serious technology leaps that are made. No doubt a serious challenge for them is to manage all of the technology and not forget their biggest asset, us, the users. Look at our friends Microsoft. More importantly, I am excited to see what disruptive technology will come along to again change the market upside down.

The Virtual Engineer » Dassault Systemes

What role do mobile devices play in CAE??

Is Dassault Systemes getting their house in order?