The plan was an annual releases with quarterly updates. And get this, we planned to post the release dates to our user community. Seemed totally logical to me, the product manager. But, needless to say, there was quite an uncomfortable vibe in development and QA. Rightfully so, our product is immensely complex and we are tweaking and adding buckets of new functionality all the time. The pace takes a bit of getting used to. At the same time, we adopted a completely new development environment. Change is always good:)

Interestingly enough, the good people that develop ubuntu follow the same philosophy– they call it a “cadence”. Check out Mark Shuttleworth speaking about it below.

I am proud to announce that we are coming up on releasing our sixth release perfectly on time. The quality and predictability of our software has never been better. It allows us to respond to enhancement requests, fix bugs add new functionality and plan in a very efficient manner. The stress of delivering everyday is immense, but I feel that it’s what holds us all accountable. Not only accountable to the product, but accountable to the community.

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Now playing: Phish – Piper
via FoxyTunes

I think my friend, “the cloud”, has gotten a bad rap. It definitely took a ribbing at SolidWorks World 2010, where engineers were trying to make a drinking game out of it all. My sense is that its easy to make fun of something that you either don’t quite understand or that you don’t exactly see the value. I suspect its the latter in most cases.

If you have read anything on The Virtual Engineer, you will know that I am a huge fan boy of the good ole “cloud”. What is my definition of the cloud? In very simple terms it is web-enabled, web-based, web-hosted, web-stored, web-collaborated computing. Common theme here, “the web”. We all use it, many of us depend on it and some of are are even slightly addicted to it.

upfront cfd external flow simulaiton

So, why does using the word cloud cause anxiety? I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time, because I clearly don’t get it. Am I the minority? Not sure. But, it dawned on me the other day that I have felt the pain of “the old way”. If you haven’t, I’m not sure you will appreciate the value. The old way is a collage of bloated hard drives, sorry-ass USB external drives, various copies of files, handfuls of thumb drives full of stuff. I’m tired of being a VPNing, remote desktoping, begging for more horse power, tired of ftp-ing slave to status quo. I want a new way. I want to have access to my files, wherever, from whatever- laptop, netbook, iphone. If I want to share my files, I want to be able to send a link to someone with highly encrypted password protected safety. I want to be able to, at a minimum, preview my files in a browser. How can I be the minority? Doesn’t everyone want this?

But, the above is just the tip of it. I’m a simulation driven, upfront CAE doing, design guy. I am drinking a Big Gulp size of the the Kool-Aid. But, you want to talk about pain. I’m not sure there is a better reason today for engineers to openly embrace the cloud than in the simulation community. But not just the simulation community, the “upfront cfd” simulation community. Why?

1. Design engineers tend to want to try numerous what-if scenarios, resulting in numerous back to back runs that ideally could run around the clock
2. CFD models are getting bigger and bigger and are requiring more and more power
3. Every design engineering department on the planet is trying to reduce cost of hardware, minimize capital investment- so paying for what you need, when you need it is a no-brainer
4. More and more engineers find that they are on the go, out of the office and need access to their data, models, computing power from anywhere

I think we are on the cusp of a major break through in the way we engineer. There are a ton of things that need to be figured out. Security, licensing, bandwidth, hardware etc are simply just the basics that need to be worked out. Exciting to see some of the most talented people in the world working on it.

Unfortunately, they took the “top down” approach. They were both respectively veterans in the CAE space that had “analyst” tools that were successful in their own right, and now they were changing their tune and exposing their technology to the design community. They found themselves in a very difficult place. They were taking what they knew and tried putting it in different terms. So, the end result was making FEA “easy to use” and making structural analysis “possible for design engineers”. But, I bet if you poll engineers and ask them how many are looking for an “easy to use FEA tool” or an FEA tool created for “design engineers”. I suspect, you will get a mixed bag. Let’s face it, most engineers are not looking for an FEA tool or a CFD tool, for that matter.

Engineers and their managers are looking for a tool that allows them to make better design decisions, reduce the number or physical prototypes, provide information whether a design passed or failed based on some failure criteria. Right? Most engineers could care less that its FEA or CFD. They expect and in many cases, demand that its easy to use. They also should not have to deal with status quo. They need tools that help them make decisions.

Where am I going with this? Don’t be fooled when looking to improve your design process. Don’t just get in line and assume that the “traditional analysis” companies or even worse, the MCAD companies, really understand how to help you make better design decisions. Each one of them is focused 100% in what they do. And what they don’t do is upfront CAE.

Traditional FEA/CFD companies are focused on working with analysts. MCAD companies are focused on 3D design. Each has a “solution” for you or so they claim. But, the reality is they are not focused on what you need.

There are very few companies that know and own the “upfront” FEA and CFD markets. Go out there, bang on google, cream rises to the top.

Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. But, don’t believe the hype. Make sure you are making the right decision.

Touch screen seems to be the hot topic in CAD right now. What do people think about head jestering. Obviously, this video takes it to the extreme. I can’t visualize myself moving my head that much (as shown in the video), but the concept is AWESOME! Got me thinking of the next generation of interacting with 3D models in the CAE space.

Recently noticed that even the local weather folks are using fancy touch screens. Imagine it even bigger than this. Imagine taking this to the next dimension and interacting with a holograph. Check out this video that was posted a few months back.

All exciting stuff.I used to be a big time user of the spaceball. I don’t seem to use it as much today. Nothing wrong with it, just not driving CAD as much as I used to. But, coming from someone who is spinning models around daily and creating presentation after presentation. I am looking for the next generation “model manipulation tool”. I might trademark that name. Just came to me…

The Problem

MCAD tools have been around for awhile, they were built from the ground up to design 3D parts, generate 2D prints and the like. They can be fairly intensive programs with tons of features. Many companies have laid an FEA program on top of this foundation and have been fairly successful. SolidWorks Simulation is super popular for structural simulation. It does a great job for design level simulation. Structural simulation is fairly straight forward these days. Users tend to plot deformation and von mises (others as well) stresses to determine if something passed or failed. Often, you can get away with a simple static image to compare across designs.

In CFD, we tend to look at “pressure drop”, “peak velocity”, “max temperature” etc. We use these values as our pass/fail criteria. But this static data isn’t enough to tell you why one design passed over the other. A static image often just doesn’t cut it. This is where Concurrent CFD begins to break down. The CFD system is laid on top of the heavyweight CAD system, so having the ability and flexibility to compare models quickly and easily in 3D becomes impossible. You are now spitting out images and laying them on your desk, really hard to see what’s going on “inside” the model. This is one of the fundamental differences between CFD and structural FEA. The action of structural FEA happens on the outside (surface of the model). With CFD, the magic, often happens on the inside. In other words, having the ability to slice/dice and COMPARE in 3D is essential.

Often, users find that the honeymoon of CFD living inside their CAD system lasts for a very short time. Many of the CAD embedded programs are developed by 3rd parties which requires them to add functionality on top of the CAD framework. The result is that you have 20+ brand new dialog boxes that are popping up on the screen. So are you really in a familiar environment anymore? I’d argue that all of the familiarity and comfort of flying around in your CAD tool goes out the window. You are often locked down by wizards and forced to follow a specific recipe. This works fantastic day 1 of training, but many of us want to take off the training wheels and do it our way.

The Solution

Upfront CFD isn’t a new term to learn. It’s been around for 18 years. It has been developed from day 1 to address one simple purpose – to empower design engineers to solve fluid flow and thermal design challenges early and throughout the entire design process. Upfront CFD has all of the comforts of your CAD system- mouse operations are the same, layout is native and clean (works exactly the way you expect), CAD materials and attributes are read directly from the native CAD system as well as being fully associative. But the gem of Upfront CFD is the ability to properly do what-if scenarios.

The real impact of Upfront CFD is the ability to conduct multi-scenario design studies in a single environment. The environment is completely associative, you can clone designs or scenarios and update any change made to the CAD model. These clones are extremely lightweight, not simply entire copies of the previous, and give you the flexibility and power to do numerous what-if scenarios. Automation is one of the fundamental concepts of Upfront CFD. The data can be reused intelligently from one scenario to the next with a simple click of a button as well as being reused for future simulations.

multi-scenario design study environment

Once you have your defined results, whether they are critical values such as max temperature or pressure drop or 3D results, you can compare the data side by side instantly. Imagine having 4 designs that you want to see the flow behavior or temperature profile in 3D side by side? Click of a button in Upfront CFD, impossible in Concurrent or Traditional CFD. That’s the difference!

The Disclaimer

Many of you know this, but fair to state that I’m the Product Manager for CFdesign, so this may come across as grand standing. Not my intention. I am just trying to lay out some of the facts and dispel the myths. There is a place in the world for traditional CFD- PhD-type research problems, extremely massive models that require compute farms to crank out and when comparison is not important. This is a fairly niche market, but valid nonetheless. Same goes for Concurrent CFD. The market is even a bit more niche as it caters to very simple problems, that are fairly small in size and complexity and comparison is of little value.

Don’t take my word for it- go out there and check it out. Google it all- the facts are there.

The next level is when the try to entice you to “upgrade”. Most are subtle and you can tend to ignore them without having to “turn off” the notification. There have been many that I have ignored for quite some time and eventually jumped into the deep end and bucked up. Examples of this –dropbox, evernote, flickr and jing. Many of these programs offer the “free version” and offer extra goodies when you put up some cash. I find my tolerance is based on the impact/cost ratio.

Meaning, many of the above programs offered me surprisingly tremendous value for free, so I felt obliged to take the step. Part of the reason is that I love the new up and coming fighters. The other part is that the upgrade process was simple and the price was reasonable. All of the above range from $15-100/yr.

So far so good, right? I recently received a new machine and was going through the ritual of reinstalling and downloaded XOBNI. They started out as they all do with the free version. I LOVED it. However, the love affair ended this morning. Why? I felt pressured and annoyed. They recently went to a premium option. Fair enough. One of the options in the premium version was to auto-fill your To: box much better than Outlook.They had a slick way of showing you (greyed) out what could have happened if I was on premium, still ok so far. But, I found it very difficult to turn off the teaser and found it to be in the way. I clicked to check out the link and the price was $29.95. Seemed steep, really steep. Enough that I had to think about it and decided to wait. I then noticed that I had to go to options to turn off the premium teaser. hmmm.. Now, I am pissed– annoyed really. So, what did I do?

I uninstalled it. Why? The teaser was annoying, too difficult to turn off and the impact/cost ratio was too high.

MORALE: It is ok to be a bit pushy, but be careful. Above all else, make sure that your impact/cost ratio is within reason. In my case, $9.95 would have been a no-brainer. $14.95, I’d have to think about it. Above that, no thanks. Not one to typically gripe about this sort of thing. But, unfortunately, you got me on a bad day. live and learn, I hope.

But, I will give you a few solid reasons why I think we deserve it.

• Abnormal obsession to helping our customers solve flow and thermal design challenges.
• Constant strive to listen, understand and implement changes to our product to help the world that has been historically intimidated to even consider CFD, not only solve their problems but unleash innovation.
• Unwavering dedication to helping people adopt a “new way” of product development in lieu of a crappy economy.
• Undying determination to go up against goliath software companies to deliver a solution for the people, because its who we are to the core.

Seems a bit over the top, doesn’t it? Anyone that has done business with us or has spoken to any of us, realizes in a few minutes that it is genuine. Genuine passion to exceed expectations…

Advancements have been made across the board in other products as well. A few years ago, many engineering organizations considered structural FEA as a “nice to have”. Now it can be said that many engineering organizations consider FEA to be part of the critical path. This was due to a number of factors. FEA codes are now easier to use, they can leverage native MCAD models and FEA has been integrated into the engineering design process. FEA companies partnered with their customers, listened to what they were saying and adapted to the changing market.

It is the responsibility of the vendors to make you successful. This goes above and beyond whether the product is easy to use. It has to do with whether or not the vendor has a plan and reputation to make you successful. Let’s be honest, there are alot of options out there. The decision should go well beyond the cost and ease of use. Here is a quick list of questions, I’d be asking.

How dedicated and experienced is the vendor in solving your particular problem?

Do they have examples, references, success stories?

Do they fully understand your needs?

Do they have an implementation plan?

Do they have a services group? Have you spoken to them prior to your decision?

Will your particular problem be discussed in training or are you stuck with standard non-related examples?

How is support handled? Do they have a Customer Portal or Online Community? Will you be transferred around from specialist to specialist? What does the “escalation” procedure look like?

Depending on the level of sophistication, the answer to the question is not so easy. Let’s take PDM, for example. It makes sense to me that users should be able to check things in and out of the vault, have full revision control etc all within the CAD environment.

How about CAM? The question gets a little more complicated. How much will users be using the CAM software? How complicated are the parts? Will the users be driving the CAM software daily? If you have to think twice about any of these, then it makes sense to consider whether or not the “CAD-embedded” solution has all of the bells and whistles you’ll need.

Now, how about FEA? Let’s take Pro/Mechanica for example. It was one of the original fully embedded FEA programs out there. PTC acquired RASNA and tightened the integration. Mechanica always stuck to its roots. P-method, liner static analysis with steady state thermal capbilities. Nothing more, nothing less (for the most part). So, in this case, if it fits your needs and you are a Pro/e user, makes sense to go the CAD-embedded route.

Let’s look at COSMOS/Works. They have done quite well for themselves by embedding inside SolidWorks. But there was always this option to “upgrade” to the full suite, COSMOS/M. Now that SolidWorks owns the former SRAC, it is probably not as much of an issue as they are focused on the full product within SW. But suppose SW didn’t purchase SRAC. Users risk that there will be a disconnect between the two different development teams. Now in this case, there was a happy ending.

But now, suppose the SRAC folks had an agreement with SolidWorks, Autodesk and UG? Can we count on the fact that they have a close knit relationship with all equally? Do all of their graphics work the same? Is their UI framework flexible enough to be embedded in all of those systems equally? SRAC made a smart decision. They picked one, focused and delivered. In this case, they made a smart pick. Good for them!

There are many companies out there that claim that their solution embeds in all of the CAD tools. Some even claim to have an upward path to their “flagship” offering if your needs grow beyond their embedded capabilities. Yikes! How focused are the vendors on their CAD embedded solution? Is it just a marketing campaign to claim “me too”? These are the questions I would be asking.

Point is, is CAD-embedded all that is cracked up to be? It can appear to have its advantages. But I wouldn’t let it sway my decision. I would put it in the nice to have column.

Consider these points when making the decision whether to go with CAD-embedded.

Is the CAD embedded tool developed and owned by the CAD vendor? If the codes are not developed by the same people, there is bound to be a disconnect.

How many products does the vendor develop? How much of their focus/$$ comes from the product you are evaluating? Is it their bread and butter?

Don’t be fooled by the carrot of CAD-embedded with promises of an “upgrade” path.

Check out this cooling fan model I have been working on, cool stuff.

In fact, there are a fair amount of decisions to be made when setting up a structural simulation of a typical mechanical assembly. Often, constraining the model can be a challenge. Also, how the parts interact can pose some questions and requires some experience to choose the correct settings. Is it bonded, sliding, frictional contact etc? What exactly is a “penalty method”?Does the model undergo large deflection, causing the analysis to be non-linear? How about material properties – elastic or plastic? FEA vendors, such as ANSYS, MSC and COSMOS have improved their interfaces substantially over the years. Some allow you to read the CAD model directly into the FEA interface. Others leverage the CAD interface and are “CAD-embedded”.

So why is CFD so scary? Well, for one the equations are intrinsically non-linear. Meshing has posed some challenges, as CFD simulations tend to be more mesh sensitive than structural problems. But, the need is there. There are 100s, 1000s of companies that manufacture valves, pumps, manifolds, flow meters, fans, nozzles, medical devices, ducts, hoses etc that could substantially benefit from a flow simulation tool. Not to mention thermal effects. Think of how many mechanical designers are working in the electronics industry that would love to be able to ensure their products will not overheat once they hit the market.

If we think about the decisions that need to be made to set up a flow simulation, they are actually quite a bit less than their structural counterparts. Typically, a flow rate or pressure at the inlet and a pressure at the outlet. Material properties are just density and viscosity. Still cautious? You should be.

There are many CFD vendors that have been around for along time and have been very successful. The merger of CFX and Fluent under the ANSYS umbrella makes them the super power of CFD. Right? How about the guys at Star-CD? They speak the language of fluid guys, analysts. They are very good at what they do and serve their market very well. It just doesn’t seem like they are ready to enter the design community. Can’t say that I blame them. It is a complete cultural shift for them. Sure, they have “entry-level” tools but there is a huge difference between entry-level and an upfront design tool.

Entry level is exactly that. It implies a first step, the need for more at some point. Perhaps OK for some companies. But it can have a mixed message. It can be a risk for a company to make the entry level product part of their design process, but then hit the ceiling very early and then have to move on to “the real deal”. They are now required to learn yet another interface, a new process, make bigger more complicated decisions. This step typically requires a significant additional investment in implementation or worse, the need to hire a specialist. Regardless of which path is chosen, the end result is the same. Less productivity, more time wasted and a lack of ROI in the end.

Instead, companies should make the assessment early on as to what their needs are for say the next three years. What kind of problems will you need to solve? What resources do you have or could you get to solve those problems? But more importantly, partner with a vendor that is focused on solving your types of problems, your way. If you are an Inventor house and design and manufacture valves, then the folks you are working with should surely be versed in both of these. They should speak your language, not require you to speak theirs.
There are vendors out there that are focused on this market- the Upfront CFD market. Certainly, don’t want this to come across as a shameless plug. I am clearly a believer. But then again, I have seen all sides of the argument. Proof is in the pudding. Take a look for yourself. Jump on Google and see what all the hype is really about. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. More to come..