Starting small: A sketch resulting from interactions can form the basis of a later 3D model
What is the purpose of CAD and the associated technology PLM (product lifecycle management) software? A few years ago, an appropriate answer would probably have focused purely on the engineering aspects: to provide a digital representation of an intended product that can support both further software-based routines, such as simulation and analysis, and then also actual manufacturing operations, in a way that ensures the final product complies with initial design intent.
Now, though, it seems that the emphasis is no longer on the ‘what’ but on the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, and the answers are not focused purely on the creation of geometry and then using that ‘product representation’ to drive further processes. Design software is, instead, now a tool to support a product development process that is dispersed, inclusive, interactive, simultaneous and collaborative. In short, it is ‘social’.
That is the message that came out of the convention in January in San Diego in the US held by one of the big suppliers of 3D modelling software – SolidWorks, a company founded in the US in the early 1990s but which has been owned for the past 17 years by French operation Dassault Systèmes.
The latter company is best-known for the high-end Catia modelling system, that serves as the primary design tool for big names in aerospace and automotive manufacturing such as Boeing, Airbus, Bentley and BMW. SolidWorks, in contrast, is a mid-range system that has established itself as a choice for companies in smaller, but still demanding, businesses such as the machine tool, consumer product and healthcare sectors.
In some ways, the two systems are odd bedfellows. Catia originated, in the late 1970s, as a specialised system running in the Unix operating environment. It was developed in-house by Dassault’s aerospace parent company, before
a marketing tie-up with US computing giant IBM brought it to global prominence.
SolidWorks, in contrast, shows how, a decade and a half later, the market had opened up to innovative newcomers. The system originated in a spare room in someone’s home in Massachusetts, and from the start it ran in the Windows operating environment, with a look and feel – and informal corporate culture – similar to that pioneered in the consumer and graphic design fields by Apple Computer.
For more than a decade after Dassault acquired SolidWorks, the two operations continued apparently independently. Although Catia did become a Windows-based system, the two products remained distinct, despite a continuing drive by Dassault to promote what it terms 3DExperience.
This concept involves specific types of program, such as 3D modelling, becoming applications that can run over the internet through cloud-based computing in a way that permits ‘social’ interaction between different parties to help both define initial design intent and then support subsequent product development.
The core attributes of the approach, says Dassault, are support for:
• social and collaborative interactions that deal with both structured and unstructured information – the latter could be, for example, a conversation or rough sketch;
• 3D modelling that can represent that information geometrically and show its performance and effect;
• simulations that reproduce actions including production environments and factories;
• searching and gathering complex information easily and efficiently irrespective of topic, format or source.
In practice, this concept requires that the whole range of software programs available from Dassault – from Catia at the top to something as relatively simple as its 3DVIA Home space planner for home improvements – must be capable of integration to support a capability to recreate in the digital world any aspect, whether existing or projected, of the real physical world. This prospect can be traced to the influence of the company’s visionary president and chief executive officer Bernard Charles. In line with this strategy, the past three years have seen a convergence between SolidWorks and Dassault in people and, more crucially, in technology.
The initial move was the appointment of a French CEO for the company, Bertrand Sicot. Next came the announcement two years ago by Charles that the existing desktop-based SolidWorks software would be joined by a new cloud-based counterpart that would be compatible with the rest of the Dassault portfolio. Another was the indication last year that the initial release of the new SolidWorks software would focus on support for upfront conceptual design. The most recent step, this year, was the unveiling of the first of the new software modules – called Mechanical Conceptual and aimed at supporting design work at the start of a project where experimentation, rather than final product definition, is required.
Despite being a SolidWorks program, the Mechanical Conceptual package differs from existing software bearing the name in several respects. Its modelling kernel is not the Parasolid software used in all previous SolidWorks releases – a system ultimately owned by rival software supplier Siemens PLM – but instead is Dassault’s own CGM product, around which Catia is built. It is also a ‘direct’ modeller that allows designs to be constructed freely without the constraints imposed by the ‘parametric’ nature of the existing modelling package.
But, most portentously perhaps, the software runs over the cloud and allows people remote from the immediate design team to access it and provide controlled input to the design process in the form of comment and ideas. It marks the debut in SolidWorks’ engineering design software of the ‘social’ working concept that is one of the essential elements of the 3DExperience initiative.
Sicot says the new software makes engineering design “conceptual, social, connected and instinctive”, just as Facebook software does elsewhere. He adds that the validity of the approach has been proven. Several engineering companies have taken part in a project to use the software for real, before its market release at the beginning of April.
One of the companies trying out the software is Karl W Schmidt in Commerce City, Colorado, US. The company makes conveyors and materials handling systems for use in recycling operations and has used SolidWorks 3D modelling technology for several years, says its engineering manager Mike Buchli.
But the company is small compared with most of its competitors – just four design engineers compared with 30 at some of its rivals, he adds. So to compete effectively, it has to provide a distinctive market profile. It does so in two ways. One is through the type of project it is prepared to tackle – retrofits of new installations into older buildings, which may have awkward shapes. The other is by seeking an edge over those larger rivals through the flexibility and speed with which it can tackle jobs.
On both counts, the extra capability promised by the Mechanical Conceptual package seems to offer exciting possibilities. The company inevitably re-uses a lot of existing design data in any installation – “about 80 per cent”, says Buchli – and in consequence its competitive advantage derives from the speed with which it can design the rest of the required hardware and configure the whole into a complete solution for the specific requirements of customers.
Karl W Schmidt’s use of the Mechanical Conceptual program is, perhaps, atypical. It ports a lot of data from its conventional modelling system into the Mechanical Conceptual package and then uses it to design the whole projected new installation, says Buchli. When the design is finalised, it transfers the data back into the mainstream 3D modelling system and uses that as the database from which manufacturing instructions are derived.
Nevertheless, the ability of the software to support ‘social’ interaction between different parties has proven useful for the company, says Buchli. People, he points out, “get ideas at all times of the day”. Karl W Schmidt has allowed external organisations – “dealers and customers” – access to the Mechanical Conceptual package to post comments, though not to alter geometry, which remains the prerogative of the company’s designers. Importantly, he adds, those external parties do not need to be running the software themselves.
Far from being a luxury for a small organisation, the software’s capability has proven valuable, says Buchli. “It increases the resources available to us,” he says, adding that the provision it allows for “customer buy-in” to the actual design process provides a “crucial” market differentiator.
So, too, does the speed with which the software enables the company to come up with designs. In a recent job, says Buchli, the company was able to reach a “fourth revision” in 3D in a time in which a 2D counterpart would have reached only a “second revision” stage. A task that might have taken six weeks to achieve in 2D and two weeks in conventional 3D is now down to a “week or less”.
So SolidWorks itself is excited by the way its software is developing, while a pioneering
user of the latest addition to its product portfolio is reporting real benefits. But how does a complete outsider view things?
Peter Bilello, president of US-based analyst company CIMdata, which monitors the use of computer-based technologies across the whole manufacturing sector, sees several factors at play – some new and others not so new.
He puts the concept of cloud computing in the latter category. There is nothing new about the use of the internet to transmit corporate and technical information – big companies have had private intranets to do that for a couple of decades or so, he says.
What is much more innovative, though, is the way SolidWorks is exploiting the concept. But a lot more is involved than the opportunity for ‘social’ working practices, says Bilello. For a start, the system provides a radically different “delivery mechanism” for the distribution of software and for subsequent upgrades, as well as holding out the prospect of access to much more powerful computing resources than many companies could afford to maintain in-house.
Indeed, he believes that probably the most significant opportunity that the software offers engineering in the near future is the ability of smaller and medium-sized companies to use the cloud to access, for instance, sophisticated simulation and analysis capabilities. In contrast, the enhanced potential for collaborative working is, he says, almost a “side-effect”.
Another pertinent trend that Bilello identifies is the simple, but still massive, increase in the amount of data that companies of all sorts are generating. This increase is, he says, far outstripping the rate at which IT budgets are growing. So the cloud, with its promise of access to huge resources of remote data storage, is the only feasible way
that sufficient capacity can be made available.
Nevertheless, he does not dismiss the prospects for the 3DExperience concept. As increasing numbers of apps are added, the potential is for the modelling not just of ‘products’ but also of ‘systems’. He says 3D could become 4D, through, for instance, the addition of time as a factor in engineering simulation and the ability to predict how products might behave over ever-extended periods of use.
But as Sicot’s comments show, the basic message seems to be that the networking and communications opportunities that the internet offers recreational users also have potential implications for design and manufacturing engineering. It remains to be seen whether people in the latter sectors will believe
this message.