By Prasad Mandava, CEO, Visual Collaboration Technologies (VCollab)

Making Better Design Decisions Using 3D Digital CAE Slides for Simulation Results Processing, Reporting, Reviewing, and Refining Previous Designs

From design through manufacturing, today’s new product development processes are driven by robust digital applications – with one notable exception. For many manufacturers and product development organizations, CAE analysis reporting for design validation and review remains largely a manual 2D process.

Design Engineers, Release Engineers, and other stakeholders rely on feedback from CAE analysis to guide critical product design decisions. This feedback is often in the form of 2D non interactive static documents such as PowerPoint slides, images, or videos. These formats are decades-old and simply not designed to operate in today’s 3D digital environment and limit the opportunity for full realization of benefits from CAE simulations. The consequences are extensive administrative work by costly CAE Analysts, and a lack of insight to guide designers and critical decision-making.

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By Russell Riddiford, ANCA Americas President, ANCA

Russell Riddiford

Entering 2023, there’s some uncertainty and speculation surrounding the market. With interest rates continuing to rise, the grumblings about an impending recession are still bubbling. Although I do predict that the overall market for 2023 won’t compete with some of the knock-out years of the past (I’m lookin’ at you 2018), at ANCA we do see a lot of opportunity in the year. At ANCA, we’re focused on continued diversification and expanding our reach into growing markets such as aerospace, medical, and automation.

Some predictions span across all markets – including the need for agility within an organization, achieving supply assurance, and making steps towards the smart factories of the future. If the pandemic has shown us nothing, it’s that businesses need to be agile to minimize risk in the ever-changing markets.

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By Doctor Yavuz Murtezaoglu, Founder and Managing Director, ModuleWorks

Dr. Yavuz Murtezaoglu

Trends in CAM technology

There are more than 1 million CAM Operators worldwide and they are using around 40 different major CAM software brands. The focus of the CAM vendors in 2023 is going to be delivering more value to their user base by providing annual maintenance updates.

Most CAM vendors are focusing on improving the User Experience to improve the productivity of the CAM operators and to reduce training needs for new operators. This means “easy to use” and “easy to learn” are both equally important topics to address by CAM vendors. Capabilities of tool path technology in CAM systems will evolve to address the needs for higher productivity of the CAM operators. A good example of this trend is quick adoption of tool path strategies like “One click Deburring” or “Fully automated Rotary machining” in many CAM systems. Many CAM Software vendors are deciding to license such tool path technologies from ModuleWorks as their main component provider for tool path calculation and simulation. This frees up their development resources to address the complete workflow from design with PMI (product manufacturing information) to post processing.

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By Jonathan Girroir, Technical Evangelist, Tech Soft 3D

Jonathan Girroir

AI is a Game Changer

Even though the industry has been talking about AI for many years, the trifecta of massive amounts of data available through the rise of the internet, the dramatic increase in processing power fueled by GPU’s originally designed for gaming and steady advances in software algorithms to analyze and use that data will result in the power of AI being more fully realized across almost all markets. AI is 100% the number one game changer in the coming years – it will change the way we interact with computers just as Google Search did 20 years ago.

Generative Design is one great example. Being able to use text prompts, leverage huge datasets and natural language recognition is now driving increased use of generative design, and I think we’ll see much more of that in 2023. But it goes beyond generative design and will have a big impact on Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) in general. For example, you will be able to generate large data sets and then have the system learn from it, and predict the outcome of deformations or anything else, give advance preview of post-processing results and even suggest certain workflows for optimum efficiency. Or give the system a basic 2D image and then it generates a 3D design from scratch.

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 By Volker Nesenhöner, CEO, OPEN MIND Technologies

Volker Nesenhöner

The shortage of skilled workers is becoming an increasingly important issue in the manufacturing industry. A large percentage of employees will retire in the next few years, and it will be a significant challenge to find new and qualified successors. Therefore, it is now a matter of quickly counteracting this development as the shortage of experienced employees is having a negative impact on the manufacturing sector.

The know-how that skilled workers have acquired over many years is gradually being lost. For companies, the loss can be enormous if they do not take countermeasures now. Therefore, manufacturers should focus on digitalization, process optimization and automation. This applies to small and medium-sized companies as well as large enterprises. Manufacturers need to adapt their processes to changing situations and this requires businesses to analyze, define and often reorganize their structures and processes. These challenges can only be mastered with state-of-the-art technologies.

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By Patrick Dunfey, Vice President of Marketing and Alliances, Anark

Patrick Dunfey

An all-in-one Digital Thread Collaboration Platform for 2023
A long-term manufacturing industry goal has been to make product data accessible and actionable across manufacturers and suppliers to allow for more effective collaboration and innovation. Since this information is rarely in one place, a platform to automatically aggregate information from disparate PLM, CAD, and other authoritative IT systems to create standards-based 3D PDF Technical Data Packages (TDPs) was important.  These documents were adopted by industry, especially the Department of Defense, as a superior way to organize, store and share information. All that was needed to open a TDP was the free Adobe Reader which is available on most desktops.
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By Jon Hirschtick, Chief Evangelist, PTC

Rapid Changes in Product Development in 2023: The Three A’s

Jon Hirschtick

Rapid change is knocking at the door.

Driven by massive amounts of volatility in almost every aspect of the world, product developers are in for continuing changes in the “three A’s”: Agile, Additive, and Augmented.

The first, and perhaps the most profound, change: Hardware developers are implementing Agile processes.

Why now? There are three reasons: Huge change in the world around them; lessons have been learned from agile software development; and the new generation workforce, who is “agile-native” in their culture and tools.

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By John Dulchinos, President, GKN Additive

John Dulchinos

In the field of 2023 additive manufacturing, we believe efforts in supply chain rebalancing will reflect a reduction in dependence on China and a greater global focus on electric vehicles (EVs) to further stimulate US manufacturing. In 3D printing, the SPAC bubble has popped, and company valuations have fallen, limiting access to capital, and ending the industry’s hype cycle phase. 3D printing continues to have excess printer capacity and remains heavily reliant on prototyping as its primary source of revenue, which is reflective of AM constraints such as limited engineering capacity, high 3D printed part costs, and a lack of robust supply chain solutions.

Looking ahead, we believe the industry’s next phase of growth will be driven by high-value, functional parts production, enabled by innovative designs and robust manufacturing solutions. This shift will be supported by an ecosystem of providers that meet customer quality requirements at scale, cost, and lead time primarily in the medical, aerospace, and automotive industries. The tipping point for the industry will come as the ecosystem matures and there is enough value creation with end-users to justify a switch to additive parts that provide substantial profit. We anticipate customers will increasingly look for financially stable, outsourced manufacturing solution providers that can consolidate and localize the supply chain to deliver assembled parts to spec while conforming to the appropriate industry quality management system(s).

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By Keith Perrin, VP Agile Manufacturing SW, Authentise

Keith Perrin

At Authentise we’ve gathered some of our team’s views about what we can expect for 2023. We feel we’ve a good record of independent innovation for design, engineering and manufacturing… DRM (digital rights management) for manufacturing; IOT manufacturing device connectivity; AI driven engineering design and manufacturing, Cloud based, distributed, agile, engineering process and workflow management are a few of the innovations Authentise is pioneering.

However, basing future predictions on what’s happened in the past, has always been an idea fraught with difficulty. Sure there are trends we can try to extrapolate. However it’s often the unforeseen that causes movements to tip. This, we feel, has certainly been the case over the past year or so.

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By Angel Llavero, the CEO of Meltio

Angel Llavero

“We believe that 2023 will be the year of consolidation among the companies developing the different additive manufacturing technologies in the market. In recent months we have witnessed processes of concentration of companies, workforce reduction, industrial relocations, price increases due to the impact of global inflation and increased production costs due to the uncertainty of the war in Ukraine and the slow supply of raw materials after the hard years of the Covid pandemic.

The global 3D printing industry is continuing to mature. Messy business conditions add complexity and consolidation to an industry moving away from its roots in labs and maker spaces and more into boardrooms and stock exchanges.

At Meltio, we end the year with our sights set on new challenges to remain an indispensable partner that enables industrial local metal parts production at the point of need and cost reductions. Our wire-laser metal 3D printing technology (DED) has become a reliable partner for applications such as material research, prototyping, tooling, final parts, and repairs across various industries, from defense and mining to automotive and consumer goods.
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