PLM industry’s history-free, feature-based modelling technology

Citation

(2008), "PLM industry’s history-free, feature-based modelling technology", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 80 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2008.12780eab.015

PLM industry’s history-free, feature-based modelling technology

Article Type: Aerospace technology From: Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology: An International Journal, Volume 80, Issue 5

Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, has announced what it considers to be the next big breakthrough in digital product development with synchronous technology, it is stated to be the PLM industry’s first-ever history-free, feature-based modelling technology, that provides users with up to 100 times faster design experience than ever before.

Launched via a global webcast in conjunction with Hannover Fair, Siemens PLM Software’s new patent-pending technology claims to combines the best of constraint-driven techniques with direct modelling, and is being integrated into the company’s next versions of NXTM and Solid Edge software.

“Siemens recognised the huge potential of synchronous technology during the due diligence process of acquiring UGS,” said Anton Huber, CEO, Siemens Industry Automation Division. “Knowing that the digital model is at the heart of our shared vision to unify the product and production lifecycles, we have worked together to accelerate this breakthrough in CAD technology. The digital model impacts every phase of the PLM process and is key to delivering innovation faster than ever before. This technology will fundamentally change the way manufacturers design products and enable them to accelerate their innovation process, ultimately driving increases in top line revenue.”

“This new synchronous technology is indeed a breakthrough,” said Jack Beeckman, PLM Manager, Liebert Corp. “It marks a new era in modelling that allows an engineer the freedom to be an engineer. With an instantaneous modelling experience, this is going to change the way people think about using CAD. More importantly it’s going to change the way CAD enables them to think about ‘what’ they want to model, and not ‘how’ they want to model.”

The technology is reported to be the first-ever design solution that simultaneously synchronises geometry and rules through a new decision-making inference engine. It claims to accelerate innovation in four key areas:

1. 1.

   Fast idea capture. Synchronous technology captures ideas as fast as the user thinks them, with up to 100 times faster design experience. Designers can devote more time to innovation with new techniques that provide the efficiency of parametric dimension-driven modelling without the computational overhead of pre-planned dependencies. The technology defines optionally persistent dimensions, parameters and design rules at time of creation or edit, without the overhead of an ordered history.

2. 2.

   Fast design changes. The technology automates the implementation of planned or unplanned design changes to seconds versus hours thorough unparalleled ease of editing, regardless of design origination, with or without the presence of a history tree.

3. 3.

   Improved multi-CAD reuse. The technology allows users to reuse data from other CAD systems without remodelling. Users can succeed in a multi-CAD environment with a fast, flexible system that enables them to edit other CAD system data faster than they can in the original system, regardless of the design methodology. A technique called “suggestive selection” automatically infers the function of various design elements without the need for feature or constraint definitions. This increases design reuse and OEM/supplier efficiency.

4. 4.

   New user experience. The technology provides a new user interaction experience that simplifies CAD and makes 3D as easy to use as 2D. The interaction paradigm merges historically independent 2D and 3D environments, providing the robustness of a mature 3D modeller with the ease of 2D. New inference technology automatically infers common constraints and executes typical commands based on cursor position. This makes design tools simple to learn and use for occasional users, driving downstream use to manufacturing engineering and the shop floor.

“While there have been important advances in 3D design technology over the years, designers have not been able to create persistent features without the computational overhead needed to re-compute models from the construction history,” said Chuck Grindstaff, Executive Vice President of Products, Siemens PLM Software. “Traditional parametric modelling serially applies rules to geometry, helping to automate planned change but not addressing unanticipated engineering changes.” History-less modelling concentrates on geometry in an unconstrained manner, but sacrifices intelligence and intent. Direct editing minimises the need to understand a complex history but does not address features.

“Our new synchronous technology incorporates the best of constrained and unconstrained techniques to deal with change in an extremely powerful and efficient manner. Applying the right technique to the job at hand, enables dimension-driven modelling to reach its full potential, generating tremendous productivity gains over traditional methods.”

“Synchronous technology breaks through the architectural barrier inherent in a history-based modelling system,” said Dr Ken Versprille, PLM Research Director, CPDA. “Its ability to recognise current geometry conditions and localise dependencies in real time, allows synchronous technology to solve for model changes without the typical replay of the full construction history from the point of edit. Depending on model complexity and how far back in the history that edit occurs, users will see dramatic performance gains. A 100 times speed improvement could be a conservative estimate.”

The patent-pending technology was jointly developed between Siemens PLM Software’s NX and Solid Edge organisations. Siemens PLM Software’s synchronous technology will be implemented in the next versions of both Solid Edge and NX as a proprietary application layer built on its D-CubedTM and Parasolid software.