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Color-coding clears congestion
Eliminating the bottleneck between design and analysis
It’s an issue that many companies face – a large design team passes CAD files to a small group of analysts. There’s iterative communication between the two disciplines as designs are tested and validated and this takes time. Meanwhile, models back up as they await specialist attention and the ensuing jam reduces productivity, impacting the development process.
Design and computer-aided engineering (CAE) teams typically cooperate to create an analysis request, transfer data to the CAE system, respond to inquiries, create and run the simulation model, generate analysis reports and revise the design. There may be multiple rounds of designing and testing as both sides move towards the optimal solution. This back-and-forth collaboration between designers and analysts is critical because it leads to better quality products. However, there is a downside.
The simulation slow down
Even though complex analysis problems can be solved in a matter of hours rather than days, the fact that designers usually outnumber analysts affects workflow. What may begin as a small time lag in analysis throughput can, after several cycles, end up as a considerable delay. Depending on the complexity of the part or product, such delays can stretch from days into weeks. With analysts caught up in routine simulation as well as complex matters, designers may be left waiting until they can proceed.
Productivity hold-ups are critical for any company, especially when they are in a demanding supply chain with fixed deadlines for a range of clients. One such company is DENSO Corporation. In terms of sales, the company is the second largest automotive parts and systems provider in the world, supplying nearly all major OEMs globally.
A member of the Fortune Global 500 with more than 200 consolidated subsidiaries around the globe, DENSO works with leading brands, liaising closely with automotive partners on research and development for electric and hybrid vehicles. It also operates in other markets such as household heating equipment and industrial robots. With a commitment to innovation, the company recognized one big internal challenge. “We have an issue with long lead times for CAE in product design,” comments Yuichi Kondo, project assistant manager at DENSO. “It takes time to communicate.”
Streamlining workflows
A long-term partner of Siemens Digital Industries Software, DENSO uses NXTM software for design and manufacturing and SimcenterTM software for simulation. These are part of the comprehensive Siemens Xcelerator portfolio.
Across the organization, NX modules support every aspect of design from concept to manufacturing whilst Simcenter 3D provides accurate multi-disciplinary simulation of product performance. With an integrated toolset on a common platform, geometry can seamlessly pass from CAD to the CAE environment and back. The simulation model and design geometry are always associated, which enables easy updating.
This connectivity already saves DENSO considerable time that was previously spent on part translation, communication between teams and essential documentation. The obvious next question was “Why can’t design teams perform some analysis on their own?”
Enabling early analysis
In answer to that, the company began to develop what it calls the NX CAD and Simcenter 3D integrated process. The first step was for the simulation team to capture repeatable processes and practices and package them up into semi-automated templates that guide designers in preparing models for basic simulation and analysis.
When designers are creating a model in NX they are now required to color-code certain critical geometry features such as narrow blends or fixed constraints. Once a designer is ready to analyze part performance, he/she applies a finite element method (FEM) template that automatically creates the FE mesh, utilizing a set of rules governed by the color-coding. This ensures a good quality mesh.
The designer then applies the sim template. This also uses the color-coding of geometry features and sets up the appropriate boundary conditions and required simulation parameters. Next, he/she simply runs the simulation model and views the results.
Because the model is already color-coded, subsequent analysis iterations are fast and easy so a designer can make geometry changes to reduce stress or improve performance then rerun the simulation without any additional work. “This is a major advantage of the NX CAD and Simcenter 3D integrated process,” says Kondo.
The color-coded information is part of the model’s feature history and can be suppressed when design work is underway. Designers can reverse the suppression of color-coding features when they are ready to run a simulation. “This makes it very easy for designers to understand and reuse the color-code information,” Kondo continues.
Simple scaling up
The Simcenter 3D and NX integrated process can also be applied to assemblies. Because each component of the assembly has color-coded geometry features, the total number in an assembly can be quite large. One early test involved preparing an assembly of over 30 components and performing a linear-static analysis. The simulation templates use the color-coding to accurately set up the mesh, boundary conditions and parameters across the entire assembly.
CAE time down by 80%
“By using the NX CAD and Simcenter 3D integrated process and CAE template, we reduced the time spent for CAE analysis by up to 80 percent,” says Kondo. Analysts have also been freed up to focus on more complicated projects.
The color-coded sections are areas where, in the past, analysts would have needed to manually edit some settings when creating a simulation model. Now that all these details are captured and automated by the template, the amount of color-coding in a model represents time saved in comparison with the original process. “The larger the number of color settings, the greater the reduction in work hours,” notes Kondo.
The company also noticed increased quality. Design problems are identified and corrected earlier and the potential for human error is reduced because there is less file sharing.
Creating a Teamcenter extension
DENSO uses Teamcenter® software, also in the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, for all design data management. Looking ahead, DENSO is focused on extending the use of the integrated process into data and lifecycle management.
Before DENSO began adopting the integrated process, the master model was stored in Teamcenter, but analysts were working outside Teamcenter using a separate storage and management system. In that system, the CAD data inside simulation and the simulation data itself were not being tracked.
As a consequence, time and effort were spent exporting and importing CAD data from Teamcenter because analysts needed to make sure they were using the right geometry files for their simulations. Data related to CAD variants had to be tracked manually, with individual analysts managing their own data. If team members changed and original data could not be located, it was often necessary to create a new simulation model.
The new proposed workflow is for all simulation data files and related templates to be saved in Teamcenter, eliminating the need to export and import CAD data every time there is an analysis.
Using Teamcenter provides an additional benefit. Model data can be viewed in the JTTM data format, designed for fast viewing without the host software. JT files are small compared to the original data files they present, sometimes by a factor of 50. This enables team members who are not regular NX or Simcenter 3D users to make quick work of a design review.
A united future for design, analysis and data
On early adoption sites the traditional workflow between design and engineering analysis has been successfully streamlined, uniting these disciplines. DENSO anticipates further reductions in CAE working hours as it continues to roll out the NX and Simcenter 3D integrated process and the Teamcenter extension.