DEVELOP3D November 2018

Wearables design P34

Siemens NX 7.0 P40 Luxion KeyShot 8 P37

TECHNOLOGY FOR THE PRODUCT LIFECYCLE

Siemens Femap 12 P41

NOVEMBER 2018 | £6 | € 7 | $10 | DEVELOP3D.COM

DR I V FO IN RC G E

ra Co cin u g b ld t e a he ut fut on ur om e o ou f s?

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WELCOME EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Al Dean al@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 541 Managing Editor Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312 Digital Media Editor Stephen Holmes stephen@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3384 5297 Consulting Editor Jessica Twentyman jtwentyman@gmail.com +44 (0)20 7913 0919 Consulting Editor Martyn Day martyn@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 542

DESIGN/PRODUCTION Design/Production Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312

ADVERTISING Group Media Director Tony Baksh tony@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7313 Deputy Advertising Manager Steve King steve@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7314 US Sales Director Denise Greaves denise@x3dmedia.com +1 857 400 7713

SUBSCRIPTIONS

A

s the first order of business this month, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who sent a message about my father’s passing, as discussed in the last issue. It’s strange that, on the surface of things, the world seems an increasingly unfriendly and antisocial place, where folks spend more of their time staring a small illuminated rectangle in their hands and less enjoying the world at large. But then you realise that this isn’t the case at all. People still connect.

The big difference is that they can do so across oceans and continents and using different means. The world, however troubled and troubling, is still a good place and full, predominantly, of good, kind, people.

At the moment, we are in the process of planning our next in-person gettogether. If you hadn’t heard, we’re moving DEVELOP3D Live away from Warwick to its new host city of Sheffield. It’s a city that is seriously going places and boasts the most interesting mix of advanced technology start-ups, operating alongside some of the oldest and most established names in engineering and manufacturing.

If you’ve got a project you’d like to talk about at our event, or some knowledge you’re burning to share with the world, drop us a line and we can have a chat.

Circulation Manager Alan Cleveland alan@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7311

ACCOUNTS Accounts Manager Charlotte Taibi charlotte@x3dmedia.com Financial Controller Samantha Todescato-Rutland sam@chalfen.com

Al Dean Editor-in-Chief, DEVELOP3D Magazine, @alistardean

ABOUT DEVELOP3D is published by

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2019

Future design technology Learn from the bleeding edge of product development

17 April 2019 Sheffield University develop3dlive.com

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CONTENTS NOVEMBER 2018 ISSUE NO. 104

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12 14 23 29 31 34

NEWS XJet ramps up its additive manufacturing offering, AMD releases details of 64-core ‘Rome’ CPU and GE gets green light to use 3D-printed part in aircraft engines FEATURES Visual Design Guide: Olympus DS-9500 dictaphone COVER STORY Robocar’s race for autonomy Computed tomography shines bright at Nordic Lights Art of glass: beer bottle prototypes by Orora Kyungshin adopts topology optimisation for engine parts STMicroelectronics limbers up for wearables challenge

REVIEWS 36 Luxion Keyshot 8.0 41 Siemens PLM Femap 12 45 DEVELOP3D SERVICES 46 THE LAST WORD Al Dean considers the future of transportation and how designs for tomorrow’s vehicles could be radically different from those of their predecessors

2019

The wood used to produce this magazine comes from Forest Stewardship Council certified well-managed forests, controlled sources and/or recycled material

17 April 2019 Sheffield University DEVELOP3D.COM NOVEMBER 2018 5

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NEWS

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT NEWS

XJET RAMPS UP ITS AM OFFERING WITH NEW VERSATILE CERAMIC MATERIAL » Alumina ceramic material, water soluble supports, promise of metals in 2019 and new clients add to company’s boosted presence in 3D printing market

X

Jet has continued to build on its nano-particle jetting approach to 3D printing, announcing a new ceramic material aimed at the engineering sector and developments on its soluble support material.

Launched as a commercial product only a year ago, its Carmel 1400 system is capable of building parts in ceramics and metals.In the future, it may be capable of combining the two maerials in a single printed part.

Already producing high-resolution, 99.95% dense ceramic parts from Zirconia, the new ceramic material Alumina offers a wider range of engineering uses, faster builds, and more opportunities to manipulate the part while in both its ‘green’ and fired states.

It’s an intriguing approach to 3D printing, based on jetting nano-particles of materials much smaller than those seen in traditional powder bed processes. This enabled by suspending the particles in a liquid (which evaporates in the 300°C build chamber), and building up the layers to form parts.

The updated soluble support materials can now be removed using little more than a water-based solution bath, with any delicate geometry or fine details unlikely to be damaged during the removal process.

The Carmel system is capable of printing parts at resolutions of 3 to 8 microns for metals and 10 to 15 microns for zirconia, an astonishingly high resolution when compared to the typical 50 microns per layer for most metals SLS-type methods, or the 50 to 100 microns offered by HP’s Metal Jet binder jetting.

The density of parts achieved by this method is likely to attract a lot of interest, and while figures have not yet been revealed, XJet CEO Hanan Gothait explained to us that the final product is ‘much healthier’ than parts made by other means and easier to simulate accurately, thanks to the isotropic nature of the nanoparticle shrinkage.

XJet’s metals 3D printers are set to launch in 2019, with the company claiming it is already facing a rush of orders for its current ceramics system. The latest customer to be announced is BeamIT, Italy’s largest additive manufacturing centre.

Additional orders also include a second installation for Oerlikon, a leading 3D printing service provider based in Switzerland with facilities across Europe.

To keep up with demand, XJet has announced that it has

upgraded its manufacturing set-up, allowing it to increase output considerably.

Much of the research and development work is taking place at XJet’s new $10M Additive Manufacturing Centre, which held its public opening last month in Rehovot, Israel.

One of the largest facilities of its kind in the world, the new 8,000-square foot R&D centre has 9 Carmel systems running full time for testing, quality assurance and new material and technology development across both ceramics and metals.

With a maximum space for 12 test machines, XJet expects it will fill that capacity rapidly, such is its current state of growth.

Having announced its second funding round (the previous round received funding from venture capital firm Catalyst CEL and Autodesk), XJet has continued to grow its staff to 120 employees, and additionally declared the UK’s Carfulan Group as its first global distribution partner. xjet3d.com

(Top) Xjet’s new Additive Manufacturing Centre in Israel is home to the company’s increased R&D capability (Above) 2019 will see the company launch its high-resolution metals 3D printing, with soluble supports and high density parts

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NEWS

AMD GIVES FIRST GLIMPSE OF MONSTER 64-CORE CPU

GE’s commercial engines get green light for 3D prints

I

A

MD has given a first glimpse of its next-generation EPYC server CPU. Codenamed ‘Rome’, it features up to 64 cores and 128 threads, double that of first-generation EPYC. Powered by the ‘Zen 2’ processor core, ‘Rome’ uses 7nm process technology to deliver what the company has claimed is much higher performance and more CPU cores at the same power.

It will be available for one- and twosocket servers, giving a potential 128 cores and 256 threads in total.

The new EPYC CPU should get the attention of design and engineering firms, because it promises to deliver incredible performance in multi-threaded ray trace rendering applications and simulation tools, including the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software, Ansys Fluent.

At the launch event in San Francisco, AMD demonstrated the performance gains that one can expect by putting a single-socket ‘Rome’ system up against competitive dual socket systems. The live demonstration featured three servers: one with a single ‘Rome’ processor with

n the near future, GE Aviation’s GEnx-2B commercial airline engines, which power the Boeing 747-8, will feature an additively manufactured bracket, now that the FAA has approved a ‘change in design’ request.

The new parts will enter mass production this month at GE Aviation’s facility in Auburn, Alabama, and be produced using GE Additive Concept Laser M2 cusing Multilaser machines. The new brackets are expected to take to the skies in early 2019.

Replacing a conventionally manufactured power door opening system (PDOS) bracket, the new part is used on the ground to open and close the fan cowl doors to enable access to the fan compartment for maintenance. ge.com/additive 64 cores; one with two Intel Xeon 8180M processors, each with 28 cores; and one with two first generation AMD EPYC 7601 processors, each with 32 cores.

In the C-Ray ray tracing benchmark test, the ‘Rome’ system was 9% quicker than the Intel system and 2.5% quicker than the AMD EPYC 7601 system, despite it only using one CPU. AMD executives were keen to point out that the prototype ‘Rome’ system was aircooled, ran at standard clock speeds and should deliver even better performance when the CPU officially launches in 2019.

While the emphasis is on Rome’s industry-leading 64 cores and numbercrunching capabilities, AMD told DEVELOP3D that it would be releasing several different models more suited to workstation virtualisation, with fewer cores and higher clock speeds for running CAD and other 3D applications.

“Rome” is fundamentally a server processor, but it is very likely that the ‘Zen 2’ technology on which it is based will also trickle down to the desktop, perhaps as Threadripper 3. amd.com

Powered by the ‘Zen 2’ processor core, ‘Rome’ will deliver higher performance and more CPU cores at the same power, says AMD

PostProcess launches in Europe

P

ostProcess Technologies, a provider of automated and intelligent post-printing solutions for industrial 3D printing, has announced the first step in its global expansion by launching its full product line in Europe.

PostProcess solutions integrate software, hardware and additive-formulated chemistry to help with support material removal and surface finishes of 3D-printed parts. Its Connect3D software leverages the CAD-file or 3D printer sliced file to automatically define the necessary requirements for post-printing, having benchmarked over 500,000 parts, all built with 3D printing technologies. postprocess.com

New CRL event to celebrate women in product design

C

RL is running a new event to celebrate the rich female talent that exists within the hardware sector, as well as products developed specifically for female customers, both at CRL and throughout the industry.

‘Hardware for Women’ will shine a spotlight on a number of inspirational entrepreneurs. The theme of the event is changemakers, so the focus will be on those whose products have been developed to tackle social problems.

Given that these products have been created with women as the target audience, and their development has been shaped by women, the event will explore how that informs product development, how entrepreneurs have engaged with their audience and the future of their products.

Speakers will include Chakshu Saharan, founder and MD of Ignius; Nadiya Siddique of UNA by Stealthy; and Solveiga Pakstaite of Mimica. The event takes place at CRL’s base near London on 29 November 2018. centralresearchlaboratory.com

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SIEMENS PLM TO BET BIG ON CONTINUOUS UPDATE FOR NX

W

hile it's not brand new information, it was clear from PLM Europe, the European user event for users of NX, Teamcenter and other products, that Siemens PLM is forging ahead with its plans to move its flagship engineering application NX to a continuous-release method of software delivery.

Continuous release has become the de facto standard for many types of software, thanks to cloud computing, but the engineering software industry has yet to jump fully on board, Onshape and Fusion 360 aside.

From talking to the product management team for NX, it's clear that they see a great deal of benefit for the customer; reducing the hassle and cost of moving large numbers of users on a two or threeyearly basis. They claim many customers are now starting to request smaller, more manageable and more frequent updates to their engineering tools – and when you consider who Siemens PLM’s customers are (the rollcall includes Rolls Royce, Daimler and so on), you know it's serious.

Other news out of PLM Europe is that Siemens is forging ahead with its industry

ROUND UP Designed for companies with limited or no access to Catia V5 but still needing to create or read NX data, Theroem Solutions' new CATIA V5i to NX CADverter is a translation solution designed to help solve the issue of working with and sharing incompatible data formats theorem.com

Following its beta programme earlier this year, Chaos Group has launched VRAY for Unreal.

This allows users to use a common set of applications for both high-end, photorealistic visualisation and virtual reality work to save time and effort. It's out now for £50 per month chaosgroup.com

4.0, digital twin and digitalisation strategy, which mimics similar moves from the likes of Dassault Systems and PTC (albeit with different focuses). CEO Tony Hemmelgarm detailed Siemens PLM’s progress so far and while the company does not split out its numbers, its claims look interesting.

PLM Europe always begins with a welcome address from chairman of the PLM Europe User Group, Martin Romers of ASML. This typically details areas of interest for attendees and big areas of focus for the event. Accordingly, the slides included the buzzwords ‘Big Data’, ‘Industry 4.0’ and ‘IoT’, but also seemed to show that what really interests attendees continues to be PLM and NX. FInally, the PLM Europe event itself is starting to change. The European and US events have been run and managed (with support from Siemens) by a user group committee. But in the next few years, control will be passed to Siemens – in part to cope with the community's expansion, following Siemens' acquisition activities in recent years. We hope these events don't lose their peer-based learning and sharing benefits, for which they have become legendary, as a result of this change. siemens.com/plm | plm-europe.org

Ansys has teamed up with Granta Design to combine metal powder bed simulation with Granta's existing GRANTA MI: Materials Gateway for ANSYS Workbench to build an integrated set of workflows for AM data capture, simulation and optimisation using validated materials data ansys.com | grantadesign.com

Integration between Autodesk’s Netfabb and Authentise’s additive workflow management tools looks set to allow Authentise users to load geometries directly into Netfabb with a single press of a button, using Autodesk’s Forge platform authentise.com

PLM Europe is where the continent's engineering and design community gather to learn from peers and find out what's coming from Siemens PLM

Kodak will supply new 3D printing systems provider Evolve Additive Solutions with imaging systems, parts and consumables based on the Kodak Nexpress digital electrophotographic platform in anticipation of the additive manufacturing technology’s commercial release in 2020 evolveadditive.com

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NEWS

ALTAIR ACQUIRES SIMSOLID Rhino 6 for Mac FOR MAINSTREAM SIMULATION is available for

A

ltair has announced that it is acquiring SimSolid, an FEA start-up with a meshes approach that dramatically shortens the set-up and solve time for structural analysis.

If you’ve not come across SimSolid, we spoke to its CEO Ken Welch some time ago, and he explained the company's approach rather neatly. SimSolid's tools represent “a generalisation of classical FEA”, he said.

“While it uses the same variational principals, the difference comes in how we build approximation functions and associate them with geometry. SimSolid doesn’t break the system into finite elements. Instead it discretises the original geometry in a more abstract mathematical way.”

SimSolid uses high order functions built on the fly during the solution phase, he explained. Geometry is decoupled from these functions, which allows the freedom to use the most accurate functions possible.

“For example, when performing thermal analysis SimSolid uses harmonic polynomials which precisely meet the thermal equation. Multiple solution passes are performed and with each pass errors are quantified and the functions are adapted," said Welch.

“In contrast to other commercial FEA products, adaptive analysis is not an option. It is always active, even for large assemblies.”

Commenting on the acquisition specifically, Altair CEO James Scapa, said: “We believe SimSolid is a revolutionary technological breakthrough which will have a profound impact for product design. It’s incredibly fast, accurate, and robust and we believe a game changer for our industry.”

Altair’s latest acquisition fits in with a couple of other moves that it has made lately. While the company's core business is high-end simulation and analysis tools, it has also been doing very interesting things at the mainstream end of the market too as it looks to address a wider audience.

beta test

T Much of this work began with its acquisition of Italian outfit Gestel and its Evolve and Inspire tools, sold under the solidThinking brand. These gave Altair a set of tools that mixed together both 3D design tools and simulation technology.

The company then added in topology optimisation and much more to the Inspire and things got very interesting. In recent months, it has also become clear that Altair is reworking how it brings this set of tools to market, with the solidThinking name seemingly taking a back seat to the Altair Unlimited branding.

As many of the mainstream CAD and simulation vendors look to bring topology optimisation and lattice design into their toolsets, Altair has a well-established set of technology and proven products that have been doing much of this work for a decade or more. altair.com

SimScale's approach makes it perfect for dealing with complex assemblies and contact conditions as well as comoplex topologies like lattices at various scales

he long-awaited port of Rhino 6 to the Apple Mac platform is now available for testing and general merriment.

Those who follow Rhino will know that the Rhino 6 release took a long time to come to fruitition, but has since been well recieved.

But what Mac users have been wondering is when their chosen platform would get the same treatment, with faster display, an updated rendering system, Grasshopper with multi-threaded components, a ray traced viewport display mode and so on. If you're a current user, then the first work in progress releases are now available. rhino3d.com

New Metals AM tools for Magics 12 release

M

aterialise has launched its simulation software for metal 3D printing.

In combination with the Materialise Magics 3D Print Suite, this software will bring simulation for additive manufacturing (AM) to the production floor by providing easy-to-manage simulation capabilities at lower price points.

Available as a Materialise Magics module, the new product aims to make simulation easy to manage and accessible to a wider audience. Users can apply simulation results directly to the support generation and orientation tools in their trusted Materialise Magics environment. It supports fast re-runs on a standard workstation without the need for high-end processing power. materialise.com

Surfcam 2019 responds to increase in hybrid manufacturing

R

esponding to the increase in hybrid manufacturing, the latest release of Surfcam has introduced a new Additive Machining module, in order to provide support for direct energy deposition methods.

Now offering a dedicated manufacturing cycle, the software accurately guides a laser over deposited powder material to form a shape, from which the part can be machined using Surfcam’s milling cycles to create the final component.

As Surfcam 2019 R1 now offers full ToolStore support for additive manufacturing, shapes can be built using almost any milling cycle, including advanced functions such as rotary and 5-axis simultaneous machining.

With nearly 30 new individual updates to the software, the R1 release has also introduced three performance-boosting enhancements to its machining engine, benefiting both turning and milling operations. surfcam.com

Surfcam 2019 features a dedicated additive manufacturing module

10 NOVEMBER 2018 DEVELOP3D.COM

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VISUAL DESIGN GUIDE OLYMPUS DS-9500 DICTAPHONE Accurate and mobile voice recording is still a key tool in the legal and medical fields, among others, leading Olympus to add wireless connectivity to its latest Dictaphone models

SECURE STORAGE The addition of Wi-Fi and file encryption means that files can be shared without manual docking, allowing important information to be transcribed or acted upon without delay, while still conforming to strict data protection policies

SLIDE SWITCH The slide-switch is a classic design that continues to be employed, since it’s an intuitive way of controlling recordings with a simple push of the user’s thumb

CLEAR CONTROLS A simple array of physical buttons and a large 2.4” colour display gives a clear overview and makes it easy to find an exact moment in a specific recording

MIC DROP TEST Drop-tested from 1.5m, the DS-9500’s housing is not only robust but also stands up to more specific demands, such as the use of alcohol wipes to clean it after use on hospital wards

DOCKING STATION The docking station provides fast charging, local file sharing via USB and connection to a foot pedal that lets the transcriber keep their hands on the keyboard

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GLOBAL DESIGN

The design and development of the DS series was carried out at Olympus’ Tokyo design centre, despite these products not being for sale in Asian markets. The design team therefore relied on research conducted by their colleagues in Europe

RICH HERITAGE

Already famous for its cameras, Olympus unveiled the world’s first microcassette recorder in 1969, the Zuiko Pearlcorder. Its portability and single-handed ease of use instantly revolutionised the way that doctors, lawyers, journalists and others worked

DUAL MIC WITH NOISE CANCELLING A dual microphone system adds realistic stereo recording, as well as new background noise-cancelling technology that allows it to focus on the user’s voice

PRICE & AVAILABILITY The Olympus DS-9500 Dictaphone is available now and costs $599 olympus-europa.com

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DRIVING F PROFILE

» At a technology centre located in the UK’s Motorsport Valley, work is underway on the world’s first driverless electric race car.

Tanya Weaver visits Banburybased Roborace to learn more about autonomous racing and the company’s plans to launch a new competition in 2019 14 NOVEMBER 2018 DEVELOP3D.COM

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G FORCE

The new DevBot 2.0 (top left), alongside the orignal driverless Robocar (bottom right).DevBot 2.0 will ne used to develop the automated driving system by using professional drivers to teach the AI how to improve, as well as learning from the AI how to better their own performance

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T

here was something distinctly eerie about watching the Robocar attempt the notorious hill climb at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, an annual motorsport event held in the grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex, UK. With no roar from the engine and no driver sitting inside, this futuristic, torpedo-shaped racing car stealthily ascended the 1.16-mile course, using artificial intelligence (AI) to navigate its path.

For some of those watching, both spectators lining the course and audiences viewing via screens, it was a challenge to accept the fact that they were witnessing the first official autonomous ascent of the Goodwood Hillclimb by a race car.

“At events like this and others where we put Robocar on display, the first question everyone asks is whether it’s remote controlled,” says Timo Völkl, technical director at Roborace, a British technology company developing both driverless and manually-controlled electric racing cars.

Producing over 500 horsepower from its four 135kW electric motors and equipped with an array of radar and LiDAR systems, ultrasonic sensors and machine vision cameras, Robocar is very much in a self-driving class of

1 1 Hollywood ● its own. As Rod Chong, Roborace’s deputy CEO, puts it, concept designer “In our minds, Robocar is a robot that happens to have and automotive four tyres.” futurist Daniel Simon is the brains behind Public scepticism is perhaps understandable. Despite Robocar’s distinctive many car manufacturers claiming to be hard at work design on self-driving technology, we’re still not seeing fully autonomous cars on our streets.

However, achieving what experts refer to as Level 5 autonomy is extremely complex. This is the most advanced level of autonomy, where the only human input is turning a car on and setting its destination in the sat-nav. From that point on, the passenger sits back and enjoys the ride, allowing the autonomous algorithm to take over and handle all circumstances and environments in which the vehicle finds itself.

“With all the talk of autonomous cars, everybody is expecting to see them – but where are they?” says Völkl.

“Roborace can close the gap between what people think is out there and what the technology actually can do, because in the controlled environment of a racetrack, you can showcase what people are really interested in – the state of the technology at the moment.”

As Völkl suggests, racing has long been a proving ground for new automotive technologies. Validated on repeated, closed-course loops, emerging technologies are often adapted for use in commercial vehicles. In the same way,

16 NOVEMBER 2018 DEVELOP3D.COM

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PROFILE In our ‘‘ minds,

Robocar is a robot that just happens to have four tyres

’’

Roborace isn’t narrowly focused only on technology suited Simon was essentially given free reign on the design, with to the racetrack. Instead, executives at the company describe the only stipulation being that it should be clear that there it as an extreme motorsport and entertainment ‘platform’ was no human driver sitting inside. for the future of road-relevant technology.

Anyone who knows Simon’s work on films such as Tron: Legacy, Oblivion and Prometheus (which he discussed as a keynote speaker at our Develop3D Live event in 2014) will IN-FLIGHT INSPIRATION appreciate Robocar’s distinctive sci-fi influence.

The initial idea for Roborace was hatched in the skies – Simon wanted the car to look as though it was sucked literally. It was during a flight towards the end of 2015 to the tarmac, achieved by angling the fenders down to that Denis Sverdlov, a Russian serial entrepreneur, and the fuselage. The fuselage itself is very low to the ground Alejandro Agag, a Spanish businessman and founder and, by squeezing the majority of the technology inside its of FIA Formula E, a motor racing championship for torpedo-shaped body, including the battery package and AI, electrically-powered vehicles, were discussing how to the car has a very low centre of gravity. incorporate AI into motor racing.

Although Simon worked closely with Roborace’s They wondered about a format in which each team engineering team to ensure that his vision was possible, was provided with exactly the same standardised vehicle in any product development process, there can always be hardware, with the differentiator being driver skill – but, challenges when a design moves into engineering. But in this case, the ‘driver’ wouldn’t be human, but an AI in this instance, the chief challenge was that Sverdlov had algorithm coded by each team. already really bought into Simon’s concept, to the extent By the time the plane landed, Sverdlov had already that exterior design could not be compromised by any decided upon the name of his next venture: Roborace, changes in the engineering stages. an AI-powered racing competition and partner series to Having received the final Autodesk Alias file from Simon, Formula E. The aim was for Roborace to be an ambassador the engineers brought it into Catia V5 and began work on for autonomous cars, so its first vehicle Robocar had to defining the Class A surfaces. Star CCM + was then used communicate that intent in a knockout design. So who for the computer fluid dynamic (CFD) calculation of these better to bring on board as chief design officer than Class A surfaces, which were correlated in the wind tunnel Hollywood concept designer and automotive futurist, with a 50% scale model.

Daniel Simon?

2

3

4

2 Robocar and ●

DevBot in various stages of build at Roborace’s Banbury facility

3 Daniel Simon’s key ●

aim with the design of Robocar was to communicate that no human driver could sit inside

4 Robocar has been ●

transported to a number of events, including this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed

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PROFILE In the meantime, Roborace was developing some components in-house, including the chassis, and working with technology partners on the development of others, such as the battery, which is tailored specifically to the Robocar.

However, despite the design being radical in terms of showcasing what an autonomous car can look like without a driver, the engineering team were still constrained by the electric drivetrain. As Völkl says, energy is an inherent problem of electric cars.

“The energy is complicated. It’s complicated to basically fill a car with wattage to charge it and it’s also more complex to save that energy and you’re also energy-limited, which means it’s not easy to do long races, for example,” he says.

“So technology-wise, the design and the aerodynamics of Robocar are quite advanced, but in terms of an electric drivetrain, it’s based on what was possible at that time.”

Most electric race cars, he adds, merely reflect what combustion race cars can do, so tend to be very similar. It’s basically a question of taking out combustion and putting an electric drivetrain in its place.

But in future projects, he says, the Roborace team plans to use its design and engineering skills to explore a very fundamental question: ‘How does an electric race car actually have to look?’

5

LAYER BY LAYER The hardware platform – powertrain, chassis and aero – is only the first layer of the Robocar. There are a further two; namely, the intelligence platform and the AI driving platform.

The intelligence platform is the bank of sensors around the car, as well as the car’s ‘brain’. This is provided by NVIDIA Drive PX2, the chipmaker’s autonomous driving platform, which processes data from all the sensors (for more details, see box below, ‘Nvidia Drive motors onwards’).

The AI driving platform, meanwhile, is where machine learning algorithms analyse and respond to the environment around the car, activities that are conducted at lightning speed.

An essential part of bringing all this tech together lay in teaching Robocar that it is, in fact, a car – and all that this entails, says Völkl. “In motorsport, there is an alignment between a test driver and a performance data engineer, who analyse the car together. So most of the motorsport industry know where they can trust the driver and then add data on top,” he says.

“When you take the driver away, you still have the data side, but for a lot of things, you don’t have the driver anymore. For example, if there is a mechanical failure on

It’s ‘‘ complicated to basically fill a car with wattage to charge it. It’s also more complex to save that energy and you’re also energylimited, which means it’s not easy to do long races

’’

6

5 DevBot being put ●

through its paces with a human driver inside, who then gets out before the machine takes over

6 An appearance ●

at the first Human + Machine Challenge in Berlin earlier this year

The Nvidia Drive platform, NVIDIA which consists of both software and hardware, DRIVE officially introduced MOTORS was during the Computer Show (CES) in ONWARDS Electronics Las Vegas back in 2015. The launch distinguished the semiconductor company as a key player in the future of autonomous vehicles.

Just over a year later, Roborace was one of the first automotive companies to publicly announce that its autonomous, electric racing car Robocar would

be equipped with an Nvidia Drive PX2 ‘AI brain’.

This artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer processes a huge volume of data coming from Robocar’s cameras and sensors, using two of the world’s most complex System-on-Chips, along with two discrete GPUs, to deliver up to 24 trillion deep-learning operations per second (TOPS). This is processing power equivalent to 150 high-end laptops, delivered in a case the size of a small

Nvidia provides the ‘brain’ for autonomous vehicles

lunchbox.

“We have created an AI system that we are able to train to have superhuman levels of perception and performance that is used for driving,” explains Danny Shapiro, senior director of automotive at Nvidia.

“We have taken what used to be a data centre worth of servers and shrunk it down into a very small form factor, designed to be hidden inside a vehicle and operate with great energy efficiency.”

Many prototype autonomous cars consume thousands of watts of energy, he points out.

“We’ve cut that down to a few hundred watts. This is especially important for electric vehicles, because you don’t want to shorten the range of the vehicle.”

With Drive PX2, the environment outside the car is constantly scanned and analysed with AI, while algorithms compute how

to safely move the vehicle.

‘Safely’ is the key word here, because it’s the safety aspect that makes people nervous and distrustful of self-driving cars.

“Something that we have introduced recently is a simulation system to test and validate a self-driving platform. It’s called NVIDIA DRIVE Constellation, and enables users to simulate different types of scenes, including hazardous situations, such as a car in front running a red light or a child rushing out in the road after a toy. We can drive millions if not billions of miles in a simulator to create a safe hardware and software product before it even hits the road,” Shapiro explains.

Many companies are hard at work on this technology.

In just under four years, over 370 companies have adopted Nvidia’s Drive platform, including Daimler, Toyota, Volvo, Volkswagen,

Audi, Continental and ZF. “The industry has underestimated the complexity of developing autonomous vehicles, which is leading to the adoption of even more computational horsepower going into vehicles. Now, the biggest trend we’ll see over the next several years is a movement from R&D into production,” Shapiro predicts.

Roborace is ahead of the pack since both its cars – Robocar and DevBot – are already doing laps at high speed. It has also upgraded to the next-generation DRIVE AGX Pegasus platform. “Pegasus can deliver 320 TOPS, ten times that of the DRIVE PX2. So we are able to process much more data coming from the sensors, which will of course enable Roborace’s cars to travel at higher speeds, as information can be processed faster,” says Shapiro. nvidia.com

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PROFILE the car, a robot does not realise when it is driving with three wheels. How can it? You need to teach it that it’s a failure and it has to stop, otherwise it will just continue driving. So you have to be sure that all these things that are normally covered by the driver inside the car are now covered by AI.” Manual vehicles are extremely complex products with many team members collaborating and contributing their individual skill sets throughout the development process.

So it’s obvious that adding autonomy introduces a whole new level of complexity. As Völkl explains, “The single parts of the car – whether software or hardware – are relatively straightforward. A LiDAR is, of course, highly complicated ––, but it’s easy to understand what it does. The same applies to other technology and components in the car, but it’s about making sure that you have, at the end of the day, a finished car that can also drive autonomously. So it’s the sum of it which makes it so complex.”

TESTING TIMES A lot of the teaching and programming of Robocar was initially conducted in a simulation environment. When it came to testing the AI software on a real-life race track, Roborace built a development mule – DevBot – which has the same sensors, motors, inverters and powertrain as Robocar, just packaged slightly differently. Using a modified Ginetta LMP3 race car tub, the most obvious difference is that DevBot allows room for a driver, enabling the car to be switched between manual and autonomous modes.

As the Roborace team progressed through the testing stages, they decided upon a new format for Roborace’s debut racing competition. Instead of pitting Robocars against each other, as originally intended, with teams competing solely on software, they would instead compete in DevBots, with each team having both a human and an AI driver. As Völkl says, think of it as two drivers sharing a car

‘‘

The single parts of the car are relatively straightforward, but it’s about making sure that you have, at the end of the day, RACE TO THE FINISH a finished So where next for Roborace? In September 2018, CEO car that Lucas Di Grassi – a Brazilian racing driver and Formula E champion – announced that Roborace’s debut racing can drive season, Season Alpha, will launch in Spring 2019. The race autonomwill feature identical cars, but teams can freely choose and develop their human and machine drivers. The competition ously in a race, except that one happens to be a machine.

As a proof of concept, the first Human + Machine Challenge was carried out earlier this year on the Berlin ePrix street circuit, with teams from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Pisa competing against each other. As a time attack challenge, the human and machine each got three goes around the 2km track. The quickest lap was averaged and the team with the fastest average was declared the winner – in this case, TUM, with an average lap time of 91.59 seconds, four seconds faster than the University of Pisa.

This challenge, in fact, offered a sight even more eerie than that of Robocar on the Goodwood Hillclimb; that is, the spectacle of a DevBot speeding along with no driver inside, but with its steering wheel still turning.

is open to OEMs, tech companies and universities.

The Season Alpha cars, based on the original DevBot car, are currently in the build and testing phase. “The main difference is that the new car is a two-wheel drive. The front drivetrain is out and it’s a rear drivetrain, but the rest of the basic concept is very similar,” explains Völkl.

Whereas the original DevBot was a rough-and-ready prototype, this new car is getting the full Daniel Simon treatment, as he is currently hard at work on designing the new bodykit. The new car, as well as more details of Season Alpha, will be released later this year. roborace.com

’’

7 DevBot 2.0, the ● new competition vehicle which will make its debut in Spring 2019

7

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PROFILE

DEFECT FREE VISION » Heavy-duty industrial lighting manufacturer Nordic Lights deploys computed tomography to avoid expensive destructive testing and eliminate critical measurement errors caused by powder spraying for part preparation 1

N

ordic Lights, part of the Herrmans Oy Ab Group, is a Finnish manufacturer of premium, high-tech work and driving lights for heavy-duty vehicles working in extreme conditions. Its products are used in the mining, construction, forestry, material handling and agricultural industries.

The company has become an expert in lighting technology through productive collaboration with partners in different branches of the industry. Continuous strategic investments in R&D, laboratories and the latest simulation software aims to keep Nordic Lights a market leader.

The company’s R&D department plays a pivotal role in the success of the company.

The developers and engineers working there constantly strive to create new and innovative world-class lighting solutions, working closely with manufacturing teams to ensure that only the strongest and most robust industrial

lighting products are produced. These products are subject to rigorous testing and rely on industry-leading inspection methods for quality assurance.

THOROUGH TESTING PROCEDURE Complete assemblies are typically made from aluminium, steel, plastic and glass.

The components are manufactured through a range of processes, including die-casting, injection moulding and machining.

Before passing inspection, all new products undergo extensive testing, for lumen output and light distribution, vibration and shock, dust and humidity, heat and cold exposure, thermal cycling, thermal protection, electromagnetic compatibility, full functionality, abnormal conditions, chemical resistance and usability.

For inspection purposes, Nordic Lights previously relied on a white light system.

This had drawbacks: a lot of components with ribs, pins and cylindrical holes are used in production, and the white light system typically had difficulty examining these.

Scanning components with narrow or tight features can be incredibly difficult when details are too deep for the light to detect.

As the white light system was only capable of line-of-sight external surface inspection, internal defects were neglected. To gain a comprehensive picture of interiors, samples and products were subject to expensive and time-consuming destructive testing.

Another problem with this inspection solution was that it required parts to be painted and marked with alignment dots.

Painting or powder spraying was needed as a part-preparation method for smooth surfaces to avoid reflections in the white light system. This, however, introduced critical measurement errors on optical surfaces, where precise tolerances are required. Not only did this result in critical errors, but the whole process was slow and time-consuming.

What was needed was a new measurement solution, capable of analysing a variety of materials and both internal and external features with high precision and efficiency.

The team at Nordic Lights consulted with DEVELOP3D.COM NOVEMBER 2018 23

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various suppliers to determine the best solution for its requirements.

Carl-Anton Manns, a test engineer at Nordic Lights, took part in the search for the new system to replace the white light system.

“The instrument needed to be able to analyse smooth reflective surfaces with high precision. Being non-destructive was also a big plus,” he explains.

4

ILLUMINATING THE BENEFITS OF CT

Previous page 1 The Sculptor from ●

Nordic Lights is a driving light that combines headlight, indicator and parking light in one unit This page

2 The Scorpius Pro ●

445 is a very durable work light that withstands shocks of 60G and vibration of 15.3 grams

3 Carl-Anton Manns ●

operates the Nikon Metrology XT H 225 ST, which is used to validate supplier samples and new parts at Nordic Lights

4 The visual reports ●

detail wall thickness, dimensional inspection and void analysis of the plastic light cover

5 Dimensional ●

inspection of a connector, including areas with limited or no line of sight

The Nikon XT H 225 ST with reflection and transmission dual-target system has since been installed at Nordic Lights, for R&D and troubleshooting requirements. It is critical for all components to be approved before they can be used in product assembly. The primary purpose of the computed tomography (CT) system is to validate supplier samples and new parts, as well as modified parts created from new moulds.

A secondary purpose for the system is troubleshooting.

During the test phase, if failures are identified, complete assemblies can be scanned to identify the root cause without having to open up or destroy the product. For troubleshooting, CT has been used to search for air pockets or voids in the silicone glue between the aluminium housing and the lens, which could cause leakage.

“Verifying the tool that makes the prototype part in the beginning of the project saves a lot of trouble later on. With Nikon CT, we can easily verify all dimensions and check for defects without needing to destroy samples. This is important to preserve the samples for other inspection tests. There are also important savings in time and money by avoiding sample preparation such as painting or cutting,” Manns notes.

A major factor in the decision was the straightforward maintenance of the open tube source. A system with an open tube source makes for lower maintenance costs and vitally, reduced downtime. Fast and competent service from Nikon support engineers was also a critical factor in the decision-making process.

A COMPREHENSIVE UPGRADE The Nikon Metrology CT system represents a significant step up from the previous method used in the R&D department of Nordic Lights. The white light system offered limited repeatability and low speed, which was a

5 hindrance. The new CT system addresses these issues and now makes it possible to scan almost every component before approval. It reveals internal defects, including air pockets and voids, which was not possible with the white light system.

A further advantage the CT system has is that it can provide the precise results for dimensions and tolerances of optical parts, lenses, light guides and reflectors.

With its new, non-destructive inspection system, Nordic Lights has experienced significant time savings, especially during in the development phase. Defects can be identified, traced and eliminated before parts proceed to production. For supplier-submitted samples, new parts or new moulds can be compared to CAD models before being used in the assembly of complete products.

It’s worth noting that, right now, the system’s transmission target isn’t used extensively by Nordic Lights, with the reflection target being the company’s primary tool for now. However, Carl-Anton Manns notes that the transmission target will become useful in the near future, as the high level of detail that can be achieved using it will likely prove to be a significant advantage. In this way, the system is not just providing an immediate solution, but new options for the future, too. nikonmetrology.com | nordiclights.com

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The days of throwing designs over the wall for implementation, and then waiting for physical prototypes to be built to see if the product works as intended, are gone. Engineers are being asked to work outside their normal domain with mechanical engineers often dealing with electrical requirements, and vice versa.

Without a coordinated design flow, integration must rely on the availability of physical prototypes and can occur very late in the design cycle. Mistakes made during late phases of development can be costly. When not

caught until the prototyping and testing phase of design, the result can be significant delays and additional costs. They can even lead to a product being introduced too late in the market.

As complexity continues to increase, previous design processes are no longer viable.

When electrical and mechanical engineers work in two different environments, it can be difficult to communicate about the most basic things. Are the two talking about this wire or that wire? The electrical engineer is looking at a line on the diagram. The mechanical engineer is looking at a wire, cable or harness routing in the 3D mechanical assembly. This can introduce significant friction, delays and errors into the process.

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COLLABORATION BETWEEN DISCIPLINES: The days of throwing designs ‘over the wall’ and then waiting for physical prototypes to see if the product works are gone. A tightly integrated electromechanical solution enables true co-design across disciplines, freeing engineers to innovate, as the impact of a change can be assessed in both domains.

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SOLUTION: Integrated design processes enable data to flow automatically between the mechanical and electrical domains, allowing more parts of the process to be automated and optimizing the design.

BENEFITS: Solid Edge Wiring Design provides interactive access to information from each domain. With it, both electrical and mechanical engineers are able to quickly reconcile incompatibilities as the design proceeds.

SOLUTION: New design and manufacturing capabilities allow users to produce a wire harness directly from assembly models, eliminating the need to build a physical prototype before producing the wire harness.

BENEFITS: Solid Edge Harness Design automates many harness development tasks including part selection, decomposition of harnesses into buildable harnesses and the creation of manufacturing reports.

SOLUTION: Sharing 3D representations allows visualisation of a design and detection of potential problems earlier. This moves validation of manufacturing and electrical data earlier into the design cycle.

BENEFITS: Solid Edge PCB Design speeds development with communication of design changes and automated review and approval processes between the electronics and mechanical domains.

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CHALLENGE: Wire harness design is still a time-consuming, error prone, manual process.

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CHALLENGE: Electrical and mechanical disciplines have traditionally been separated.

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BENEFITS: An efficient and effective ECADMCAD collaborative process provides increased productivity by enabling what-if scenarios and allows engineers to co-design in their native environments. solidedge.siemens.com III

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PROFILE

THE ART OF GLASS » Orora gets client buy-in on a new beer bottle design using colour-matched, 3D-printed appearance models with identical heft and hue to their glass counterparts

P

ackaging redesigns are serious undertakings. On the marketing side, changes are visual and emotional; on the manufacturing side, they cost money.

Before making the investment to overhaul its glass bottle tooling systems, the maker of Australia’s James Boag’s Premium Lager needed to be confident that an updated bottle would not just represent change for change’s sake. Instead, the company needed to be sure that the new bottle would look good and be well received by customers. Ideally, it wanted confidence on these issues before spending significant time and capital on the project.

As the supplier of Boag’s bottles, Orora had a vested interest in validating the design quickly and accurately. Orora’s innovation and design team started by contacting long-time partner, 3D Systems’ On-Demand Manufacturing Services, to assist in the development of a state of the art 3D-printed prototype.

With Boag’s existing supply chain processes in mind, a new-look bottle was designed to comply with the manufacturing infrastructure already in place, in order to avoid expensive and timeconsuming changes to that infrastructure.

Once printed, the bottles were put through an in-house finishing protocol to bring them to final product quality. This included wet and dry sanding, applying a surface tint and then a final clear coat to deliver a glass-like sheen. With just a few simple steps, clear SLA prints were transformed with impressive results.

FAST FEEDBACK

The appearance models were ready within a week, allowing Orora and Boag to quickly put the new design through customer trials and gauge the public’s reaction.

They filled the 3D-printed bottles with liquid, outfitted them with a label and cap and put them in a shop for monitoring.

Feedback from these in-store trials indicated that the new 3D PRINTING A GLASS LOOKALIKE design was a hit, To get Boag’s buy-in on the new design, a clearing the new credible-appearance model was needed for evaluation. The 3D-printed models needed to be design for production.

“The new James convincing and have the same clarity and hue Boag’s Lager bottle has set a standard within as glass, as well as the same in-hand heft. 3D Orora for the way packaging design and 3D Systems’ Manufacturing experts accounted for prototyping can come together seamlessly with weight disparities by adjusting the interior wall short notice,” said a spokesperson for Orora’s thickness of the design file based on the density of the selected stereolithography (SLA) resin, and innovation and design team. “It’s the sort of technology innovation that’s giving us a critical then got to work on colour-matching to achieve edge when it comes to developing best-practice the correct green used in the classic Boag bottle.

Using 3D Systems’ SLA 3D printing technology bottling design and manufacturing solutions for and VisiJet SL Clear resin, they printed four SLA our customers.” prototypes. ororagroup.com | 3dsystems.com DEVELOP3D.COM NOVEMBER 2018 29

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PROFILE

SHAPING A BETTER BRACKET » Intense heat and vibration in an engine compartment can easily cause part failure. Kyungshin turned to topology optimisation to design stiffer, lighter brackets to support their smart junction blocks and reduce risk, as Kim Byeongwoo, the company’s Design Team Manager explains

A

smart junction block is the central nervous system of an automobile. The PCB of the junction box manages the electricity and distributes power to all parts of the vehicle, so it is a critical component of the modern car. Because of the vibration and high temperatures in the engine compartment, the junction block and the bracket that connects it to the chassis must be designed with high stiffness to resist cracking and vibration fatigue.

Traditionally, the bracket was designed using a build-andtest method, which was slow and costly. Also, engineers tended to use more material than was necessary to ensure high stiffness, which raised the cost of raw materials.

To avoid such over-design problems and develop plastic junction block brackets with optimal dimensions to maintain the necessary stiffness, Kyungshin engineers used the topology optimisation functionality of Ansys Mechanical to design durable, lightweight brackets.

With topology optimisation, the simulation software automatically determines the best shape once engineers specify where supports and loads are located on a volume of material. For example, instead of a continuous solid bracket, topology optimisation might find that a lightweight design with ribs and void spaces produces a bracket that meets all mechanical requirements. In this case, Ansys Mechanical’s topology optimisation capability performed digital exploration to determine the optimal bracket shape, rib shape and rib positions.

THREE STEPS TO SUCCESS In the first step of the design process, Kyungshin engineers defined the load conditions experienced by the bracket in normal operation, established the allowable range of design parameters and generated an initial design based on the density distribution of the bracket

1

using topology optimisation.

The bracket size was limited to the available space in the engine compartment that would not interfere with any nearby component. Engineers defined the vibration simulation conditions of the bracket by stipulating fixed points in the design and the acceleration load (4.5G) experienced due to vibration. They then used topology optimisation to generate an initial bracket layout using density distribution analysis. They explored brackets with density distributions of 20%, 50% and 80%, and verified a bracket shape in each case that would provide the desired stiffness.

The second step involved shape optimisation of the bracket based on the 50% density distribution model developed in the first step. Kyungshin engineers generated a parametric model with minimum and maximum dimensions for each defined design factor, including right and left side

1 Topology ●

optimisation areas

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PROFILE bracket width, height, angle and centre radius. They then performed design of experiments (DoE) simulations, automatically employing the manual central composite design (CCD) algorithm in Ansys OptiSLang to obtain an optimal value for each parameter that resulted in a bracket with reduced mass and increased stiffness compared to the original bracket they were trying to replace.

Finally, the engineers verified the performance of the proposed optimal bracket using vibration fatigue simulation. The simulation involved varying the vibration acceleration from 4.5G to 3.0G over three minutes while the vibration frequency varied from 20–50Hz (at 4.5G) to 50–200Hz (at 3.0G).

The simulation also cycled the temperature from 90C to –30C back to 90C over a 24-hour period to ensure that the bracket could withstand the temperature variations inside the engine compartment.

A BETTER BRACKET The vibration fatigue simulations revealed that the optimal model had a breakage lifetime of 2,259 operating hours versus 1,544 hours for the original bracket model.

This is an increase in product lifetime of 46% – a significant improvement.

The new bracket also was lighter, using 16% less plastic than the original, continuous solid bracket. In the process, Kyungshin engineers reduced the development period for the new bracket from six months to three months, greatly decreasing development costs.

They also created a new thermal-vibration-fatigue simulation process using Ansys Mechanical running on Ansys Workbench, in order to forecast the breakdown of the junction block bracket, which can be used in preventive maintenance scheduling.

By substituting simulation for traditional methods that relied on an engineer’s experience and existing design standards, Kyungshin engineers have cut in half the number of bracket performance verification analyses, from eight to four.

At a cost of approximately 50 million to 100 million South Korean won (US$45,000 to $90,000) per verification analysis, this is clearly a major saving.

In addition, they have produced a reusable model on which to base all future junction block bracket designs.

The new model, employing Ansys topology optimisation, offers a flexible design scheme, which the engineers at Kyungshin will be able to modify for any other component that they may decide to manufacture in the future.

Topology optimisation ensures cost savings through designs that use the minimum amount of material necessary to meet required mechanical standards while increasing product lifetime.

2

3

4

ansys.com | kyungshin.co.kr

5 2 Definition of vibration ●

simulation conditions

3 Optimal model of bracket ●

based on optimal design value

4 Initial layout shape of ●

bracket rib

5 Result of density ●

distribution for Bracket 1 All images courtesy of Kyungshin, Incheon, Korea

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PROFILE

WEARABLES CHALLENGE » Engineers at STMicroelectronics are using numerical simulation to optimise semiconductors for use in a wide range of devices, including health-related wearables

F

or specialists who design microdevices such as actuators, controllers, drivers, sensors and transmitters, growing demand for miniaturised electronics and Internet of Things (IoT) devices is creating new challenges. From responsive equipment and wearable monitors to energy-efficient lighting in the office and automation on the factory floor, engineers need to bridge the gap between their microscopic semiconductor components and our macroscopic world with reliable and innovative products.

This is inspiring them to explore new ideas in the virtual world of numerical simulation.

STMicroelectronics, a world leader in designing and manufacturing semiconductor solutions, employs 7,500 individuals in the area of research and development (R&D).

According to Lucia Zullino, a technology R&D engineer at the company: “In our field, we need to analyse very small structures and understand their interaction with large packages in different configurations over a wide range of environments and applications.”

For semiconductor manufacturers like STMicroelectronics, the choices that engineers make in terms of materials and design are critical – and simulation plays an important role in evaluating materials and performance parameters.

“Much of our work is done through the Comsol Multiphysics software, which we use to validate hypotheses and to optimise products,” explains Zullino.

“There are about 30 users within STMicroelectronics, and although we belong to different departments and work in various locations, we are continually building and sharing knowledge about mathematical modeling techniques used in several projects.”

UNDERSTANDING INTERACTIONS Simulation is used to understand multiphysics interactions at every stage of the development process for

several of the company’s products.

Examples include optimising an epitaxial reactor for faster wafer production; controlling reactant flow distortion in the wet etching process; and investigating the interaction between die and package at the microscopic level.

In addition to design and manufacturing of microchips, engineers at STMicroelectronics work on the design of miniaturised actuators such as micromirrors used in recognition technologies that require optics and cameras.

Simulation was also used in another actuator-related project to investigate printheads and compare the effectiveness of two different working principles: displacement of ink through pressure-generated bubbles or using a membrane actuated by a PZT, a ceramic material made of lead zirconate titanate.

Through this work, the researchers were able to determine that the thin-film piezo printhead offers better compatibility with a wide variety of inks, higher printing speeds, superior print output quality and extended printhead lifetime.

In yet another development project at STMicroelectronics, simulation was used to analyse the properties of concrete and to predict the capacity of an embedded sensor (figure 1) to monitor age-related changes and relay a signal to the surface.

This structural health monitoring (SHM) system has already been deployed in various locations in Italy. Here, it is being used on various built structures, in order to assess the health of the concrete from which they are constructed and to log any damage that the structure incurs when it is exposed to unexpected stress.

In this way, the SHM system enables engineers to keep a close eye on structural integrity and reliability of infrastructure.

WEARABLES FOR HEALTH Over the years, STMicroelectronics has developed many healthcare applications. In one prototype project, a patch was designed to measure the bioimpedance of an organ,

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‘‘

We can assess materials and structures more quickly and screen for the best ones, which means less time spent on trials, better technical decisions and quicker business decisions

’’

1

2

1 Geometry of ● the embedded structural health monitoring sensor, with the sensing part highlighted in blue 2 Technique used ●

to measure the bioimpedance of an organ

3 A 3D model created ●

from computed tomography (CT) images (left), postprocessed with CAD tools (middle), and then interpolated to generate the volumes (right) needed for the analysis

3

4 Simulation results ●

4

5

showing the electric voltage and current distribution in a human torso

Comparison between measured and simulated bioimpedance values 5 ) for different (● electrode shapes and 6 ) positions (●

6

such as the heart, inside the human body (as seen in figure 2).

Working from medical imaging of human organs, researchers created a 3D model (figure 3) to run an AC/ DC simulation in the frequency domain (figure 4) and assess the effect of the electrode shape and position on the measured physiological parameters.

The simulation results they obtained (figure 5) correlated closely with real-life measurements and enabled the development of a wearable configurable patch, capable of indicating physiological changes.

These sensors will enable doctors and other healthcare workers responsible for monitoring various heart conditions to get real-time data to provide patients with the best care, using the latest technology.

“Through simulation, we have learned a lot about potential problems and we have gotten better at

optimising semiconductors for the outside world,” says Zullino.

“Simulation now drives product design, both for internal and external customers.”

She and her colleagues see many other opportunities to use multiphysics simulation in other aspects of development. For example, she says, studies on humidity levels inside packaging and the potential for corrosion are already in progress.

“We can assess materials and structures more quickly and screen for the best ones, which means less time spent on trials, better technical decisions and quicker business decisions,” she says.

“Compared to physical testing, we can implement new solutions and verify them at zero cost. Simulation is one of the key tools that drives innovation.” st.com | comsol.com DEVELOP3D.COM NOVEMBER 2018 35

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REVIEWS SOFTWARE REVIEW

1

Luxion KeyShot 8.0 From its roots as a point-and-click renderer, KeyShot has grown in sophistication and power in recent releases. Al Dean takes a look at KeyShot 8 to see if Luxion can continue to expand its capabilities while still retaining its legendary ease of use

K

eyShot’s background is as a system intended to provide the quickest route between your 3D design data and a photorealistic rendered asset. While in its first couple of years, the focus was on the production of static images, more recent releases have extended this to cover not only animations (both as movies or as 360-degree rotatables), but also configurators for sales and presentations.

At the same time, the system has in recent releases started to gain sophisticated tools for creating more realistic, more complex and more demanding material descriptions.

While the core geometry import tools are there, many of these have been geared towards solving those complex rendering problems that might otherwise require a more general-purpose rendering system (such as 3dsmax or Maya, for example). So shall we take a look at what’s new in this release and see where KeyShot is today?

The good news is that the Keyshot user interface remains much the same as in previous releases. There’s just a few tweaks here and there to make it more usable. For example, there’s a new auto-

» Product: KeyShot 8 » Supplier: Luxion Price: from $995 keyshot.com

save function that reminds you to save your work – simple, but useful for when you’re in your groove and might otherwise neglect this vital task. Other than that, and some updates to the formats that the system now supports (including the addition of Rhino 6 and Inventor 2019 support), Keyshot looks pretty much how you remember it.

MATERIALS UPDATES

1 The new Flakes ● capability makes the rendering of complex materials (for example, filled polymers) a snap once you get your head around the workflow

That said, this release is a pretty big milestone for Keyshot in terms of materials support. While the last few major releases introduced things like procedural materials and the all-new material graph (itself responsible for some added sophistication), KeyShot 8 brings some important background work to fruition.

Perhaps the biggest news is the addition of a geometry shader. While we should all be familiar with the ideal of a material shader, which controls how the surface of an object looks, geometry shaders differ in that they can create or modify underlying geometry. The difference is perhaps best explained by looking at the difference between the existing bump map tools and the brand-new displacement map options.

A bump map uses a greyscale image to

‘fake’ how a surface on an object, can vary in height. While the effect is ok, it’s a fudge that only really works with small variations in height and doesn’t make any edits to the underlying geometry.

A displacement map, on the other hand, uses a map or other process to make changes to the actual geometry, according to requirements. If you take the example of a car tyre tread, a bump map can sort of replicate this, but the effect is a little underwhelming. By using a displacement map, along with the same texture map, you can get a much better representation of how the tread should look. In this case, you are actually modifying the underlying mesh, which means not only does the part and texture look right, but also how it interacts with light matches reality much more closely.

What Luxion has done is start to introduce geometry shaders into KeyShot and the materials and effects you can replicate are really interesting. While displacement maps are pretty well documented, for those times when you want to add a specific set of deformations to an object but don’t want to hard model it, it’s ideal. This could apply to adding texture or geometric features; for

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2 example, think of the shape of a gravel floor versus adding product detailing or labelling.

BUBBLES & FLAKES Geometry shaders can also be used to construct more esoteric materials. For KeyShot, the system gains both flakes and bubbles as options. Bubbles are pretty straight forward. Choose your material, add in the geometry node in the material graph, attach it to the geometry input of

the material (see figure 1 for a look at how a flake material is structured) and you can add spherical voids to your material. You have full control over the size (including variation of size), distribution and density of bubbles. This is most immediately useful for liquids, but also consider building an accurate glass bottle model; quite often, you’ll see small bubbles in the glass. These would be difficult to hard model in, but with the geometry shader, the job becomes pretty simple.

Things get really interesting when you start to explore the flakes option. You have full control over the form of the flakes (either rectangular or spherical), size (including variation) and density within a geometry body, as well as the material that’s applied. While on its own, that doesn’t make much sense, there’s a wee trick here: if you duplicate the body and apply your transparent material, you’ll find that you can very quickly replicate a wide range of polymer additives.

2 KeyShot 8.0’s ● displacement map tools indicate that Luxion is looking to take advantage of its new materials engine in coming releases.

Here, a structural foam is replicated accurately, rather than using a texture and opacity map

WORKFLOW: PHOTOREALISTIC SECTION VIEWS WITH KEYSHOT 8.0

1 Import your model, as per usual. For this workflow, it’s ● useful to have meaningful parts names for each part, which don’t always come across from the CAD systems

2 Work through your usual texture and material assignment ● workflow. Set-up your camera angles and anything else you need to get a good image ready

3 Sections are a material that’s applied to a part. KeyShot ● allows you to add in primitives (in this case a cube) or you can model more complex requirements in CAD

4 If you’re using KeyShot primitives, scale and move your ● geometry into place. In this instance, we’re doing a quarter section on a small electric DC motor

5 Grab the section material from the library and apply it ●

6 Last step is to adjust settings as well as selecting any ●

to your cube. You'll instantly see the section applied and capping faces rendered out

components you want to exclude from the section. This will save a bunch of time in post-processing such views

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

3 SCATTERING MEDIUM Moving on, another new material is scattering medium. This allows you to define materials that simulate particle scattering such as smoke or fog and can prove useful for adding in light effects, smoke and such.

It can also be adapted to quickly simulate materials such as open core foams (as seen in Figure 3).

It’s worth noting that while these can be applied to a geometry shape, there’s also

the ability to import OpenVDB format files to store particle simulations from other systems. (Take a look at www.openvdb.org for more information on this.)

Elsewhere on the materials front, there’s been work done to remove some additional workarounds relating to modelling and rendering the interface surfaces between hard parts and liquids.

While previously you might have needed to model in a gap or an interface layer, this

is now taken care of automatically, saving you the trouble.

CUTAWAY SECTION VIEWS Lastly on the materials front is section material. Those of us who grew up marvelling at bedroom-wall posters of the Rolls Royce Merlin engine (guilty as charged), or our parents’ trusty Haynes manuals, or physical models that allowed you to view internal details know from

3 Similar to many ● updates in KeyShot 8.0, image styles (available both in preview and postrender) allow you to apply styling and adjustments to your image, without the need for post-processing in another app

KEYSHOT VIEWER: MAKING ADVANCED VISUALISATION PORTABLE Keyshot Viewer may not strictly be new for Keyshot 8, having been introduced in the 7.0 release cycle, but it’s still very interesting.

Part of the attraction of a product like KeyShot is the ability to generate marketing assets to be used across a wide spectrum of company activities – for example, in the sales and marketing department.

Being able to distribute that content in an interactive manner is also increasingly useful. It’s something that the automotive companies have been doing for some time.

So what Luxion has come up with is a method of wrapping up everything from a KeyShot session (such as the model, variants in both models and materials, and environments and lighting) and making that portable dataset more easily distributable. In this way, it can be sent to whoever needs to have a more interactive view on visualisation assets. That could be marketing folk working with a photographer to finalise camera angles for a shoot, for example, or sales folk looking to demonstrate customisation options in the showroom using a configurator running on a touch-enabled machine.

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4



Keyshot has been through some pretty interesting release cycles in the last few years and the system has grown exponentially from a relatively simple rendering system for product designers to something much more sophisticated

 experience that a cutaway is a marvellous way to show how a product operates, particularly when cut surfaces are painted just the right shade of red.

If you wanted to achieve this kind of image previously, it typically involved some manual modelling in your CAD application and then importing the design.

Now, you can do it all in Keyshot.

You begin with the model you want to section, and work through the usual workflow, applying materials, lighting and so on. Then, when you want to add in a section, you add a piece of geometry that represents the shape of the cutout.

In our example, we used a rectangular block, created using KeyShot’s primitive library. Then you apply the cutaway material. This will hide the geometry of anything crossing into that shape and apply your cut-face conditions, which are controlled in the material.

This first pass will cut through everything in the model, but if you want to then exclude certain items, you edit the material property and add the parts to your exclusion list. Compared to trying to knife and fork this, it makes some pretty complex renders a breeze – and

don’t forget, anything you do can also be animated.

IMAGE STYLES Moving away from materials definitions, image styles are another headline update in this release. As we’re all aware, rendering systems are good at getting you 95% of the way there, but in many cases, it’s that last 5% that really nails the image for its intended purposes.

This is where tweaks and other small adjustments can really make an image really sing and these changes are typically made in Photoshop: adjustments to colour balance, contrast/brightness, shadows, highlights, curve adjustments and so on.

To help you eliminate the need for this type of post-processing work, Luxion has introduced image styles. Essentially, these are the types of tweaks that are typically a post-render activity, but they’re built directly into KeyShot.

That means they can not only be applied after a final image is rendered out, but also during set-up and to the progressively rendered image that you work with.

There is a whole host of post-processing that can be applied and these can be saved

out and reapplied in other render projects if you develop house styles. It’ll even let you add in a front plate (such as logo or similar), to save you ever opening up Photoshop again.

CONCLUSION

4 KeyShot 8.0’s ● cutaway materials make section views in 3D a snap to build and, when you play with the animation options, interesting things start to happen

As we said at the start of this review, KeyShot has been through some pretty interesting release cycles over the last few years. These changes have seen the system grow exponentially from being a relatively simple rendering system for product designers into something much more sophisticated.

What’s interesting is that while development work has managed to bring some truly advanced rendering techniques on board (with displacement maps, scattering and much more), Luxion has incorporated these enhancements without ever losing the ease to use that has made KeyShot so popular.

This is perhaps the best compliment I can give the system as it stands today – it’s as easy to use as it was when it was first released.

All you need to do is load up a CAD file (with reliable CAD translators), add in some materials and render out your image, to get results that are among the best in the business.

At the same time, if you really want to dive in, dial in your materials, build up your 12-layered material graph flow chart, tweak your HDRi environment to nail those highlights and generate something truly mind-blowing, then you can do that, too.

KeyShot has evolved to bring you all the tools you need to create the remarkable images that today’s products need and consumers expect.

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

1

Siemens PLM Femap 12 Simulation is still a process that frequently requires a specialist set of tools.

Al Dean takes a look at one of the finest pre- and post-processing systems on the market and discovers what makes Femap really sing

L

et’s talk about simulation: it’s been an important part of many engineering-led workflows for decades now but, more often than not, it’s still work that is performed by specialists. Also, despite the promises made by CAD vendors over the years around the great potential for CAD-integrated simulation, it’s still not part of the mainstream.

What this means is that, when you set aside the focus on CAD-integrated simulation, you’ll see there’s been a great deal of work on continuing to develop rich sets of tools for the more specialist end of the market, and that these don’t always get the attention they deserve.

These higher end, specialist tools typically consist of solver technology, alongside pre- and post-processing systems. The solver technology provides the computational engine to solve problems, while pre/post-processing helps with study set-up (for example, defining a mesh, boundary conditions, load constraints and so on) and subsequent interpretation of results.

Siemens PLM’s pre/post-processor is

called Femap and has been on the market for a good few years. It may have started life as a graphical front end to Nastran, but Femap has since grown to support not just the various flavours of Nastran, but also to connect to Ansys, Abaqus, LS-Dyna and Marc.

» Product: Femap 12 » Supplier: Siemens PLM Price: from £233 per month siemens.com/plm/femap

USER EXPERIENCE In terms of what to expect when opening up Femap 12, the system has been through something of a refresh in the last release cycle. It’s now looking a lot cleaner and more logically laid out.

In addition, work has been done on how you interact with screen entities. There have been improvements to graphics processing, in order to take better advantage of any GPU hardware present (either AMD or NVIDIA-based). The addition of the now-standard ‘view cube’ device for manipulating your view, meanwhile, enables quick inspection of parts.

The new graphics engine allows you to switch on a ‘feature’ view that shows either edges of CAD surfaces or curvature changes, which will be really useful when working with more complex CAD geometry. And items like contour legends,

view axes and such are all much more customisable.

It’s worth noting that these updates are on top of tools that have been in Femap for many years. These include a wide range of tools for organising and abstracting your CAD geometry and for building models from scratch – things like groups and layers will prove useful for many, as they have done for years. So, shall we explore how Femap works?

PRE-PROCESSING

1 In Femap 12, you ● can now interactively move and adjust graphics screen entities including viewing axes

The first goal of Femap is to allow you to either build finite element models from scratch or to import and repurpose CAD files from a variety of formats. While in some cases, this might be a simple case of meshing, in many instances as you start to explore more exotic forms of simulation, it will involve abstracting away from the raw geometry, This is to build more appropriate or lightweight representations of a part or assembly – whether that’s defeaturing models (such as removing small features, fillets, chamfers and small parts) or constructing mid-plane or beam element models.

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

2



As a toolbox to allow you to get into the nittygritty of both study set-up (which can involve a lot of idealisation and abstraction) and of results interpretation and reporting, Femap is first class

 range of mature and well-developed tools, there’s always room for enhancement with each release. In the Femap 12 release, some key updates are worth exploring.

The first is that stitch has been worked on, in order to combine surfaces into a single body; this will prove useful for working with those less than ideal models where individual surfaces don’t connect well.

This now allows you to specify a maximum tolerance and uses an iterative approach to get surfaces stitched together without too much hassle or manual rework.

There’s also been work done on Boolean operations to do a better job retaining combined curves and boundary surfaces, which are typically used to reduce the complexity of geometry to improve mesh quality. There’s also a new ruled surface option to allow building between curves, with much more control over tangency (either to connecting surfaces or a specified vector). Again, this seems like a small update, but if you’re trying repair a complex model, then it’ll be godsend.

On the subject of defeaturing a model, there’s also been some under-the-hood work done on speeding up feature removal – for example, to reduce the time spent on removing a large number of small hole features from minutes to seconds.

The last update we’ll cover for geometry

process is the new beam centreline finder. While there’s good support in most systems for building beam element models from basic framework, this is a cut above what’s typically offered and gives you much more control. It’ll find your centre lines, locate the most appropriate section property from its own library (or prompt for input where a match can’t be found), then apply them across the model. It’ll work as well in structures where each solid has a unique section profile. If you’re working with tubular structures, it’ll handle the intersections as well.

MESH DESIGN Moving on from geometry processing, a key part of the pre-processing workflow is the creation of the mesh. As you’d expect, Femap already had a rich set of tools for creating meshes for a variety of study types and has done much to enhance that existing functionality over the years. That said, there’s still room for new tools and redesigned workflows in the latest release.

One such example is the new washer and pad meshing tools; these help you create mapped meshes around holes and slots to improve mesh quality, thus improving overall model accuracy. While there were existing tools to work with the most common circular holes in the product,

these have been extended to work with non-circular holes. That’s ideal for nonstandard openings, whether for washers, holes in 3D forms or items like gaskets.

Elsewhere, there’s been some interesting work around reusing geometry and meshes in a more efficient manner. Now, if you grab a selection of geometry that has a mesh ‘attached’ and either move, copy or mirror it, it’ll take both the geometry and the mesh. If there are any other items associated with that selection (such as loads, constraints, connecting regions), it’ll replicate those, too. The same capability has also been introduced for polar arrays. For those users who like to keep a track of how entities are numbered, these tools will also respect any numbering conventions in place.

On the subject of numbering schemes, work has also been done on how numbering of entities is handled when constructing models from separate mesh files. It might be the case that you need to split up work across a team or for pure performance benefits, and then bring those separate data files together. The model merge command now affords you full control over how numbering is handled during your import and rebuild process, as you bring disparate meshes together into a single structure.

2 New feature and ● silhouette lines aid model visualization by outlining model edges and features

POST-PROCESSING While we’ve covered most of the updates to pre-processing, there’s also been a lot of work done in recent releases on the post-processing aspects of Femap, both at a functionality level and how the system connects to other solvers.

On the post-processing front, there’s been work done across how you can

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3



Femap is a fantastic bit of kit for those looking to push their use of simulation further and to get into some serious analysis work. Yes, it has been tailored to work perfectly with Siemens PLM’s own Nastran code, but it’ll also happily work with some of the other leading structural codes out there



display your results. For example, while previous releases took a ‘one size fits all’ approach to colour ranges and their application across a results set, you now have much more control.

Alongside this, dynamic criteria plotting allows you to select a criterion and vary it to your chosen limits or values and immediately see how the model looks on screen.

You can use the ‘Generate From Criteria’ operation to group passing elements. Both of these make inspecting complex models much easier, letting you gain a quicker understanding of your results.

Elsewhere on the post-processing front, Femap has been gaining more extensive charting tools in the last few releases, outside of the typical X/Y plotting tools.

The idea here is that rather than using an another system (for example, Microsoft Excel), you can do more work inside Femap, keep it linked to your data and keep things up to date, in a single place.

Finally in post-processing functionality, the system has at long last been given its own automatic report generation tool. We all know the type of thing this entails: the ability to set up your plots and charts and have the system spit out a pretty generic report. These things usually aren’t much cop, but do a least give you a means to quickly generate all of your plots in one go.

Femap’s answer to this eschews the typical HTML approach and instead delivers report in Microsoft Word format, saving another step along the way.

SOLVER CONNECTIONS Alongside the functionality updates that we’ve already discussed, work has also been carried out on how Femap connects with

the various solvers out there. As you would expect, its connectivity with Siemens PLM’s own NX Nastran solver is first class and, for this release, Femap also now supports the recently introduced topology optimisation.

The product has also been updated to support a NX Nastran solution which leverages technology from the Samcef solver, which Siemens acquired when it bought LMS. This is useful for simulation of the delamination of composites.

And if you’re an Ansys house, Femap’s connection to that system has been completely reworked to support modern element types, material definitions, boundary conditions, and analysis options.

3 Topology ● optimisation is reintroduced expanding solution capabilities to optimise design performance

IN CONCLUSION Femap is a fantastic bit of kit for those looking to push their use of simulation that bit further and to get into some serious analysis work.

Yes, it has been tailored to work perfectly with Siemens PLM’s own Nastran code, but it’ll also happily work with some of the other leading structural codes out there.

As a toolbox to allow you to get into the nitty-gritty of both study set-up (which can involve a lot of idealisation and abstraction) and of results interpretation and reporting, Femap is first class.

It’s also worth noting that, with its maturing API set, Femap is also finding a home in organisations that are looking to automate their simulation use when it comes to handling some routine or repetitive tasks.

All in all, if you’re serious about simulation and analysis, Femap 12 is well worth investigating – so jump on that trial and see what it can do for your organisation.

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THE LAST WORD

The automotive design world is going after electrification and autonomy hard, but will these two paradigm shifts open up the transportation industry to a much wider audience? Al Dean takes a look at how things might change

T

he automotive industry has been on the cusp of a revolution for quite some time now. As we have started to see the sense in moving away from the internal combustion engine and our reliance on fossil fuels, the electrification of cars is one of a series of shifts that promises to lead us to a brand new world of autonomous driving. Yes, electrification will happen first (led by governmental legislation), but then we’ll gradually increase levels of autonomy from current capabilities to something truly mind-bending.

Today’s vehicles are currently around the Level 2 of autonomy; that’s partial assistance,

Another curious one to pop up recently is Cake (ridecake.com), a Swedish outfit looking to bring its electric Kalk dirt bike to market. It’s a slick-looking product, with a top speed of 46mph, a range of 80km or two hours of hammering it with a 15kW power unit (around 20hp).

What I find so fascinating here is that these are all companies that didn’t exist two years ago. Yes, their teams all have design, engineering and manufacturing experience from previous places of work, but their core market hasn’t been power transportation.

This is a serious shift in how transportation devices are being developed.

And these companies are also differentiating themselves with design.

1

2



If you look at the earlier pioneers of electric vehicles, they often made the mistake of too closely matching what had gone before. Tesla is a prime example – gull wing doors? Unless it’s a Mercedes 300 SL, then leave them on the Hot Wheels, Elon.

 with LiDAR-based guidance in traffic and lane assist tech in fancier cars. Once we start to get to the higher levels, where the vehicle is essentially doing all the work, things will get really interesting, particularly from a design and engineering perspective.

Even today, we are seeing new forms and new explorations of what the future of transportation looks like. The answer is that it looks very little like anything that has gone before. Take a look at Figure 2 on the right-hand side of this page. This is an electric delivery vehicle from Banburybased Arrival (arrival.com). This isn’t your average trannie van, is it?

Then you’ve got the SIN concept from Danish bicycle manufacturer Biomega (sin.biomega.com). Those familiar with Biomega will know that the company doesn’t scrimp on new details (its bicycles are things of beauty), but developing an electric vehicle is a bold move and one that couldn’t have been conceived without the use of an electric platform.

Whether or not you like the Biomega concept, with its almost child-like styling, you have to admit that it’s bold (even if that A-pillar is going to be an issue). The Arrival van looks amazing and I’m first in the queue for a consumer version when it become available. Or I might save my pennies up for one of Cake’s dirt bikes; again, the styling here isn’t mimicking what’s gone before. The company is basing its design on what works, in terms of frame and geometry, but the rest looks and feels new.

This I find endlessly fascinating. If you look at the earlier pioneers of electric vehicles, they often made the mistake of too closely matching what had gone before. Tesla is a prime example – gull wing doors? Unless it’s a Mercedes 300 SL, then leave them on the Hot Wheels, Elon.

GET IN TOUCH: Email al@x3dmedia.com or on the twitter @alistardean — Al’s now off to look into a electric conversion kit for his aging Hyundai

3

1 Danish bicycle ● design master Biomega recently unveiled its SIN concept, with a 20kWh battery, 80mph top speed and 100-mile range

2 Banbury-based ● Arrival is developing a 150-mile range delivery vehicle. We want to know when the company plans to make camper conversions available

3 Electric motorcycle ● start-up Cake has developed a dirt bike without the emissions and a lot more fun. The styling is particularly interesting

46 NOVEMBER 2018 DEVELOP3D.COM

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