CFdesign 2010: The multi-scenario design study environment

The epitome of upfront cfd is leveraging the results from your fluid flow and heat transfer simulation to help drive design. The results need to answer the question whether a design or a scenario passed or failed. The results should also provide some insight to why it passed or failed and should help the design engineer make better design decisions. Everything else, is simply gravy.

We have been obsessed with this idea from the beginning. We have talked to literally 1000s of design engineers and the message we are hearing is that they want an environment that fosters decision making. The workflow needs to be super intuitive and a key is to be able to identify critical values and compare this data very easily.

CFdesign 2010 takes upfront cfd to a new level. The brand new environment has been optimized for multi-scenario design studies. Everything from the setup workflow, to the lightweight architecture that makes multiple scenarios possible all the way to the brand new Decision Center that makes decision making…well, exactly what it should be…simple!

Don’t take my word for it, take a look for yourself.

Top 10 reasons why CFdesign 2010 is changing the game…again!

Things have been quiet on the Virtual Engineer front lately. All for good reasons. I have been utterly consumed with the new release, CFdesign 2010. The feedback has been overwhelmingly great.

This release is a game-changer, for sure. You’ve been asking and we have been listening. Take a peek at the doc below to get a general feel. Videos will be posted in the next few days.

Click the “Toggle full screen” button.

CFdesign 2010_top 10 Brochure

Big Props to Pump Design Engineers

Started my Sunday, pretty typical, hanging with the kids etc. Thunderstorms had kicked in and we had one of the hardest rains in Philly in a very long time. Having a fairly old house by US standards comes with flooding wet basements from time to time. As you can imagine the clean up side of the story was less than fun.

I purchased a submersible pump (Water Ace Model R6S) model from Lowe’s or Home Depot a few years ago for just such an occasion. Fortunately, I have only needed to use it only a few times and it has saved me a ton of aggravation. It is amazing the volume of water that can accumulate in a very short time. I bet I pumped a few 100 gallons in less than an hour. It got me thinking of all the pump engineers I have spoken to over the years and it was really cool to use a device where some engineer somewhere in the world designed it so that it just worked. Maybe, just maybe CFdesign (or some CFD software) played a contributing factor on the design.

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3467/3782025898_7f094a3c3c.jpg" alt="

Check out the pump above in action. Got me also thinking, about my expectations as a consumer of what appears to be a simple device. I want to just stick it in the watery/muddy mess and turn it on and miraculously it just works. Fact is, that is basically what has happened, every time I used it. But in reality, what appears to be a simple device is pretty sophisticated. It has moving parts internally, tight clearances and is expected to prime itself and pump “whatever”. Obviously the rain water gets mixed with the sand and dirt from my cellar floor as well as all kinds of debris it picks up along the way. There is a very simple screen on the suction side that allows the debris to collect in a pile instead of being suctioned into the impeller etc. But, watching the discharge end its pretty obvious that this “simple” pump is working it and pumping all kinds of stuff.

Not trivial stuff to design, obviously. We have worked with the folks at Pentair Pumps (parent company of Water Ace folks) for a few years as well as many other pump manufactures.

Take, Cornell Pumps shown above for example, we have helped them reduce the amount of prototyping. There is a long list of things Upfront CFD can do to help such as providing flow rate, pressure head, performance curve data, efficiencies and torque to name a few of the basics. But where we really help is seeing inside the device, which simply can’t be seen in a testing environment.

At the end of the day, the cleanup was no fun at all. But it always brings a smile to see products designed by mechanical engineers that just work as expected, easy to forget the blood, sweat and tears that was put into the design.

Multi-touch coming from SpaceClaim

Check out this awesome video from the boys at SpaceClaim. Multi-touch is still in its infancy, but I definitely see a place for it in the CAE world. As computer power and technology grow, it will be common for engineers to have design reviews surrounded by big flat panel displays where info is literally a click away.

Imagine the day when all of your PLM information is instantly available and you are spinning models around showing details and making changes, updating instantly within a simulation environment to see “what-if”.

I see the time required to “make” presentations and capture images begin to dwindle as we move forward in time. All of this is required now, because the info is not available. Multi-touch is only a piece of the entire pie. Cool stuff and not too far away.

Today’s Engineers: Adaptibility is the key to survival.

Been absent from blogging the last few weeks. Spending a bit more time on Twitter, (@derrekcooper) but figured it was time for some reflection. I recently returned from literally a trip around the world (London>Baltimore>Beijing) for some company meetings. It was great to sit and plan with our team how to tackle the next 6-12 months in this ugly economy. Spirits are high and confidence is key.

The overall theme for us and for all engineering organizations is “adaptability”. I found a funny discussion about Charles Darwin on his views of “adaptability being the key to success” and “only the strong survive”. The author felt these were vastly different. I disagree and think they are one in the same. Being “strong” doesn’t necessarily mean bigger or more money, although it does help. To me, strong and adaptive in the engineering word are synonymous. Those that adapt and react smartly, tend to be the strongest and will end out on top.

The fact is the economy stinks and many folks are not spending any cash. But there are still mountains and mountains of engineering challenges in the world. Engineering managers and directors all over the world are tasked with making things cheaper and better. Probably now more than ever before. Teams and individuals have to pull out the stops whenever they can and adapt to this new world. It may be here for awhile, can you handle it?

Very simple, short post. To all the engineers out there, when you are sitting around your weekly meetings, speak up, push your teams to the limit. Push yourself to the limit, now is the time. It will only be a matter of time before the economy makes a turn. Will you be ready? Will your team be primed and ready to go?

Get out there and investigate your process are there things that you can do to improve, even on a tight budget. Work with consultants, sales folks and come up with a strategy that is a win-win. Don’t just sit and wait for it to happen.

I couldn’t agree more – “only the strong will survive”.

CAE in the Clouds

Constant buzz about this topic. Tons of speculation on where its going, pretty sure no one knows where it will end up. But I think its clear to many that the options are endless. A recent blog post, by Devon Sowell indicates that SolidWorks is getting into the game. To what extent, only time will tell. I was a bit surprised to hear that they are looking at CAD as SaaS, at least in the traditional sense.

I tend to mix cloud computing and SaaS as one in the same. But really, I see SaaS as the business side of things – how you access and pay for the software application. Cloud computing is a bit more general and simply means (to me) leveraging the web and hosted servers/sites to perform what you do (or wish you could do) locally today.

There are so many avenues that this can take on the CAD side. I suspect that as bandwidth is increasing, we can imagine that you will be able to interact, edit and create 3D models over the web. But, I am not sure from a user’s experience this is in the near future. Tons of things have to be accounted for including RAM, video performance and overall processing power for complex CAD operations. Plus, one of the selling points of SaaS is to use it on demand, “when” you need it. This has a very part-time, occasional feeling about it. Even though CAD is easier to use now than ever before, its not word processing, so there will be a need for proficiency.

But, as we know, there are many facets to the CAD world. To me, the first logical step is data collaboration – files in the sky, on demand access from anywhere that can be viewed, mocked up and shared. Reducing the need for ftp, email and time draining “quick” design reviews. PTC is just dipping their toe in the water with their Social Product Development effort. So imagine you are collaborating with another site or a vendor or a supplier and you can all have access to the exact same CAD data on demand. You can collaborate on the spot or leave text or even video messages for each other so that time zones become less and less of a burden. This access needs to be anywhere, from any device. All the data – 2d drawings, FEA/CFD results, testing data, specs, BOMS -everything must be a click away. Some might be thinking, doesn’t this already exist in PLM?? To a point, but it is still not mainstream enough to roll out to everyone. Once this is accomplished, then I think we will see the true power of cloud computing on this sector of the industry.

The next and more true to my heart is on the computation/simulation side of the world. FEA/CFD is becoming more and more mainstream. Sizes of models is increasing daily as well as the complexity of the physics being solved. This growth will not slow down and will always be bottle necked by the computing resources available. Many have tried and have been marginally successful in providing “on demand computing”. This will continue to be a theme from the simulation folks. So you can imagine that you may run CFD from time to time, but really don’t want to maintain the computing power needed. You may run conceptual models locally and leave the big jobs to the cloud. No doubt we will see more and more of this. But how we interact with this environment is key.

If I sit at my desk and setup a model and then submit all the files etc needed to run the simulation to some server in the sky, this will take time. I also will want to interact with these models in some form or another. At a minimum, I want to know the progress, check quickly if things are moving along nicely, check preliminary results and a whole list of little subtle things that I check when running locally. The beauty of a cloud model is that I want to check that from anywhere at anytime. Might seem silly, but be nice if I had an iphone app that allowed me to see what jobs I had running and have a little dashboard that is customizable to look at certain things that “I” want to look at for all my models. Maybe I’m not an iphone guy and I simply want a text message or instant message when the model is finished. Maybe I am not a mobile device guy at all and simply want to “login” on my wife’s home computer to see how things are going. To many this might be a foreign concept and many others are probably nodding their heads because they are feeling the pain.

I am closer to the simulation folks, so I could go on for days about the potential of SaaS/cloud in this space. I am interested in hearing from true CAD folks that are struggling everyday. Where can the cloud help you?

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PHISH show – Camden, NJ

Little late, but have been thinking about the show last Sunday night in Camden at Susquehanna Bank Center. (former Tweeter Center). It’s been a long five year hiatus/breakup for the boys. Timing couldn’t have been better to hit the road for a summer tour. I was pretty adamant a few months ago that I was going to at least see one of the shows. Bummed I wasn’t able to swing Hampton, but they posted all three s hows for free to LIVE Phish as a thank you. I quickly snatched all three nights and have been playing them since.

I procrastinated like hell and snatched a single via stub hub. Prices are a bit high, but that system is amazing. I placed my order online, email confirmation and I swung by a local hotel in Philly on my way to the show. Couldn’t be easier considering I waited two days before the show.

So much has changed in the last five years. The venues are so much nicer AND more commercialized than ever. Parking is a madhouse with the typical fun insanity in the pre-show parties. As in sports arenas, the quality of the food is a bit higher than it used to along with the prices. $12 for a Hoegaarden. Seems insane, but the counter is don’t drink or pay $9 for Miller Lite. I also scored a lawn chair rental for $5. Interestingly, I found that to be a bargain. The crowds were a bit younger than I remember. And, no, it has nothing to do with me being older.

PHISH camden favorites

The band sounded better than ever. The energy was at an all time high and it was obvious they were having alot of fun again. Above are two clips you can see for yourself. I have completely reengaged with my favorite band of all times. As with everything I do, I am totally addicted to their music and have been downloading/uploading like a fiend. I get the music via livephish and upload and stream via lala.com. I keep a backup of it all on a usb jump drive so I can manage music on my ipod via banshee or songbird. Songbird just released an update so I am currently testing out the music management tool I’ll be using on ubuntu and will update that for another time.

I am in the process of scoring more tickets. Jealous of other folks that are traveling around. Had it been five years earlier, I’d so be there. If you are a fan and think you might have outgrown the scene, I can assure you its worth it.

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The Simulation World: the designer and the analyst

If you have read more than a sentence of any of my posts, you know that I am a fan of simulation, FEA or CFD or other, to be done throughout the product life cycle. I think the earlier in the design process the better. Anyone that has done very early, proof of concept models can verify that if done properly the payback can be invaluable. In many organizations, the person responsible for this sort of simulation varies.

Some of the smaller/newer organizations tend to have multi-tasking engineers that are responsible for the entire gamut of tasks – design, testing, material selection, manufacturing, support and simulation. The larger and older organizations tend to be a bit more hierarchical and lines are a bit more defined.

My goal is to not pick sides here, although I definitely do tend to lean toward one side. I just wanted to point out some observations. I sat through some really cool presentations last week at PLM World, in particular the NX NASTRAN presentations. There were some really insightful conversations and ideas being presented. I was a bit surprised at the demographic of those presenting. The room was filled by veteran engineers, clearly with mountains of FEA experience and were passionate to bring the NX flavor of NASTRAN up to snuff.

Could be simply the group of folks that attend this sort of thing, but I was a bit surprised that there were not young, enthusiastic engineers in there pushing a new breed of ideas in with a passion. I know that the seasoned guys know there stuff, but I firmly believe that the new crew of engineers can and will drive the software companies to develop products of the future. So I began to accept this idea that the analyst demographic, for now, are the veterans in the audience.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I cruised down to the Solid Edge Simulation hands on session. I figured, this is where I will find the new breed banging away. There certainly were some, but it was clear that it was pushing comfort zones to the max.

My findings at this event are seen at every conference and in numerous companies all over the world. I love what the Siemens’ folks are doing to position themselves as a leader in the simulation world. I hope that young engineers continue to push themselves to incorporate simulation as part of the design process.

I think that many young engineers are entering the work force with a fair amount of knowledge about simulation. It is now up to the engineering managers out there to open their minds, expand the comfort zone and allow the new breed to help implement the tools that are available.

A Partner View of Siemens PLM

Sitting at the close of the day at PLM World. Unfortunately, I came in the trailing end of day 2. So, with time to catch up, I spent the entire day soaking in as much info and vibe as possible. Fair to state that my impression of Siemens and the many previous names was that of respect but also that of a massive organization that had their fingers in a bunch of stuff but I had a difficult time tying it altogether.

I surely can’t say that I totally get it, (it’s me, not them- I’m sure). But one thing is for sure, they have some killer technology and like many have extremely passionate users.

I rode two main tracks today – the Simulation side and the Velocity Series side.

Let’s start with Velocity. I have driven Solid Edge for many years and always thought it pretty descent but honestly found some of the “other” guys easier. Totally unfair assessment as I have never been trained in SE and more importantly, I never really heard the philosophy of it. Philosophy?

Yea, I have always gained tremendous insight knowing the thought behind it all when testing out a new product. Often, if you show me how it was intended to be used, I pick it up instantly rather than trying to figure it out. Anyway, I sat through a Solid Edge Simulation hands on, given by Mark Thompson. He gave a quick intro and guided people through it. Once I heard a little bit, I was off. It is still in its infancy, targeting linear static analysis, but based on a bigger NASTRAN back end, its solid. I haven’t done structural simulation in awhile and I was flying through it. I totally got it and more importantly, I can “see” where its going. Check out a tiny blip.

I have to say, one thing that SE has going for them is that they are backed by one of the industry standards, NASTRAN. So the migration path is endless. That is something the other midrange CAD companies will have to wrestle with at some point. Being a former ANSYS user, I’d never give too much credit to NASTRAN but what I saw today is that there is a new NASTRAN in town. The NX flavor is a newer generation of any that I have seen in the past. Plus they have the power of FEMAP on the front end.

That leads me to the Simulation track. Very cool stuff and more importantly, there was a room full of passionate people that are not only into it but are willing to put the time in because they want it to succeed. On odd thing to say, perhaps, but building that tribe of dedicated folks is all it takes at times for there to be constant energy injected into a product.

I’m sure there has been this crystal clear clarity among Siemens folks for along time. But I can truly say that I enjoyed the education today and can say, I see it. Doesn’t necessarily mean that it all makes perfect sense to me, but I see the potential.

It’s interesting how much Teamcenter plays a part. Still seems super complicated to me, but watching a presentation on how it manages the how lifecycle of the product is super cool. What’s even cooler is to hear that it is actually being implemented and goes beyond the demo.

Internet Radio: Slacker vs. Pandora

I think many of us count on music in some form or another to get us through the work day and take care of us in our non-work time. Some maybe are locked to the itunes library, or some other mp3 system. Many just prefer to listen to what they own or acquire, depending on how you roll.

Others of us are looking for diversity and enjoy listening to online radio. If you asked me six months ago, I would have swore by XM. But, we recently went through a sad divorce. I think satellite radio missed the mark on so many fronts – a rant for another day. I began to explore intenet radio and stumbled upon Pandora.

Initially I liked Pandora. It’s free with commercials or can be upgraded for $36/yr for commercial free and a few other perks. It allows you to create your own stations by simply picking an artist, song or style of music. This seemed great initially, but I quickly felt that the selection wasn’t vast enough. Lots of repeats etc. Plus, one thing I quickly learned is that there is no way to say create a “Counting Crows” station and expect nothing but Counting Crows. If you think about it, does make sense, otherwise, I might never buy another mp3 or album again. So, what you do get is similar mixes of like artists and songs. Plus they have an iphone app that worked really well. They have a “share” community based feature that you can see what oth

Saving…

ers are listening to and share, seems cool. I just don’t use it. If Pandora was more popular, I could see this feature being really cool, link it to your Facebook account etc. Often I found that I just wanted to pick a genre and let it rip. This forced me to poke my head around and see what else is out there.

Enter slacker radio. This was recommended to me by a good friend. I tried it out and loved it. Immediately upgraded to the Slacker Plus for commercial free. What I liked about slacker is that there are a ton of pre-programmed stations, literally 13 different alternative stations. Plus they also have an iphone app which is an absolute requirement for me as I want to listen as I walk the trails. So far so good, I thought the hunt was over. But, not so fast. The performance of the slacker iphone app has fallen off the charts. It blanks out at least twice a song. Absolutely, unusable. Extremely disappointing as I use the iphone version 85% of the time. Without it, its a show stopper for me. I haot good.

Pandora now is back on my radar. I have been using it successfully on my iphone without any issues, whatsoever. When it comes down to it, performance is key. I like Slacker’s selections more, the iphone interface is much nicer than Pandora’s, but if it doesn’t work….I can’t use it. Therefore you come in as a distant second. If I didn’t pay for the Plus service, I wouldn’t feel like I had the right to gripe. But, if you want me to remain a customer, how about it works every time, no matter what.

Both applications have a desktop version, so you are not required to run in a browser. I didn’t appreciate this at first, but it’s extremely handy to not have to tab over in Firefox to change a station etc. Both use Adobe Air for their desktop apps. Every Air product that I have seen is really slick. I use twhirl for twitter on both Vista and Ubuntu and I really like the Air look and feel. I am looking to see how Air can be leveraged for some engineering type apps.

One last thing — both services are trying to push their own player/device. I see the value in it, but the last thing I need is another device. I wish they spent a little more time allowing me to leverage it with my car radio system or existing entertainment system. Perhaps the portable device is the way to go? Rather just use my iphone, but that’s me..

Anyway, open for discussion on this one. What is playing in your office?

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