Archive for the ‘Digitalization’ Category
Friday, September 24th, 2021
PROSTEP first presented the Mars Rover as a demonstrator of its wide range of software and services at its 25th anniversary celebration. Since then, for example, the chassis and housing of the vehicle originally designed by NASA have been further developed and the physical Mars Rover has been linked to the digital Mars Rover in order to map use cases like the digital thread.
New PLM technologies and concepts such as the digital thread, traceability, model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and the digital twin can be very abstract. With the aim of making them easier to experience at events, PROSTEP has built several models of the Mars Rover based on NASA’s design documents. The argument in favor of the all-terrain vehicle was the fact that it is a complex mechatronic product and as such is ideal for demonstrating new technologies and methods. The model can be used universally and, because it is “rocket science”, it can be presented to the media and the public particularly effectively.
The Mars Rovers were used for the first time at PROSTEP’s 25th anniversary celebration in early 2019, and they subsequently also caused quite a stir at the Hanover trade fair (HMI), the prostep ivip Symposium, the IoT Solutions World Congress held in Barcelona and other events. The coronavirus pandemic has only interrupted their career as a major public attraction. We intend to be back on tour with the new generation of Mars Rovers by the first half of 2022 at the latest.
We have used this forced break for a major “pit stop” and have equipped the Mars Rovers with more powerful steering and drive motors. In two student projects, the rocker bogie was optimized using a hybrid (plastic/sheet metal) construction and plastic components manufactured using additive manufacturing processes. This has made the physical model of the Mars Rovers much more robust, which means that it now requires less maintenance after being used. A positive side effect is that the new Mars Rover variant can be used to demonstrate the PLM capabilities of variant management.
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Sunday, June 13th, 2021
As a result of the pandemic, this year’s prostep ivip Symposium was once again held on screen. PROSTEP was nevertheless able to make a major contribution to the virtual event with its many offerings relating to digital product development and manufacturing. Our experts showed what they are made of with a wide range of presentations that have been made available to view on-demand on the symposium’s virtual platform.
Colorful shoes, passion and 100% commitment are what characterize Steven Vettermann, our expert in the field of traceability, a topic that received particular attention during the symposium. In recognition of his valuable work in ensuring the successful development of the Association and the symposium, he was made honorary member by the board. For many years, Vettermann was general manager of the prostep ivip Association and contributed greatly to driving its expansion in Asia.
But Vettermann’s involvement was not limited to accepting this honorary membership. In a humorous “Late Night Innovation Show”, he and other speakers gave participants a better understanding of his favorite topic, traceability, and explained how they can help make the complexity involved easier to manage.
Despite the pandemic, PROSTEP has gained a large number of new customer projects in recent months and steered other projects to a successful conclusion. Some examples of these can be seen on the symposium’s digital platform.
- In his presentation, Frank Brandstetter, accompanied by a speaker representing the customer, explains the reasons for implementing an agile process model in the development of Daimler’s PDM landscape and describes the associated challenges, in particular with regard to harmonizing working methods.
- Carsten Zerbst reports on the implementation of a new toolset for designing complex cruise ships at the MEYER Werft shipyards in Papenburg and Turku, which combines the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform and the CADMATIC shipbuilding software. Our technology works in the background to ensure seamless integration of the system landscape.
- In his presentation on “PLM Cloudification”, Mirko Theiss presents a project for migrating an existing on-premises data supply solution to the cloud. It is based on the new version of our OpenPDM integration platform, which is made available on the AWS cloud stack. This is the first example of a customer using OpenPDM in the cloud.
On the digital platform, we present not only interesting customer projects but also report on our involvement in research projects and the project work performed by the prostep ivip Association. For example, Josip Stjepandic familiarizes participants with a fully automated tool for creating digital twins for production systems, which can be used for the planning and analysis of facilities or for in-process monitoring. The solution was developed as part of the DigiTwin joint project. It is based on the use of 3D scan data, which is analyzed using object recognition and converted into simulation data.
The Association’s working groups have not been idle over the last months, as the presentations from the live event and the contributions available on the platform make clear. Our employees have made a major contribution to these efforts.
- Together with other participants from the DDP project group, Torsten Schmied informs participants about the development status of the digital data package. DDP is a type of metastandard for the exchange of configured, linked engineering data and is intended to permit the creation of a cross-enterprise digital thread.
- Andreas Trautheim and his colleagues from the Project Schedule Management (PSM) project group provide an overview of the progress being made in the field of cross-enterprise project management. The group defines processes, methods and interfaces for schedule management synchronization for companies that use waterfall, agile or hybrid project methodologies.
- The aim of the Production Lifecycle Information Management (PLIM) working group, of which Stefan Just is a member, is to bridge the gap between the heterogeneous data sources involved in production process planning using a generic information model. In another presentation, Just reports on the work of the Additive Manufacturing Interfaces (AMI) project group, which is developing a specific data model and uniform semantics for the transfer of data for additive manufacturing processes.
- The activities carried out by the Integrated Collaboration Framework (ICF) project group are explained by our colleague Tamara Hofmann. Among her other tasks, she is concerned with the development of a cross-domain ontology for interdisciplinary collaboration together with guidelines as to how this shared conceptualization can be implemented in companies.
The presentations from the live event and the specialist contributions in the platform’s on-demand library will be available online to symposium participants until 30 June.
By Peter Pfalzgraf
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Friday, May 21st, 2021
The joint project “ICT-enabled model-based impact analysis in product development” or ImPaKT for short is picking up speed. Under the leadership of PROSTEP, the project partners are launching a survey to find out which software tools companies use in product development and for MBSE in particular. You are cordially invited to participate in the survey.
For complex and variant-rich products, it is very time-consuming to assess the effects of changes, especially when many domains and partners are involved in product development. In the joint project ImPaKT, a consortium of research institutes, software manufacturers and user companies led by the Heinz Nixdorf Institute at the University of Paderborn aims to simplify such impact analyses by means of a model-based and IT-supported solution approach. It combines the methods of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.
A key project goal is to establish a reference architecture for end-to-end model-based systems engineering that links the partial models in the existing data silos from the development of mechanical, electrical engineering and software engineering system elements. It will then serve as the basis for the development and implementation of model-based and AI-supported methods for holistic impact analysis.
As part of the project, PROSTEP will extend its OpenPDM product family to include software modules for the cross-domain coordination of changes and validate the functionality of the solution together with industry partners.
In order to align the reference architecture with practical requirements, the project partners need information about the existing system and process landscapes in the companies. In particular, the question of which IT systems the companies use to support their change processes, perform MBSE and how they exchange data across company boundaries is of great interest for the project work. To this end, the project partners will conduct interviews with selected companies. The findings obtained in this way will be supplemented and backed up by the results of this survey.
We would be pleased if as many readers of the PROSTEP newsletter as possible would participate in this german survey. Your answers will provide interesting insights into the IT systems currently used in product development and the PLM capabilities used, over and above support for the ImPaKT project. If you give us your consent when filling out the online questionnaire, we will be happy to inform you about the evaluation of the results. If you have any queries, please contact Christian Gentili, christian.gentili@prostep.com.
By Martin Holland
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Thursday, May 13th, 2021
During the last year, PROSTEP gave a boost to the development of the OpenPDM SHIP integration platform. The functionality was expanded in several areas, such as interfaces with CADMATIC and ShipConstructor or NAPA and NESTIX conversions. Continuous development of expertise in shipbuilding-specific software solutions remained high on our agenda.
OpenPDM SHIP is an integration platform designed specifically for the shipbuilding industry that connects shipbuilding-specific CAD/PDM/PLM and ERP solutions and mechanical CAD applications via standardized connectors. The product was launched as development evolved from numerous customer projects, where we tackled similar needs from the shipyards. The COVID pandemic slowed down the progress of customer projects but created a unique opportunity for development to leap forward and expand the functionality of the solution.
New connectors to CADMATIC, AVEVA E3D
OpenPDM SHIP connector with CADMATIC WebAPI offers new opportunities and more flexibility for data access. Besides outfitting model data access, it enables hull data accessibility for the CADMATIC Hull COS version. Additional functionality was added for CADMATIC eShare connector to integrate 3D visualization and collaboration platform with data stored in PDM systems, such as approval, procurement, or delivery status information or other data.
Another significant development currently under construction is the new connector to Everything3D (E3D), the successor system to AVEVA Marine. With a customer already using the system productively, we are working on an OpenPDM SHIP E3D connector that will initially cover the transfer of the outfitting data. Further steps will expand the interface to support E3D Hull in the future.
Additional functionality for CAD conversions
We have made significant progress in the native generation of ShipConstructor data from third-party applications such as NAPA. A corresponding API from SSI, which is still under development and is constantly being extended, enables generating or regenerating parts of the hull or steel structure natively in ShipConstructor.
OpenPDM SHIP supports the mapping of data and structures from ShipConstructor for production engineering with NESTIX, which is used at numerous shipyards for planning the cutting and welding work packages. Previously released functionality for the CAD/CAM process chain worked consistently between AVEVA Marine and NESTIX.
The agile approach to continuous development
The nature of OpenPDM SHIP lies in integration capability between many shipbuilding-specific CAx systems and PDM solutions. It requires deep expertise in exchange formats and integration technology and close cooperation with CAD software development companies. Keeping internal knowledge at a high level is one of the priorities for PROSTEP’s R&D teams.
The robustness and quality of OpenPDM SHIP have further improved because the development of the integration platform for the shipbuilding industry is now more closely aligned with the general development of the OpenPDM platform. We synchronize the sprints of SHIP development with the sprints of the general OpenPDM development. Our integration platform thus fits seamlessly into the product family.
By Matthias Grau
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Friday, May 7th, 2021
Magna is developing intelligent next-generation electric vehicles for the Chinese market together with Beijing Electric Vehicle (BJEV), the electric car subsidiary of the Chinese carmaker BAIC. Magna Blue Sky, the name of the joint venture, uses PROSTEP’s OpenDXM GlobalX solution, in combination with the PLM solution Teamcenter, for the secure exchange of data with partners and suppliers.
Approximately two years ago, Magna and BJEV announced that they would be jointly developing and manufacturing high-quality electric vehicles for the Chinese market. The joint venture set up a greenfield state-of-the-art development center in Zhenjiang for this purpose. It operates under the name Magna Blue Sky NEV Technology (Zhenjiang) and employs about 420 people, who not only develop electric vehicle architectures for the joint venture but also provide engineering services to other customers. The Magna Steyr Group, which is headquartered in Graz, was responsible for implementation of the completely new IT infrastructure.
Magna Blue Sky’s engineers use the mechanical CAD system CATIA V5 from Dassault Systèmes together with the PLM solution Teamcenter from Siemens PLM Software. OpenDXM GlobalX is used to manage data exchange with partners and suppliers. The decision in favor of the world’s leading data exchange platform from PROSTEP did not require a long evaluation process as Magna has been using the OpenDXM products for years and now operates its own OpenDXM GlobalX installation in Graz. “It offers us even greater flexibility and security when exchanging data,” says Oliver Burlon, project manager for data exchange at Magna Steyr.
Working in close cooperation with the IT experts in Graz, PROSTEP’s PLM experts implemented the data exchange platform in Zhenjiang, defined appropriate templates for integrating exchange partners, and adapted the data exchange processes and authorizations to Magna Blue Sky’s specific requirements. A complex approval workflow was implemented to ensure maximum protection of intellectual know-how. It ensures that all exchange processes are approved in accordance with the multiple-eyes principle before the data is made available to partners and suppliers for downloading.
The OpenDXM GlobalX Teamcenter integration allows engineers at Magna Blue Sky to initiate data exchange processes directly from the Teamcenter user interface. This not only makes operation easy but also saves time when data is sent since the export of data from Teamcenter runs completely in the background and users do not have to wait when larger assemblies are being exported. They also have the option of making data from MS Outlook or Windows Explorer available for encrypted exchange with OpenDXM GlobalX.
By Udo Hering
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Monday, May 3rd, 2021
Cloud-based applications can be used out of the box without high initial investments. This is especially interesting for start-ups or newly founded companies like Adient Aerospace. The manufacturer of aircraft seats, a joint venture of automotive seat manufacturer Adient and aircraft manufacturer the Boeing Company, has recently started using the OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform as a SaaS model.
Adient is a world leader in automotive seating. In 2018, the company brought its aircraft seating business into a joint venture with the Boeing Company. At the end of a transitional period, this created the need to carve out the PLM infrastructure and to introduce a separate data exchange solution for the joint venture. After a market analysis, the decision was made in favor of OpenDXM GlobalX from PROSTEP, as it guarantees the requirements of a secure and traceable exchange of data to the partner companies.
In order to be able to use the data exchange platform quickly and without any acquisition costs or installation effort, the company opted for the cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) model. The software is installed in the partner data center of PROSTEP AG, which users access via encrypted data lines and an intuitive web portal after appropriate authorization.
“As a result, the amount of training required is very low,” says Gregor Starck, manager engineering at Adient Aerospace.
The effort required for installation and ramp-up was also kept within limits. The solution was operational just one day after the order was received. Adient extracted the contact data of the aerospace partners from the legacy automotive system so that it could be automatically transferred to OpenDXM GlobalX.
Engineers at Adient Aerospace currently use OpenDXM GlobalX as a portal solution, meaning they extract the data to be exchanged from their PTC Windchill PLM system and send it manually using OpenDXM GlobalX. In order to automate and speed up the data exchange processes the company is considering the option to implement OpenDXM GlobalX Windchill integration. “PROSTEP’s data exchange platform integrates very well with the company’s processes and applications,” comments Starck. As the range of functions grows, a switch to an on-premises installation is also not out of the question.
By Daniel Wiegand
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Wednesday, April 21st, 2021
The digital twin is an important, if not the most important, enabler for the digital transformation of business processes and the development of data-driven business models. This is why it is the focus of numerous digitalization initiatives in a wide range of industries. Companies however face a number of challenges when it comes to implementing the digital twin. One of these challenges, albeit not the biggest, is the fact that their existing PLM capabilities are most likely insufficient for this purpose and need to be expanded.
Everyone is talking about the digital twin, or perhaps I should say almost everyone. At CLAAS, a manufacturer of agricultural technology, this term is not used to avoid alienating users with grand terms, as Kai Korthals explains in an interview with the PROSTEP Newsletter. For many companies, the term digital twin is still a buzzword that everyone takes to mean something different. Even in the shipbuilding industry, despite its many digital twin projects, there is still no common industry-wide understanding of what a digital twin is, as indicated by a recent survey conducted by PROSTEP.
A concept study that we prepared together with 3DSE for Airbus Defense & Space significantly sharpened my understanding of the digital twin. The findings have been incorporated in a white paper that I recommend you read. A key insight is that there is, or should be, something along the lines of a generic digital twin that accompanies the product or production system throughout all the phases of its lifecycle – from its as-designed/planned/manufactured through to its as-operated/maintained state.
The phase-specific configurations of the digital twin have a shared data basis, which is also used to derive configurations for the use cases to be supported. Creating a special digital twin for each use case would not be a viable solution as it would create isolated solutions and data silos. The aim must be to keep the digital twin as redundancy-free as possible across all products and variants, which is why it places much more demanding requirements on configuration management.
From the very start, we need to think about how we can weave the digital twin from the digital thread. I would even go so far as to turn the tables and say that it is ultimately the digital twin that determines the requirements when it comes to end-to-end digitalization. It determines which information we need to link for which use case and with which level of granularity. In my opinion, approaches based on data lakes do not work. It must be possible for field data collected while a product is being used to be connected to the correct development data in a transparent manner. Establishing relationships at a later date using semantic searches or AI results is, at most, an 80% solution and always prone to errors.
The key requirement for the digital twin is access to the “core data” in its “atomic” form. This means that we need to move away from file-based product lifecycle management toward granular access to all the information objects in the product development process. Freezing a bunch of documents at specific baselines might improve auditability, but it is no digital twin.
Developers need to know the relationships between individual objects, for example in order to understand what impact changing a requirement will have on a particular function, on the costs, on the manufacturing process, etc. Knowing which circuit diagram is affected is of no help because hundreds of functions can be described in a single circuit diagram. No PLM concept today provides appropriate support, neither in terms of technology nor methodologically. Extending the PLM concept to include additional PLM capabilities is therefore an essential prerequisite for the digital twin and one of the challenges that Airbus is addressing with its Shared digital Enterprise Services.
However, the biggest obstacles standing in the way of digital twin initiatives are not of a technical nature. For one thing, the companies have their own “fiefdoms” with separate system structures and methodology, which in the short term enjoy no direct benefit from end-to-end digitalization at cross-domain level. The initiative should therefore be driven forward in a strategic manner by someone above domain level. In addition, many companies today make a lot of money from service-related activities. A digital twin that results in customers needing fewer services is to a certain extent counterproductive. A major problem when it comes to end-to-end digitalization from development through to operation is the change of ownership of the physical product. As a result, manufacturers no longer have access, or only limited access, to the operating data that would allow them to gain insight into product behavior.
Offering your products as a service provides an elegant solution to this problem. But you might not want to wait that long before you launch your digital twin initiative. We recommend that you tackle concrete projects that offer economic added value as soon as possible. PROSTEP can provide you with effective support in this context. We have the required expertise and a wealth of experience implementing digital twin concepts in a variety of different industries.
By Karsten Theis
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Saturday, April 17th, 2021
The products from agricultural machinery manufacturer CLAAS are becoming ever more complex, and this also true of the associated development processes. Talking to PROSTEP Newsletter, Dr. Kai Korthals, Head of Digital Product Engineering, explains how CLAAS intends to master this increasing complexity and looks at the role that PDM/PLM is playing in the company’s digitalization strategy.
Question: How important a role are product-service systems playing in CLAAS’s product portfolio now?
Korthals: That depends on what you mean by a product-service system. If you mean supplementary services such as predictive maintenance as part of the after sales service or features such as software updates over the air, it is an area of growing importance for us and represents a major challenge.
Question: What new requirements arise from this with regard to product development?
Korthals: In particular, we have to take solution-neutral customer requirements as a basis for integrating software development, balancing processes and methods from the very beginning. Which is why model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is a very important topic for us. In addition, seemingly mundane topics such as the quality of master data, which we have been working on ever since the advent of PDM, are enjoying something of a renaissance. Even the topic of the end-to-end use of 3D, which is not in itself new, is taking on a new dimension. Suddenly, we find ourselves collaborating with game vendors like GIANTS, who use our 3D models for their farm simulators and in return provide us with rendered models for our sales activities. The coronavirus pandemic in particular has increased demand for virtual sales meetings and training sessions with customers, for example, where we use animated renderings to show them how to get into the cab.
Question: What does this mean for your digitalization strategy? Where are the key fields of activity?
Korthals: There are a number of pillars to our digitalization strategy: modeling and connecting with MBSE, visualization, i.e. the issue of digital continuity with a focus on 3D, and validation using simulations, which is an aspect that should not be overlooked in the wider discussion about digital transformation. In other words, the basic topics remain the same as they were ten years ago. What has changed is the way in which these topics and, indeed, the data models are interlinked. I can map these connections using MBSE, but I also need the link to the tasks in project management or to the configuration for production. Which brings us on to the issue of traceability.
Question: Is traceability driven more by the complexity of product development or the legal burden of proof?
Korthals: Traceability remains important in the context of functional safety, but with regard to the product service systems already mentioned or to autonomous systems, mastery of the technical, process-related and organizational complexity is becoming increasingly important. You can’t negate the complexity. Instead, you have to make it manageable. For this, we need MBSE and configuration management throughout the lifecycle in order to make the interrelationships easier to understand.
Question: You just said that MBSE is an important topic for you. What do you see as the main drivers of this approach?
Korthals: There are undoubtedly a number of different drivers, but they can be grouped together under the term complexity. Ultimately, it is the growing proportion of software, the interconnected development of cross-product features and globally distributed development that lead to increasing complexity at the product, process and organizational level.
Question: You get the impression that CLAAS is to a certain extent pioneering the use of MBSE. Is this the case?
Korthals: That is for others to judge, but we are of course represented in a large number of working groups and we see what other companies are doing. So I think I have some justification in saying that we have a very holistic approach to the topic and have already made considerable progress.
Question: To what extent has what you have validated in the Systems Engineering Solution Lab already been implemented in the product development process?
Korthals: The various aspects are at present being rolled out one by one. We are currently rolling out validation management. But we are not migrating all ongoing development projects to the new process and the new tool environment in a big bang, because that would inhibit the projects. Instead, we are introducing it gradually across the projects until we reach a tipping point, as the users in cross-sectional functions have a vested interest in avoiding the use of parallel systems.
Question: Does PDM/PLM still play an important role in your digitalization strategy?
Korthals: Yes, absolutely. Our digitalization strategy has three major pillars. Firstly, we want to digitalize our interaction at the point of contact with the customer and thus make it independent of time and place. The second is the empowerment of our employees, i.e. we want to drive digital transformation as a change process. And the third major pillar is the topic of the digital enterprise, which break down to the level of Industry 4.0. PDM/PLM is in many cases the enabler that brings together the internal view, external view and empowerment. Without this foundation, digital transformation simply collapses like a house of cards.
Question: You are working very closely with Dassault Systèmes to implement your digitization strategy. Is your broad PDM/PLM vision feasible with a monolithic system landscape?
Korthals: Your question is understandable. PLM experts have for years been promoting the idea that monolithic systems are dead. We are aware of the fact that we are to a certain extent placing ourselves in a position of dependency, but we have done very well with Dassault so far. You have to remember that we are not just a customer, but a strategic R&D partner and write user stories for the developers in Vélizy, so our needs are implemented very quickly. Not only that, we don’t source all of our expert systems and authoring systems from Dassault. There are certain environments for software development and simulation that we will not be replacing. At the system level, however, the opportunities offered by a monolithic approach outweigh the risks.
Question: In what use cases are you already using digital twins?
Korthals: We don’t use the term ‘digital twin’ at CLAAS yet, partly because of our experience with the introduction of systems engineering. When we started using it five years ago, we tried to avoid coining some grand, new term without any concrete benefit for the user being apparent, because that simply discourages people. Although we had our strategy in mind, we approached the issue very much on the basis of use cases. And we’re doing something similar with the digital twin. We have plenty of very concrete use cases, for instance moving maintenance documentation to a kinematic DMU to show a service technician in Uzbekistan how to change the oil filter without the need for words. But we don’t refer to this as a digital twin.
Question: How important is the East Westphalia cluster for CLAAS?
Korthals: The cluster is extremely important to us. From our Systems Engineering Solutions Lab, we have started research projects together with Fraunhofer IEM, one of which has been merged into it’s OWL. And then there is the MOSYS project for human-oriented systems engineering, which is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. Collaboration with other it’s OWL partners such as Miele allows us to discuss our future needs and system requirements. The research projects have also allowed us to hire additional staff for our Solution Labs, which helps us to become faster.
Question: What needs and system requirements do you see in the future?
Korthals: As I have already said, connecting and visualizing information is currently a big driver for us. It is only this combination that makes complexity really comprehensible and thus manageable. In our Solution Labs, we have found out that we can build databases to connect certain artifacts with each other, requirements with test cases, or with architecture models, with CAD models, with circuit diagrams and so on. But the problem is that at the end of it all, no normal person has any hope of understanding it. That’s why we have to be able to pull out these relationships in a way that is specific to the application and the user and, where possible, visualize them in the 3D model in order to quickly make the complexity understandable across different locations, languages and roles.
Mr. Korthals, thank you very much for talking to us. (This interview was conducted by Michael Wendenburg)
About Kai Korthals
Dr. Kai Korthals has worked for agricultural machinery manufacturer CLAAS since 2014 and is currently Head of Digital Product Engineering. In this role, he and his team are responsible for the CLASS engineering system. This comprises the engineering processes, methods, data models and applications for CAD, PDM/PLM and systems engineering. Korthals studied industrial engineering, majoring in mechanical engineering and production technology at RWTH University in Aachen. He subsequently completed his doctorate at the RWTH’s machine tool laboratory in the field of production-oriented product development.
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Friday, April 9th, 2021
When exchanging CAD data, it is important to ensure the transfer of complete and valid assemblies, which might possibly be used for downstream operations such as conversion. PROSTEP has therefore expanded its OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform to include intelligent CAD analysis functions, which efficiently analyze and structure assemblies before they are transferred.
CAD Analyst is available to users in their send client and is activated using Windows Explorer and the CAD send function on the right mouse button. Depending on the selection made by the user, the CAD data is analyzed and structured in such a way that assemblies are transferred for post-processing as separate data sets.
When a CAD file is selected, an intelligent algorithm checks whether the file contains an assembly for which dependent CAD files exist. All the data belonging to an assembly is transferred as a single data set. If multiple files are selected, analysis is performed for each of the files and the corresponding number of data sets is created.
If a directory is selected, CAD Analyst first checks whether the directory includes one or more root elements for assemblies. If this is the case, these assemblies and all dependent components are entered in the send job as separate data sets. Once all the assemblies have been processed, the algorithm repeats the process for all individual files, which are also entered in the job as separate data sets.
If neither method allows CAD Analyst to find all the referenced files, the user receives a warning that his assembly is incomplete. The user can then decide whether or not to start the transfer. Once analysis has been completed, he can generate a 3D preview for each data set and view it in his web browser. This preview file can be included in the transfer, thus making it possible for the recipient to quickly view the files they receive.
CAD Analyst supports the analysis of files in widely used CAD formats such as CATIA V5, Creo (Pro/E), Autodesk Inventor, JT, NX, Solid Edge and SolidWorks. There is no need to install CAD software in order to use the analysis and viewing functions. We deliver the libraries needed to do this with the Windows integration for OpenDXM GlobalX. The new analysis module is an optional extension to the basic OpenDXM GlobalX module and can be expanded to include CAD extensions for processing, converting and checking CAD data.
Find out more about creating send jobs with CAD Analyst in this video.
By Daniel Wiegand
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Monday, April 5th, 2021
January saw the launch of the joint project “ICT-enabled model-based impact analysis in product development”, or ImPaKT for short, which is being funded with the support of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Within the framework of the project, PROSTEP will be extending its OpenPDM family to include a software module for the cross-domain coordination of changes and validating the functionality of the solution together with industry partners.
The more complex and variant-rich products become, the more time-consuming it is for companies to reliably analyze and evaluate the technical and financial impact of changes. The challenges grow when a large number of partners and domains are involved in the product development process. Impact analyses are designed to help companies identify the possible impact of product changes in advance.
A consortium or research institutes, software vendors and user companies, under the leadership of the Heinz Nixdorf Institute at the University of Paderborn, is developing a model and IT-based approach with the aim of making this type of analysis in product development easier. The joint project, which was launched in January, will run for three years and has a project volume of approximately four million euros.
The number of product variants is constantly growing. Every modified detail means changes in the design and production processes of all the partners involved. When it comes to developing complex products, incomplete and distributed data and knowledge bases, media discontinuities in the information flows, a lack of supplier integration and the large number of variants make engineering change management (ECM) a time-consuming and error-prone process. In the joint ImPaKT project, the consortium partners intend to develop a solution that makes it possible to efficiently analyze the impact of changes on the basis of a comprehensive data and knowledge base, while at the same time making the complexity of variant management more manageable using function-oriented impact analyses.
The integration of mechanical, electronic and software components in a single product requires an interdisciplinary development process. A key objective of the project is the development of a reference architecture for end-to-end model-based system development that links the partial models in the existing data repositories created during the development of mechanical, electrical and software system components and creates a common parameter space for changes. The project partners will develop and implement methods for a fully integrated impact analysis using model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms on the basis of this integration platform. Standards for integrating impact analysis in process management and cross-enterprise collaboration are also to be defined.
In addition to the HNI, the Institute for Machine Elements and Systems Engineering at RWTH University in Aachen, the software companies CONTACT Software, Itemis and PROSTEP, as well as the user companies Eisengießerei Baumgarte, Hadi-Plast Kunststoff-Verarbeitung, Hofmann Mess- und Auswuchttechnik, CLAAS Industrietechnik, Knapheide Hydraulik-Systeme and Schaeffler are involved in ImPaKT.
The software partners will be implementing a demonstrator based on the ImPaKT reference architecture. The industry partners’ primary task will be to validate the suitability of the project results for supporting impact analysis on the basis of three case studies.
PROSTEP is contributing its many years of expertise with system modeling and the development of reference architectures to the consortium project. Building on this architecture, we will be developing certain basic services for performing cross-system impact analyses using artificial intelligence (AI). We will be using our integration platform OpenPDM, which is implemented at by over 200 customers worldwide, as the basis for implementing the demonstrator. OpenPDM is the world’s leading solution for synchronizing and migrating PLM data and processes in a wide variety of application scenarios and domains.
We intend to expand the software to include essential ALM and ECM aspects within the framework of ImPaKT. Once the project has come to an end, it is intended that the solution, which is designed as a demonstrator, be turned into a commercial product and marketed under the name OpenCLM. Maintenance of the solution is a prerequisite for long-term commercial use of the project results and provides a benefit outside the circle of consortium partners.
By participating in the consortium project, we not only expect to be able to establish interesting contacts with customers and universities and expand our AI expertise. We also hope it will provide important impetus for the further development of our OpenCLM solution in the direction of cross-system and cross-domain impact analysis. This is a prerequisite for being able to coordinate changes to complex products with an acceptable level of effort.
By Martin Holland
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