DEVELOP3D September 2009

IronCAD Next Gen P37

Inventor Simulation P45

TECHNOLOGY FOR THE PRODUCT LIFECYCLE

Simulia Abaqus P48

SEPTEMBER 2009

THREE WHEELING

The future of wheelchair design

Urba n V inyl HO

W Ra Prototyping pid tran sfor is a glo ming sub- bal culture

Pet accessories CFD and clusters Workstations p01_D3D_SEPT09_Cover.indd 1

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How do we turn escalating customer demands into highly demanded products?

The Siemens answer: Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology 2 delivers up to a 100 times faster design experience.

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Old Market Place, Market Street, Oldbury, West Midlands B69 4DH www.saplm.co.uk 0121 544 1400 SOLID Applications Limited are an award winning UK supplier of Siemens PLM Software.

3/7/09 17:08:40

WELCOME EDITORIAL Editor Al Dean al@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 541 Managing Editor Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312 Consulting Editor Martyn Day martyn@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 542 Editorial Assistant Stephen Holmes stephen@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7311 DESIGN/PRODUCTION Art Director Rob Biddulph Design/Production Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312 ADVERTISING Advertising Manager Tony Baksh tony@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7313 Deputy Advertising Manager Steve King steve@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7314 SUBSCRIPTIONS Circulation Manager Alan Cleveland alan@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7311 DEVELOP3D is published monthly and is available FREE to qualifying individuals.

To ensure you receive your regular copy please register online at www.develop3d.com/registration

ABOUT DEVELOP3D is published by

X3DMedia Ltd 93a Rivington Street London EC2A 3AY T. +44 (0)20 3355 7310 F. +44 (0)20 3355 7319 www.x3dmedia.com © 2009 X3DMedia Ltd All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without prior permission from the publisher is prohibited. All trademarks acknowledged

S

o it’s the end of the summer. It’s been patchy hasn’t it? Following a swine flu scare in the family I recently took a holiday and disappeared into the Suffolk countryside for a fortnight (rather ironically, camping out in a field on a pig farm). We messed about in meadows, castles, on the beach and rather oddly, in a Saxon Village.

A glorious time was had by all – Arthur Ransome would have been proud of us (for those old enough to remember).

Now it’s back to the last part of 2009. The diary is already stacking up with all manner of excursions. I’m off to South Korea, probably as you read this, to attend Delcam’s Asian Technical Summit. I’ll be finding out the state of the art in the Far East, with a few visits to manufacturers, including the gargantuan Hyundai. Also on the docket for this year is Autodesk University, once again held in Las Vegas and that’s not to mention events closer to home with TCT in Coventry in October and Euromold in Frankfurt in December, to name but a few. It looks like the team and I will be spending a lot more time in airports than we have in the last few months. But what do we have in store for you this issue?

As always, Frances Corbet has been off finding companies that do amazing things and she’s come up trumps this issue with a look at how Mike Spindle and the team at Trekinetic are using their knowledge and expertise forged in the heady world of Formula 1 component manufacture (and a spark of inspiration and sheer perseverance) to revolutionise mobility for wheelchair users.

Elsewhere, ‘our Stephen’ (as we like to call him) has been off into the world of product development and come up with some fascinating stories. He looks at the latest products for the pets that mean so much to so many and I’m particularly covetous of the Eglu, having become accustomed to fresh eggs whilst on holiday.

Stephen also tracked down (by which I mean, met in a pub) Cris Rose, a leading light in the Urban Vinyl scene, who’s using a combination of traditional skills, 3D design and rapid prototyping to bring his quirky art to reality. Finally, Stephen headed North to visit Paragon Rapid Technology in Sunderland. The team does fascinating work and proves that despite the advances in digital design and rapid prototyping, when you want a prototype that’s going to knock peoples’ socks off, it’s going to take more than a rendering to do that - as Darren and his team did for the Nissan’s Qazana concept vehicle.

Greg’s been busy writing too, looking at the latest in workstation technology and in particular, focussing on how Intel has turbocharged Blue Ridge Numerics’ clusterbased solver for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

And of course, there’s reviews. No issue would be complete without them and we have a good selection for you this month. There’s some 3D design action with IronCAD Next Generation which now mixes history and non-history based modelling workflows. We have advanced simulation with both Inventor Simulation 2010 and Abaqus 6.9, and the next generation of software for designers looking to automate their work with DriveWorks Solo. Finally, we look at what Geomagic has up its sleeve for those looking to integrate physical objects in their digital design workflows in Studio 11.

There you have it, Formula 1 inspired wheelchairs, modern chicken coops, a concept car and, did I mention, killer robots? I wonder what next month will bring. We’re keeping that under wraps for now, but we can assure you it will be fun. See you then.

Later,

Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author and not of X3DMedia. X3DMedia cannot accept responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements within the magazine DEVELOP3D is printed by Warners Midlands plc www.warners.co.uk

Al Dean Editor, DEVELOP3D Magazine DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2009 3

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SolidWorks

2010

PRODUCT LAUNCH THE MAIN EVENT

An exclusive preview of SolidWorks 2010 ‘The Main Event’ at the prestigious Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon, Warwickshire on Thursday 8th October 2009 from 09:30 - 16:00 ‘The Main Event’ is going to be like no other before, with many new features making this a truly unique day. With a handpicked group of inspiring customer speakers, innovative and record breaking customer designs plus some amazing prizes to be won.

For more information please visit www.ntcadcam.co.uk/themainevent

Get realtime with ATI FirePro™ graphic accelerators ATI FirePro™ V5700

ATI FirePro™ V7750

ATI FirePro™ V8750

> http://ati.amd.com/products/firepro/

AMD will present how to use the realtime rendering inside SolidWorks.

© 2009 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, ATI, the ATI logo, FireGL, FirePro and combinations there of, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

COntEnts sEPtEMBER 2009 ISSUE NO.12

6

nEWs The future of heterogeneous computing at SIGGRAPH, Spatial harnesses power of multi-core workstations, Alibre slashes price of 3D CAD, while SpaceClaim goes all touchy feely

12 COMMEnt Al Dean gets all excited about how many DEVELOP3D readers are using simulation and Rob Jamieson has chips on his mind.....and steaks and burgers.

16 20 26 30 33

FEAtUREs Product design showcase - pet accessories COVER stORY Redefining the wheelchair Urban legends - futuristic model making CFD and clusters - boosting simulation performance Flexible friends - advanced prototyping at Paragon RT

37 40 45 48 52 54

REVIEWs IronCAD Next Generation DriveWorks Solo Inventor Simulation 2010 Simulia Abaqus 6.9 Geomagic Studio 11 Workstations

58 tHE LAst WORD A vision of the future with killer robots and killer bankers

DEVELOP3D is published monthly and is available FREE to qualifying individuals.

To ensure you receive your regular copy please register online at www.develop3d.com/registration

FREE sUBsCRIPtIOns tO EnsURE YOU RECEIV YOUR FREE COPY OF DEVE REgIstER OnLInE nOWEAt LOP3D www.develop3d.com/regis tration

DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2009 5

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NEWS

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT NEWS

SIGGRAPH gives a glimpse into the future of heterogeneous computing » Despite shrinking in size, this year's SIGGRAPH event delivered some important insights into the convergence of CPU and GPU computing, as Bob Cramblitt reports

O

n the surface, Siggraph seems to offer little for the CAD/CAM/CAE professional.

But, developments coming out of the annual conference and exposition eventually have a profound impact on the way designers and engineers work.

The biggest ramifications are in graphics computing and rendering. Design and engineering professionals have benefitted from the relentless escalation of graphics processing power driven by movie special effects and 3D games. New rendering techniques have delivered quantum leaps in realism and the ability to visualise and simulate within seconds after tweaking a design. These advances in graphics computing and rendering usually get their first showings at Siggraph. The year's event was held in New Orleans at the beginning of August.

heterogeneous computing Over the past few years, analyst Jon Peddie has used Siggraph to bring together leaders in the graphics computing and rendering fields – both from the technologist and user sides – for a freewheeling discussion. The theme of this year’s forum was the convergence of computing and graphics processing.

According to Peddie, we are on the threshold of being able to see what we are thinking as soon as we think it. For designers and engineers, that means designing products in days instead of months and being able to generate complex simulations in real time – all on desktop systems with the power of supercomputers from just a decade ago.

The convergence of CPU and GPU computing is called heterogeneous computing by Peddie. He predicts that it is the tipping point for changing the way we work with existing applications and spawning completely new ones.

Heterogeneous computing will be made possible by Apple's Snow Leopard and Microsoft's Windows 7 operating systems, which allow applications to pick the processors that they need to accelerate computing. Increasingly, that processor might be the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), which has more potential to scale than the CPU, according to Bill Dally, chief scientist at GPU manufacturer, Nvidia. Dally said the switch to GPU computing can deliver a 20100X increase in performance.

Where’s the software?

Amid the exuberance, Gary Fitzgerald, creative director of visualisation for BMW Designworks, said that any advances in visualisation need to be placed wihin the context of the job at hand.

“Visualisation exists to help the appropriate person at the appropriate time make the appropriate decision,” he said. He emphasised that major decisions require more than what meets the eyes. They must be based on the other senses as well. In his words, “the senses jury one another.”

Fitzgerald helped focus attention on the changes that will be required to take full advantage of heterogeneous computing.

At the start of the session, Peddie asked: “Where the hell is the software? We’ve been hearing about multi-threading for five years… anybody seen any?”

The widespread adoption of OpenCL – the Khronos Group’s open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of processors – will likely be the key driver for widespread adoption of heterogeneous computing within CAD. But, that will take some time and there are hardware issues, too.

Mark Hereld, a senior fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, said the ability to tap into systems based on many chips is limited by the fatness of the pipe that connects memory or disk to the chips. In other words, the gateway to the chip is the bottleneck. There are also issues of heat and energy consumption.

Bridging the divide Most of the Peddie session, however, dealt with the incredible progress being made in graphics processing and its promise for the future.

Fitzgerald said the new graphics computing power is eliminating many of the boundaries between physical and virtual worlds. Designers can rapid prototype a part, test it the next day, scan it and remodel based on user feedback, then retest. This ability to jump quickly back and forth

Nvidia OptiX engine is used for executing real-time ray tracing on the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)

between physical and digital worlds greatly speeds design iterations and helps ensure a better-quality end product.

Key Announcements Although the show floor this year was smaller and more focused on digital content creation (DCC), there were several developments that should interest designers and engineers: AMD announced bundling of its ATI FirePro M7740 graphics card with a Dell Precision M6400 mobile CAD workstation, creating a high-end alternative to Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia introduced its OptiX engine for executing real-time ray tracing on the GPU, and showed a combination of two Quadro Plex systems that can be used in a single workstation.

Epic Games announced that it has incorporated Intel’s Threading Building Blocks approach to parallelism into its Unreal Engine 3. As games are the leading edge of interactivity, this could have an impact on future CAD applications.

Caustic Graphics announced that several rendering companies, including Lightwork Design and Robert McNeel & Associates, have agreed to port their ray tracing applications to the CausticRT platform, which includes a graphics accelerator card and the CausticGL programming API. Weiss AG showed off its Civetta HDRI (high dynamic range imaging) camera with impressive accuracy, speed and a lower cost than similar systems. This could make HDRI a more accessible tool for conceptual design.

In its 36th year, SIGGRAPH continues to shrink in physical size, but still looms large as a forum for new graphics technologies that impact the CAD market.

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Spatial lays foundations for multi core efficiency

Alibre slashes price of 3D CAD software to $99

L » ACIS thread-safe is designed to make it easy for 3D software developers to make full use of multi core workstations

W

ith a view to making it easier for 3D software developers to harness the power of multi core workstations, Spatial, who makes 3D development components for design, manufacturing and engineering applications, has added dedicated multi-threaded capabilities to its standard ACIS 3D modeller.

ACIS sits at the heart of a wide range of CAD/CAM/CAE applications and while it's arguably not as popular as Parasolid from Siemens PLM (in terms of the mainstream applications it supports), it features in a huge number of supported 3D apps, including IronCAD, SpaceClaim, Moldflow, EdgeCAM, and MSC.Software, to name but a few.

The technology in question is called ACIS thread-safe and according to Spatial, for compute-intensive operations, it delivers near linear performance scaling on multi-

core systems. The company claims significant performance gains can be achieved when faceting, sectioning, and performing most ACIS modelling operations which work on multiple independent parts.

With typical software development cycles anywhere from 6-24 months, the tech has yet to appear in any mainstream applications.

However, McMaster University has implemented ACIS thread-safe capabilities in both a machining tool path optimizer and a rapid prototyping wall thickness verification program, realizing near 3x speed-up on a quad core computer.

With quad core workstations now standard it's good to see that developments are under way to use this additional processing power at the heart of 3D software and not just in peripheral areas of simulation, rendering and CNC toolpath generation. www.spatial.com

HP's high-end Z800 workstation features eight processor cores

ast month Alibre made a bold marketing move and slashed the price of its Alibre Design 3D CAD software from $999 to $99. This limited period offer, which was still available as DEVELOP3D went to press, gives customers the chance to get their hands on a complete parametric toolset for unlimited 3D part and assembly design and 2D draughting.

This is not the first time Alibre has made a bold marketing move. In 2005, the company anonymously announced that a new CAD package called X-CAD would be made available for free if 100,000 customers registered for it. The software was later made available as Alibre Design Xpress.

Meanwhile, Alibre is gearing up for the imminent release of Alibre Design V12, which could spell an end to the $99 promotion. www.alibre.com

Marin bike 'goes down a treat' with prize winner

K

atharine Dawson, Development Engineer at Zodiac Aerospace, was the lucky winner of our Autodesksponsored Marin Bike competition in the July/August edition.

On hearing the news Katharine shared her excitement, "I cycle to work every day and my current bike is definitely showing the wear and tear, so a new one would go down a treat! I shall be putting it through its paces on my daily commute, but I also like getting out and about at the weekends, so it will be great to try it out on a variety of terrains."

Stay tuned for more competitions soon.

ON DEVELOP3D.COM - SPACECLAIM DEMOS MULTI TOUCH INTERFACE Multi-touch – enabling on-screen objects to be manipulated using multiple fingers – will soon become mainstream through the launch of Windows 7 from Microsoft.

SpaceClaim is the first mainstream CAD software developer to incorporate the technology into its product and this is demonstrated on DEVELOP3D.com with a video showing off some of the impressive features.

We’ve mixed views on multi-touch at DEVELOP3D, but the technology certainly looks slick.

8 SEPTEMBER 2009 DEVELOP3D.COM

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NEWS

ROUND UP

Bike legend adopts Pro/E on return to the UK

A

fter nearly fifteen years of US ownership, Norton Motorcycles, the quintessential and most famous of British motorcycle brands, returns home and is using Pro/Engineer Wildfire as its product development system.

Stuart Garner, a UK based businessman and owner of Norton Racing, has bought back all the trademarks and development work relating to the Norton, Manx, Atlas, Commando and Dominator brands.

Norton Racing is already in development of a new rotary engine race bike and plans are being developed to introduce a new road bike.

"This has been a challenging and exciting period for us," commented Garner. "We are proud to have brought the brands back home and we now intend to focus on reestablishing Norton Motorcycles as a premier motorcycling brand across the World."

"We also needed to make some key technology decisions to support our design operations," stated Garner. "It was obvious that we needed to partner with a solutions provider that could support our current and

on-going needs with best-in-class technology that was scalable."

Norton partnered with CAD/CAM/CAE and PDM/PLM solutions provider Inneo, and Garner explains the rationale behind this decision. "Their proposal of PTC’s PDS solution exactly matched our criteria and enables Norton Motorcycles to add further solutions such as manufacturing as and when required. No other provider had this capability.

"With scalability in mind Norton Motorcycles has initially implemented Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 complemented with Inneo’s Startup Tools technology," added Garner. "We are currently reviewing PTC’s Windchill Solutions with the intention to implement in the coming months." www.nortonmotorcycles.com www.inneo.co.uk

Norton Motorcycles has standardised on Pro/E Wildfire 4.0

Half year figures from engineering and enterprise IT applications market research and analysis firm, Cambashi, show that growth in expenditure on software for technical applications, including manufacturing, is on track for positive recovery by the second half of 2010 www.cambashi.com

Autodesk launches dedicated Mac website

T

o a backdrop of persistent rumours linking Autodesk product development with Apple OS X ports, Autodesk has created a web page to guide Mac users in how to best-run its applications on their Intel-based Macintosh computers.

There are two levels of supported software: Mac (native) and BootCamp compatible. Much of Autodesk's Mac OS X compatible software has come from its acquisitions - Alias Design, Maya, SketchBook Pro, ImageModeler and Mudbox, to name but a few. However, Autodesk now offers support to users running Inventor, AutoCAD, Autodesk Revit Suite and 3ds Max

Design on 32-bit Windows under a boot utility called BootCamp.

The launch of a dedicated web page is a small but important statement by Autodesk. The company is serious about Apple and looks set to develop more native CAD applications for this growing platform.

Insiders at Autodesk have told DEVELOP3D that AutoCAD for OS X is actively being considered, while Inventor for OS X would be a challenge but not impossible.

The high percentage of students at university with Macs is being taken as a lead indicator that there will be increased popularity of the platform in coming years, at the expense of Windows-based workstations. www.autodesk.com/mac

More and more Autodesk software is being supported on Apple Macs

CAM products boast huge performance gains

D

elcam claims version 10 of its PowerMill CAM system offers the fastest-ever toolpath generation on multi-processor computers.

The new release incorporates the latest background-processing and multi-threading technologies with a view to using the full power of recent hardware developments to reduce calculation times and increase output.

Meanwhile, Vero has improved the graphics performance in its new release of VISI 17 after a collaboration with both AMD and Nvidia.

The use of VBO's (vertex buffer objects) on the ATI FirePro and Nvidia graphics boards has returned exceptional software gains, the company claims, with frame-per-second rates increasing by over 20 times. www.delcam.com www.vero-software.com

ARRK Product Development Group has added a new 3D scanning service to its range of prototyping solutions.

Using an optical scanning process, the resulting 3D CAD data can be used to produce prototype or low volume components through SLA, SLS, metal casting or polyurethane www.arrkeurope.com

First Cut, a service from Proto Labs, is now offering CNC-machined prototype parts in aluminium, as well as engineering grade plastics. According to First Cut, CNC parts are superior to additive RP parts due to their greater strength, better surface finish and more accurate dimensions www.firstcut.eu

NEi Fusion 2.0 is a combination of Nastran FEA solvers and 3D modeller powered by SolidWorks.

This release adds several types of advanced modal and heat transfer analyses, new element types, new load capabilities, and support for hyperelastic and orthotropic composite materials www.NEiSoftware.com

A five megawatt solar power (CSP) plant designed in SolidWorks has gone online, providing electricity to 4,000 homes near Los Angeles. California-based eSolar used SolidWorks to design heliostat mirrors that reflect and concentrate sunlight to generate steam and power a turbine www.esolar.com

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NEWS

AMD targets the high end of professional graphics

NT CADCAM hosts SolidWorks 2010 launch event

N

F

or years AMD (and before it ATI) has been happy to exist only in the mainstream professional graphics market, but now the company has taken the fight to Nvidia at the ultra high-end with the unveiling of three new technologies.

A new ultra high-end graphics card, professional support for its Crossfire multi-card technology and a new framelock solution for powerwalls have all been announced.

First off AMD has unveiled a new 2GB graphics card, the FirePro V8750. Bigger (bandwidth), better (performance) and faster (memory) is the general marketing message, but the most significant benefits are only likely to be experienced in certain high-end applications running on high resolution displays. AMD quotes Siemens PLM NX and Autodesk 3ds Max as key examples.

As with previous ATI FirePro cards, the V8750 features native multi-card support so users can drive four displays by adding a second card in the same workstation.

However, the big news for this release is this multi-card capability has been extended so all the processing power can be diverted to a single modelling window. The technology that makes this possible is called ATI CrossFire Pro and while similar 'Crossfire' technology has been available on AMD's consumer boards for a while, this is the first time it has been made available in the professional sector.

Nvidia was first to market some years ago with this type of multi-card technology and as with its Quadro SLI offering, ATI CrossFire Pro is unlikely to bring significant benefits to the majority of CAD applications,

particularly for those where the CPU is the bottleneck. However, AMD claims a significant performance boost in certain CAD and DCC applications including NX and Maya.

ATI CrossFire Pro works by coupling two graphics cards together using an interconnect cable. Currently only available on the ATI FirePro V8750, support is planned for the company's mid-range and above graphics cards including the ATI FirePro V5700, V7750, and V8700. When this happens it will be interesting to see how two mid-range V5700s stack up against a high-end V8750, for example, particularly as the V5700s will be the more cost effective solution.

While speed increases are a given for any new professional graphics technology, it's the addition of the new ATI FirePro S400 Synchronisation Module that really takes AMD into uncharted territory. This turns the high-end ATI FirePro V8750 graphics card into a niche solution capable of driving powerwalls from multiple projectors.

Up to four graphics cards can be used in unison to produce a single seamless 'virtual canvas' on which high resolution digital mockup and design review applications can be displayed. With this solution each card has it own workstation and projector with individual images stitched together using framelock, a technology that synchronises the display output of the graphics cards. This capability was originally brought to market by 3Dlabs through its Wildcat cards and more recently with Nvidia's high-end Quadro FX cards. However, according to AMD other synchronisation modules only support two graphics cards at a time. www.ati.amd.com

(Top) The ATI FirePro V8750 has 2GB memory for high-end 3D applications (Bottom) The ATI FirePro S400 Synchronisation Module makes the FirePro V8750 capable of driving powerwalls from multiple projectors

T CAD CAM has announced details of its SolidWorks 2010 launch event, which is to be held on 8th October 2009 at the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon. The event will feature high-profile speakers from the design and engineering community, plus live product demonstrations and a tailored exhibit hall just outside the main conference room.

Keynote speaker Edd China, proprietor of Cummfy Banana and a regular contributor to the Discovery Channel, will talk about his unique fast moving automotive furniture designs and how SolidWorks has helped him achieve these designs.

Rob Jamieson, EMEA Marketing Manager of AMD, a main sponsor of the event, will discuss OpenGL and why certified graphics cards give real 3D performance inside SolidWorks.

Meanwhile, the SolidWorks Technical team will highlight what’s new in SolidWorks 2010, spread over two sessions.

Additional sponsors include 3Dconnexion, Workstation Specialists, DriveWorks, SimpoeWorks, and Laserlines.

More details and registration at www.ntcadcam.co.uk/themainevent

Autodesk VARs Trionics and Imass join forces

T

wo of the UK's top Autodesk resellers have announced that they are joining forces. Leedsbased Trionics and Newcastlebased Imass will merge their teams to sell Autodesk's manufacturing design solutions.

Colin Watson, director of design solutions for Imass and joint-owners of Trionics, John Pickering and John Bartle, said that it would be 'business as usual' with customers experiencing a seamless continuity of service. However, they stressed that by combining the strengths of the two businesses, they would be further enhancing their customer service, support and technical consultancy.

The two firms are longstanding Autodesk resellers and appear to be a good match, complementing each other with expertise in different areas; Imass in Oil, Nuclear and Gas and Trionics in heavy machinery and automotive. With the manufacturing segment suffering, DEVELOP3D expects to see more mergers and acquisitions within the Autodesk sales channel. www.imass.co.uk / www.trionics.co.uk

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COMMENT

With its advanced capabilities and multicore processing, Al Dean knows that simulation will soon be driving the product development process.

What he didn’t realise was how pervasive it had already become

O

ver the past two issues we’ve run a lot of simulation-related coverage in the pages of DEVELOP3D. From advanced crack propagation and co-simulation to multi-core processing and the rise of the GPGPU (General Purpose Graphics Processing Units), it’s clear there have been some huge advances in the world of simulation and analysis. But this hasn’t been limited to advanced users.

Simulation has gone mainstream.

Take, for example the new parametric design studies now within Inventor (see page 45). These can use a combination of motion simulation, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and design study optimisation to ensure designers and engineers are using the most efficient number of scenarios to get to an optimal design. The very idea that you can do all this, with a tool that costs just over six grand is quite something. And this is commonplace, rather than the exception.

Thinking back to when I used these tools in anger, you’d probably be looking at something in the region of thirty grand’s worth of software, running on a hardware platform costing a further twenty. I’m also aware that this last sentence probably makes me sound like the grumpy old fellow in the pub waxing lyrical about “How it all used to be better in the good old days.” - and it does -

but with one big difference. It wasn’t better in those days. It was crap.

The software was hard to use, quite often command line driven, and the hardware was so scarily expensive that you’d save up for one SGI workstation and never be able to afford to upgrade it. In fact, you needed to book the pallet truck from old Frank in the storeroom, just to move it out from under your desk so you could install four grand’s worth (256K) of RAM. Contrast this with today’s environment and near-future technology. We’re looking at multi-core workstations, up to a colossal eight cores as standard, and that’s before we even start thinking about using graphics cards to solve additional simulations. Sat beneath our desks some of us now have enough computing horsepower to effectively use simulation tools as an integral part of the product development cycle. Not just as a sanity check at the end of a project, but a fully integrated part of the process.

If you have the power to do the calculations as you design, you can use optimisation routines to find directions for design that you might never have conceived of. The tools are there, they are affordable and unlike systems of old are becoming more and more usable by the designers and engineer, as opposed to the specialist. But is it gaining traction? It certainly appears so.

We recently did some research into simulation usage amongst our readership and discovered something rather interesting. According to the results, a whopping 60% of you are already using simulation in some shape or form within no - 40% your working practices yes - 60% and a good percentage are looking to adopt it in the very near future.

Of course, there are always those involved in design, engineering and manufacturing for whom simulation holds Are you currently using simulAtion? no benefits, but it’s

 While we would love to believe that our readers are much more advanced than the average designer or engineer, the key indicators can’t be ignored – simulation is everywhere



A whopping 60% of DEVELOP3D readers are currently using simulation and a good percentage are looking to adopt it in the very near future

clear that the message is getting across and these tools are actively being used.

Another interesting discovery is what these tools are being used for. There’s always been a long held belief that simulation is used when products fail - to find the reasons for failure and to make post manufacture design changes – but this has changed. Validating a design variant prior to manufacture was the leading reason, closely followed by reducing physical prototypes and gaining insight into product performance. The old “fix it when it’s broke” reason came in last.

Perhaps the most gratifying statistic was who exactly was doing this type of work. Was it still the last bastion of the mesh-head, the big brain in the corner, with all the knowledge required to “do simulation.” It appears not.

78% of simulation work is now being done by designers and engineers, with only 20% carried out by the simulation expert, and a small fraction outsourced to a specialist.

While we would love to believe that our readers are much more advanced than the average designer or engineer, the key indicators can’t be ignored – simulation is everywhere. And with more and more processing power available on the desktop, all the pieces are in place to truly make simulation an integral part of the product development cycle to help create better products faster.

One question we didn’t ask in our survey was this: If you’re not currently using simulation to its full potential, can you really afford to be left behind?

Al Dean is Editor of DEVELOP3D Magazine. He nearly broke his office chair from the shock of reading the positive results of our simulation survey. If only his chair designer had learnt about simulation in DEVELOP3D. al@develop3d.com

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SIMULIA Helps Keep My World Green

Dedicated zone for your image

Simulation for the Real World

Electronics manufacturers are eliminating lead-based materials in chips and circuit boards while creating portable products that stand up to everyday use.

Our customers use SIMULIA solutions to understand the behavior of lead-free solder connections to optimize designs and prevent fracture. We partner with our customers to deploy innovative simulation methods and technology which helps them drive innovation and keep our world a little greener.

SIMULIA is the Dassault Systèmes Brand for Realistic Simulation. We provide the Abaqus product suite for Unified Finite Element Analysis, Multiphysics solutions for insight into challenging engineering problems, and SIMULIA SLM for managing simulation data, processes, and intellectual property.

Learn more at: www.simulia.com The 3DS logo, SIMULIA, and Abaqus are trademarks or registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries.

Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Copyright Dassault Systèmes, 2009.

IF YOU’RE NO POPSICLE STICK MASTER, USE SOLIDWORKS. You don’t need to be a Popsicle® stick master to create exciting designs in 3D. SolidWorks® software lets your team simulate motion and vibrations to test models in real-world conditions.

So you can bring your products to market faster and gain a competitive edge.

S & S Worldwide uses SolidWorks for visualization of roller coaster vehicles and track interactions, improving overall product quality by 25 percent while cutting prototyping costs by 20 percent.

Learn about the advantages of SolidWorks at www.solidworks.com/popsicle DESIGN BETTER PRODUCTS SW_Develop3D_Sept09.indd 1

SolidWorks is a registered trademark of SolidWorks Corporation. ©2008 Dassault Systèmes. All rights reserved

19/8/09 15:27:16

COMMENT

With emerging technologies, reduced power consumption, and an economic downturn, chip design is changing.

It’s no longer just about being faster.

It’s also about working smarter, writes Rob Jamieson

I

t’s happened to me three times now. I’m in the US, order a nice big juicy steak and chips from the waiter, but when my order arrives it’s got crisps on the side instead. We just don’t eat steak with crisps in the UK – you’d have thought I’d have learnt my lesson by now! Why am I on about chips? Well first of all there are more of them - not the ones next to my steak but those inside your workstation, both CPUs (Central Processing Units) and GPUs (Graphics Processing Units).

But there is also a trend to make the most of the available resources, which is particularly appealing in this current economic climate.

Back in the 60s, a chap named Moore came up with a law that said transistors on a chip will double in number every two years and more transistors equal more performance. To increase the amount of transistors on a chip you have to shrink

1

 the die size, and while this process ticked along nicely for decades, during the last few years technological issues have slowed down this shrinking process. As a result, in order to keep pace with Moore’s law, chip manufacturers have also increased the number of processors on a single CPU and multi–core CPUs are now standard. The number of processors on a graphics card has also increased.

A neW drIvIng force While keeping up with Moore’s law and delivering ever increasing levels of computational performance is important for CAD/CAM/CAE it is no longer essential in the consumer sector. A case in point is the netbook, which enables users to happily browse the web, watch a video or write an email on a relatively low powered computer. Virtually all modern processors can satisfy these requirements and in this sector, chip development is all about reducing size, weight and power requirements.

While these characteristics are essential to drive forward lightweight mobile computing, they may also have a bearing on future developments at the highend, particularly as software and hardware become more adept at harnessing the power of multiple chips. In a single system, for example, if the chips or dies are made so they interconnect to create a new pipeline, a powerful new solution can be created from smaller and easier to manufacture components.

And as they are smaller they are easier to cool and run faster as well.

1 In recent years ● the number of processors on a single CPU has increased, such as this six core AMD Opteron

With the economy starting to perform better it will be the companies that adopt new technology and make it work for them that will come out winners

 mergIng technologIes This shift in chip development is not just limited to CPUs. Linking all the processing technologies together is a way of making maximum use of all the power in your workstation. Doing this effectively though is not trivial and is a problem that needs to be solved by software developers, but you can see that it’s already starting to happen.

OpenCL (Open Computing Language), for example, can run on a workstation with lots of CPU or GPU power. It will detect what performance is available and use it as necessary. DirectX 11 is also launching later this year with Windows 7 and this is likely to incorporate new technologies, such as the tessellator, which uses a GPU, rather than CPU to sub divide meshes on the fly.

chAngIng tImes While manufacturers will continue to produce chips with more and more computational power in the quest to keep pace with Moore’s law, finding new uses for existing hardware or integrating multiple technologies is becoming increasingly pertinent, particularly in this current economic downturn.

At the moment the market is dictating that we only need enough computing power for the task at hand. This is a typical reaction in times of trouble. But while downsizing from a ‘steak to a burger’ and getting the job done faster with fewer resources might be the current ideal, with the economy starting to perform better it will be the companies that adopt the new technology and make it work for them that will come out winners.

Rob Jamieson is a marketing manager at AMD. All this talk of chips, crisps, steaks and burgers has made him rather hungry. This article is his own opinion and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. robert.jamieson@amd.com

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PROFILE

PRODUCT DESIGN SHOWCASE » With this month’s product design showcase focusing squarely on the latest and greatest pet homes and accessories, one can only presume that author Stephen Holmes has the happiest collection of hamsters, cats and chickens in the whole of Britain

Animal house

T

he traditional abode of a hamster was always a wire cage with a wheel, however now they’ve broken out into something much more interesting – tubing.

As zoos have been redesigned to create more natural environments, on a lesser scale we are doing the same in a domestic setting for our pets, with the hamster, an adventurous rodent benefitting more than most.

The modular environments for different activities found in Habitrail’s world not only replicate the pet’s natural environment, but provide interactivity with the pet owners through the use of transparent plastics and modern design.

The latest Ovo range is a bright world of activity, creating unique combinations of environments and tunnels for the pet (and owner) to discover.

“My primary objective is to design products that will make the experience of owning a pet a wonderful one!” says Robin Plante, research and development manager at Rolf C Hagen, Habitrail’s manufacturers.

Beginning with handmade prototypes to review the wellbeing of the animal as well as the ability for the customer to interact, the team then virtually recreates the product in 3D with Pro/Engineer. Here, all the mechanical details are added as well as the moulding parameters for production.

“To validate if our 3D files would work well before making any expensive production moulds, we did several generations of prototypes made directly from our 3D files in stereolithography, and retested the animal well-being, the customer interface, durability of the mechanical details and product assembly, as well as the knock down ability for the packaging size,” says Robin.

The hardest part is designing an end product that fits all the criteria. “Obtaining the perfect balance between the cool factor of the product, manufacturing in mass, durability, affordable for the consumer, easy to use and clean, without making any compromise to the well being of the pet,” concludes Robin.

www.habitrail.com

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AL CI PE TS PE Happy as Harry the hamster: The modular and colourful world of Habitrail should give your hamster endless enjoyment. Now where’s the owner-sized model?

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PROFILE

Puurfect design

C

ats are particular about many things; what they eat, where they lounge, which item of furniture to scratch the hell out of, and most importantly where they go to the loo. You’d be hard pushed to find a receptacle for animal faeces that has had as much thought put into it as the ModKat. This feline friendly litter box features a ‘rooftop’ entry that catches gravel as the cat walks out of the box, an ergonomic shovel with a brush to sweep up accidents, and a reusable litter bag to save money and the environment.

“We thoughtfully considered every detail, from non-skid feet that keep ModKat put, to the locking rooftop that keeps nosey pets and curious kids at bay,” says Brett Teper, who along with ModProducts partner Rich Williams, designed the product.

Truly functional, yes, but form also played a critical role in the design process. “We set out to design a litter box that was aesthetically worthy of occupying prime space in a small apartment, why should one be embarrassed to have their litter box out in the open?” says Brett.

Beginning with sketches Brett and Rich then developed full-scale foam core mock-ups. From there they worked with Cheetah 3D (an Apple Mac-based 3D tool for modelling, rendering and animation) and Adobe Illustrator to develop profile drawings, hole patterns on the top and to flesh out the hinge mechanism that causes residual litter to fall back into the box.

These were passed on to the manufacturer who developed more detailed models in SolidWorks to incorporate the necessary tapering required for the injection moulding process. Several full sized models were made to test for stress, and assess colour and textures.

For further testing real cats were also let loose on the ModKat and multiple breeds, of various ages and ‘unique personalities’, all felt immediately at home. If you treat your cat to this cool looking litter tray, the chances are they might actually like you for once.

(Above) The ModBox is a stylish alternative to the traditional cat litter tray (Below) Clockwise from top left: Initial Sketches, Prototype hinge, Prototype lock, Foam core mock-up, SolidWorks model, Scoop studies

www.modkat.com

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quick and easy to clean and the smooth plastic design allows the surfaces to be disinfected and washed with a hose.”

Meanwhile the run is made from strong steel weld mesh and has a unique anti-tunnel skirt to prevent predators from digging in.

After the basic concept and mock-ups a handful of fibreglass prototypes were sent out to potential users to get valuable feedback.

“They told us exactly what was missing and what needed to be improved,” says Simon.

The eglu is rotationally moulded from MDPE and is available in seven colours, creating large, hollow mouldings with insulating properties to keep the chickens warm in winter and cool in summer.

“CAD modelling is used most heavily during the later stages of a project for production tooling and engineering drawings. Our design engineers are fully trained in Unigraphics NX5 and SolidWorks 2009,” explains Simon.

This month also sees the launch of Omlet’s beehaus, designed with leading apiarists to take beekeeping into the 21st century. With its contemporary and easy to use design it is aimed at first time and urban beekeepers.

L

T

he humble chicken coop has had a renaissance as an environmental wonder, a bastion of the organic – a door step protein producer, which is why it needed a make-over.

“What could be better than collecting eggs from your own hens?” says Simon Nicholls, part of the team behind the eglu, including James Tuthill, Johannes Paul, and William Windham, all graduates from the Royal College of Art, London who together set up Omlet in 2003.

The first step was to get rid of the image of chicken wire and salvaged wooden panels.

“Existing chicken houses were all made of wood, a material not particularly suited for animal housing because of the difficulty of cleaning, and they looked drab.” To encourage more people to keep chickens the team decided that the product had to perform better and look much more pleasing.

Since its launch in 2004 the eglu has become the world’s best selling chicken house. The team have adapted the design for rabbits and guinea pigs and in 2006 unveiled the eglu cube, which plays host to up to ten chickens.

“The slide out droppings tray makes the eglu

ECIA SP PET

Which came first…?

(Above) Omlet’s beehaus, is designed to take beekeeping into the 21st century (Below) The eglu cube is not your ordinary chicken coop.

It’s rotationally moulded from MDPE for easy cleaning, available in seven colours and can house up to ten chickens

www.omlet.co.uk

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PROFILE

FORWARD THINKING » Wheelchairs aren’t usually considered to be ‘cool’, but the Trekinetic K2 All Terrain isn’t your average wheelchair.

Stylish looks, coupled with an innovative front drive threewheel design means it’s just as at home off-road as it is on the high street. By Frances Corbet

S

ince the first lightweight, collapsible wheelchair was invented in 1933 by the American mechanical engineer, Harry Jennings, its basic form has remained pretty much unchanged... until now. With the use of new production tools, materials and manufacturing methods, British engineer Mike Spindle, has gone about quashing our perception of conventional manual wheelchair design with the Trekinetic K2 All Terrain. This stylish front wheel drive wheelchair sports two chunky wheels at the front and a smaller single wheel at the back, a carbon fibre monocoque seat, a dynamic braking system, ‘varicam’ quick camber change, a telescopic footrest, a quick-fold rear assembly, a nitrogen shock absorber and onboard wet weather protection in the form of an automatic umbrella. It is no ordinary wheelchair.

No ordinary wheelchair: The Trekinetic K2 All Terrain combines good looks with excellent handling

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‘‘ Because the chair is so unusual our users get stopped in the street and asked where they bought it from

’’ Mike Spindle, Trekinetic

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1 Back in 2000 Spindle realised that his Hertfordshirebased engineering company - DT-Clayton Toolmakers - that had been making components for the F1 industry and previously tooling for the motor industry, needed to diversify into new areas in order to survive. Being quite a cash rich company and having invested quite heavily in new technology over the years, including a large 3-axis Haas CNC machine, Spindle was looking to design his own, relatively high value product. He stumbled upon just the thing whilst waiting in Luton airport’s departure lounge.

Having noticed a “cool lad” in a wheelchair he was struck at how out of place he looked in his traditionally designed, purple wheelchair. “I had no emotional involvement with anyone in a wheelchair and seeing this kid I honestly thought, is that really the best that wheelchair manufacturers can do?” says Spindle. Feeling inspired that he could create something better, he started sketching out his ideas on the back of his boarding pass during the flight.

A new beginning With a ‘clean sheet’ approach, Spindle’s mission was to build a new wheelchair from the ground up. “I deliberately didn’t look at any wheelchair designs because I thought that I may be influenced. I was going to try and come up with something as if a wheelchair hadn’t existed,” he explains.

1 Study of His initial concept and break from traditional wheelchair ● wheelchair operator design was to move the smaller wheels, or castors, from position in relation to the front to the back. He felt that, perhaps naively, with front drive wheels the castors at the front the wheelchair is more susceptible to tip backwards. He also thought that it would feel more natural for the user to have their hands next to their knees and not behind their hips. The original concept also included ratchet type levers attached to the wheels.

“Instead of pushing the wheels I thought that the levers would be more efficient but, as it transpired, I was completely wrong about that,” admits Spindle.

From this kernel of an idea it took another six years and 14 separate prototypes before the K2 was ready for market.

“The first prototype was made cheaply and simply out of plywood and didn’t look anything like what we have now,” says Spindle. “It was a front wheel drive wheelchair with two levers and two castors at the back.”

With that prototype he realised that the lever propulsion system was not the best solution. “When we developed it we found out that it simply wasn’t a practical method as it’s much quicker to move the wheels with your hands. A lever is too cumbersome, too expensive and it’s also difficult to put into reverse,” he explains. With subsequent prototypes Spindle discovered that a three-wheel design would offer a better solution as it meant that all the wheels would remain in contact with the ground, even on an uneven surface.

20 wayS F1 racing iS changing our world F1 racing isn’t just about fast cars and tight boiler suits.

The Trekinetic K2 All Terrain is currently featured at an exhibition at London’s

Science Museum, which showcases 20 examples of where F1 technology is impacting on our lives. The F1-inspired wheelchair will be showcased alongside examples of new ways to look after

patients, design sports equipment, and maintain heating systems in homes.

The exhibition runs until the 5th April 2010 and is FREE. Result! www. sciencemuseum. org.uk

22 SEPTEMBER 2009 DEVELOP3D.COM

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PROFILE

‘‘ we didn’t

know at the time but because we had put the wheels at the front, the chair was quite good on gravel, snow and uneven surfaces

’’ Mike

Spindle, trekinetic

Sitting pretty The real breakthrough came with the fourth or fifth prototype when Spindle decided to build the wheelchair around a moulded seat to which all the components would be attached.

“One of the remarkable things that I thought about when I saw the wheelchair at the airport was that it was still on a metal frame chassis with a seat plonked on top,” he says.

He sourced an aluminium racing-car seat and weeks of painstaking measuring later, he had the CAD data that could become the basis for a comfortable and mouldable monocoque wheelchair seat.

He used AutoCAD combined with NC Graphics Toolmaker to produce the first on-screen prototype.

This was then machined, full size from a huge block of solid reinforced resin. The machining took three weeks and needed great care, as many sections were a fragile 4mm thick. Once this was successfully trial assembled, manufacture of the production moulds could begin.

However, although he had originally envisaged the seat being made out of aluminium, this material proved to be very costly and as a result, he chose another very strong and more lightweight material - carbon fibre.

DOwn tO the nutS anD bOltS Using AutoCAD in conjunction with NC Graphics’ Machining Strategist, Spindle created a variety of tool

2

paths for the more complex geometries of the wheelchair design. However, another rather unconventional ‘design tool’ he made use of during the process was his son’s Meccano set. Meccano is a model construction kit comprising re-usable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears, with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces enabling the user to build working models of, for instance, planes and trains.

“Some of the linkages on the wheelchair were quite complex and even with a pen and paper or CAD I wasn’t actually sure whether they would work the way that I thought they would. So, I used the Meccano set to prove that they would,” reveals Spindle. “Sometimes you stumble upon what would appear to be a truly new solution. An example would be the self-locking trapezium that forms the basis for our ‘varicam’ mechanism. I was almost sure it would work and the theory looked flawless however, there was no prior art and I just couldn’t believe the solution was so simple and so elegant. The Meccano model proved what is now the subject of a worldwide patent.”

Although the development proved to be a long and difficult road for Spindle it was one he was determined to stay on despite having to keep creating new prototypes and then going back to the drawing board again when they weren’t quite right.

“I never quite wished that we hadn’t started but it was very difficult because when you are breaking new ground there is nobody to ask how it should be done - you have to come up with the solutions yourself. We spent £1,000s making a particular device that didn’t work and that happened many, many times,” says Spindle. But having committed the company’s resources to the project he wanted to at least get to a point where he could prove that either it could or couldn’t work.

“What I didn’t want to do is spend all this time, money and many years of my life to prove that this thing was viable and then just give up. I wasn’t prepared to give up before somebody proved that it was useless. So, I felt compelled to find a solution to the problem,” he reveals.

“Also, throughout the whole journey I always believed the solutions were already there, I just had to uncover them.”

Off the beaten track In 2003, having overcome many complex engineering challenges, he had created a solution, in fact prototype number nine, that he was happy with. He took it to Aspire Leisure Services in Stanmore, Middlesex, a fully integrated training centre for disabled and non-disabled people, where he informally showed it to a focus group of doctors, nurses and wheelchair users. This exercise showed up one of the great strengths of the design - its off-road ability.

“We didn’t know at the time but because we had put the wheels at the front, the chair was quite good on gravel, snow and uneven surfaces. We had no idea that the average

3

2 Isometric of the moulded seat ●

to which all the components of the wheelchair are attached

3 Wireframe of moulded seat design ●

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autodesk INVENTOR takes you beyond 3d to digital prototyping.

Autodesk® Inventor® software creates a single digital model that enables you to design, visualise and simulate your products. Inventor helps you to reduce product costs and get innovative designs to market faster. Learn how Inventor can take your designs beyond 3D at autodesk.co.uk/inventor.

autodesk INVENTOR

Model was designed using Inventor Image is courtesy of Engineering Center LTD, Russia Autodesk, Autodesk Inventor and Inventor are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2009 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

PROFILE

‘‘ Throughout

the whole journey I always believed the solutions were already there, I just had to uncover them

’’ Mike

Spindle, Trekinetic

wheelchair was completely hopeless off-road as the little front castors get jammed,” says Spindle. “So, we realised that we had really hit on something here.”

One wheelchair user in particular, Robin Gibbons, a former Royal Navy diver and ex-pilot, really helped in giving a critical assessment of the product and continued to provide valuable feedback over the remaining three years of the chair’s development. It was Gibbons who pointed out that the three-wheel prototypes had poor directional stability and were unsteady at speed.

As a result, Spindle developed a mechanism that automatically locks the rear castor into the straight-ahead position when travelling in a straight line and releases it when the wheelchair is turned. He also realised that in order to make the chair more stable the wheels would need to be tilted inwards because the wider they are at the point where they contact the ground the more stable the chair would be. But having the chair permanently wide would then mean that it wouldn’t be able to get through doorways.

The solution was an innovative ‘varicam’ system - by simply turning a rotating cross-shaft under the seat the user could easily change the angles of the wheels. So, at zero camber the chair is 710mm wide and then when adjusted to negative camber of 24 degrees it becomes 870mm wide.

An adjustable nitrogen gas filled, shock absorber was also integrated into the design allowing the seat angle to be adjusted. In the end, Spindle filed for half a dozen separate international patents.

Nearing the end of the road After the fourteenth prototype he was finally happy with his creation and had it tested to British and European standards by an independent body, the MHRA. In April 2006, the tooling was ordered, just in time for the Mobility Road show exhibition in June 2006. The response at the show was largely positive and subsequent press from the BBC, CNN and national newspapers including The Independent caused heavy traffic on the website as well as many emails and phone calls

1

to Spindle. However, the interest did not only come from wheelchair users or companies interested in the commercial possibilities - many were from architects, engineers and designers who appreciated the design aesthetic and detailed engineering.

The Trekinetic K2 went on to win the 2007 Frost & Sullivan European Product Innovation award in the field of rehabilitation wheelchairs, an award that recognised Trekinetic’s pioneering work in developing an innovatively stylish and ergonomically designed alternative to present wheelchairs, and was nominated for a series of other awards.

Mass production The K2 All Terrain wheelchair is now in its third year of production and just in the past few months production has been moved to a bigger, purpose-built facility, which is just over 4,000 square feet.

“It is a brand new unit that we have designed specifically for Trekinetic production,” says Spindle. “We machine about 50 per cent in-house and subcontract the seat moulding and some of the components. In fact, we are probably keeping a lot of small firms going at the moment. For instance, the wheels are specialised and they are made in the UK but we have had to now order 100 at a time to keep it all viable for a small company.”

This production set-up can handle 20 chairs a week.

The wheelchairs are distributed through a network of carefully selected dealers that currently consists of 11 in the UK, Belgium, Greece, Israel the Netherlands and Australia. “We have a good relationship with our dealers and more and more are opening up as time goes by,” says Spindle. As for marketing the product, Trekinetic relies predominantly on word of mouth with many of the users doing their own ‘advertising’ by using their wheelchairs off-road such as in the country or on the beach, drawing admiring glances from both disabled and able-bodied people.

“Because the chair is so unusual our users get stopped in the street and asked where they bought it from. Only this week I got a call from somebody in Dubai who actually saw someone using the wheelchair in Dubai and wanted to know how they could order one,” says Spindle.

However, not one to rest on his laurels and bask in the current success of the K2, Spindle claims that he has a number of “groundbreaking” ideas up his sleeve that he wants to introduce to the mobility sector in the next three years. One of them he reveals is an electronically powered version of the wheelchair, but the second he guarantees will take everyone by surprise. “It will be based on this chair but I don’t think anybody expects what we are going to do next,” he says. So, without it sounding like too much of a cliché, watch this space! www.trekinetic.com

2

1 Trekinetic has its own large ●

3-axis Haas CNC machine in-house

2 Assembly area for the all terrain ●

wheelchair

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PROFILE

URBANLE Âť The weird and wacky world of urban vinyl toys is a global sub-culture with a huge following. Stephen Holmes talked to prominent London-based artist, Cris Rose about how rapid prototyping has transformed his creative business

Meet the family: Rapid Prototyping has helped Cris Rose create a collection of Urban Vinyl individuals

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leGends ends t

he urban art scene has seen a commercial boost into the mainstream of late; a niche collectors market for figures is now a million dollar industry the world over.

Around the world artists are making models with a twist. Robots stalk, Manga animals threaten, and aliens pose - all in great detail, standing a few inches tall. These creations are hugely desirable to collectors who pay big bucks to get hold of the latest limited edition or custom pieces by their favourite designers.

The models are an extension of what is better known as the ‘urban vinyl’ or ‘designer toy’ scene, the biggest names being Dunnys (by Kidrobot) and Qees (by Toy2r). The industry’s high turnover rate means that artists rush to get their latest creation out to the masses, something that commonly proves a costly and time consuming process.

2,000 piece run producing a wholesale cost of £30.

Large batch production in vinyl is not always practical, and to preserve exclusivity for an artist, limited edition runs might be preferred. These are made out of resin and the moulds for this process are much cheaper to produce because they are gravity fed and don’t require machinery. For short batches though they are still not particularly cost-effective as each original needs to be made by hand using modelling foams, polymer clays, found objects and car bodyfiller.

Mass custoMisation

With a view to driving down the cost of short batch production runs, Cris looked at rapid prototyping and found detailed originals could be produced for £100 or less. “These are the kind of originals that you would have had to have gone to a professional model maker for and spent over £750 on - up to £3,000 on a larger, very complicated design that has a lot of revisions.

Production values “Using RP means you can get a very high quality original Traditionally there have been two types of models - vinyl and to cast from, but as we don’t need to sell a lot of pieces resin. Vinyl is best suited to large batch production as Cris Rose, a prominent London based urban vinyl artist, explains. to break even, we can take more risks and produce lower “Mould making for vinyl can cost thousands, partly because numbers. Lower numbers means more exclusive and often it requires expensive rotational casting machines.” However, more desirable,” adds Cris.

Starting with initial sketches, Cris then develops them once the mould is made models are cheap to produce with a

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Are YOUR Designs the same but different?

AUTOMATE! www.driveworks.co.uk

You can have your cake and eat it!

www.paragon-rt.com

Quality prototypes at an affordable price!

Tel: 01325 333141

The rough surface finish of stereoligthography helps give this rusty ‘Rotund’ plenty of character

inside SolidWorks to create a 3D model. This is sent to a rapid prototyping bureau and the returned figure is hand finished, before the silicone mould is created. The resin is then poured in and once set, it is cleaned, assembled and painted.

Rapid prototyping has done more for Cris than just reduce costs. He can now make much more detailed models than were previously possible with resin.

“With these designs I’ve purposely made them as thin as I could to see what I could get away with,” says Cris showing off a model’s robotic arms done in stereolithography. “You can print these tiny, little details with this type of rapid prototyping, but you can’t really cast it in resin particularly well because you get air bubbles trapped and you end up with an arm in two pieces.”

In cases where manufacturing issues dictate the form of the model, Cris needs to make adjustments to the design and this is where CAD is incredibly useful. “One reason why I use SolidWorks rather than other programs is because I can almost go all the way back to the first bit of size and shape detail I put into it and just change the sizes.”

“There is no [other] way I’d be able to create something so detailed, so dimensionally perfect and have it put into production in such a ridiculously short timescale.”

Cris has always been computer literate, using CAD of his own accord back in his school days when systems were in short supply in education. Now it means he can work quicker, cheaper and give his models individual personality.

“In a lot of ways it allows me to produce new iterations, new versions and more diversity in the characters I was doing without having to do a whole new sculpture, new moulds and everything else.

“If you design it like a real product, such that they’d actually have separate joints and pieces, then you’re able to make a few different types of arms that fit the same body. They’re ever so slightly different, but it’s enough to

change the whole character and expression. Whereas when working with resin where the whole character is just a single piece, arms moulded into the body, if the artist wanted to do anything further with it then it would have to be a completely new sculpture.”

The rapid prototyped figure has a rougher surface than most modellers would appreciate but for Cris this is beneficial. “I’m trying to do something which in the end looks like this when it’s painted up,” he says pointing to a finished Rotund, one of his most popular designs, “Old and rusted with lots of character – a super-smooth finish would have been counter productive.”

His influences are nature and technology: “I like the old with the new, the futuristic designed in the 1950s. [A time when] they thought we’d have little guys like this running around the house.

“A lot of modern design tends to be take away all the buttons, take away all the character - smooth it off and make it flat and perfect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Apple fan, I love the simplicity, but it seems to me that if you were going to have a robotic companion you’d want it to have personality.”

The collectables are usually produced in runs of around five pieces, although a cast from an RP model can last for up to 40 resin copies.

The future The next step for Cris is to get his designs out to the masses. “I’m currently doing some designs for vinyl production, but the initial costs are over 50 times higher and the project has required a manufacturing partner in Japan,” he says. Whichever path he chooses, mass production or bespoke creations, Cris dreams of having his own rapid prototyping machine. This will give him instant control over modelling changes, and a whole new army of individuals to unleash on the urban vinyl art world. www.crisrose.co.uk

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TECHNOLOGY

CFdesign For clusters » Armed with a brand new solver technology, CFdesign can now use clusters to accelerate solve times. Greg Corke reports on how this move to High Performance Computing (HPC) will change the game for desktop CFD

O

1 A cluster built ●

from standard Dell workstations, InfiniBand cards and dedicated cabling

2 For a more elegant ●

cluster Cray’s new CX1-LC deskside is an all in one supercomputer

1

2

ver the past ten years CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) has changed from being a niche application for specialists to one that is also easily accessible to nonexpert designers and engineers.

These desktop CFD applications work hand in hand with CAD software and enable CFD to be used to help drive the actual design process, rather than just being used as a verification and validation tool.

Blue Ridge Numerics, a developer of one of the leading desktop CFD applications, calls this upfront CFD. Its CFdesign software is Windows-based and works alongside all the mainstream 3D CAD systems, including Inventor, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Catia, Pro/Engineer, SpaceClaim, NX, and CoCreate Modelling.

The software is used in equal measure for electronics cooling and mechanical flow, and is put to work on all manner of fluid dynamics projects including valves, manifolds, ducts, and diffusers, simulating a variety of fluids including water, air, and petrol.

By bringing CFD into the hands of the non-expert user, CFdesign started out being used on relatively simple problems, but this has changed over time, as Derrek Cooper, product manager, CFdesign, explains. “A few years ago people were so excited just to be able to run flow in a little valve out of their CAD system, but now people want to do a lot more,” he says. “The models are bigger and they want to run more of them. Now people are doing huge ventilation systems with multiple floors and multiple rooms.”

With this ever increasing complexity of problems, last year it became clear that more performance was required to reduce the solve time of its CFD simulations. However, because CFdesign had always been a desktop Windows application, its solver code was multithreaded and was only designed to run on a single workstation. And while it would work with multicore workstations, the limitations of the then current Intel Front Side Bus (FSB) architecture (Core 2 Duo), meant that users would only experience a 1.3 or 1.4 times performance boost with a quad core chip over a single core CPU. Blue Ridge Numeric’s solution was to re-write its solver

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code to work with High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters, which are essentially a collection of computers joined together with high-speed interconnects.

Clusters are commonly used with more traditional CFD packages intended for dedicated analysts – such as STAR-CD from CD-adapco or Ansys CFX – as the datasets are much bigger. Here, complex aerospace and automotive problems of biblical proportions are typical with simulations often taking many hours, if not days.

Code breaking Re-writing CFD solver code to work on a cluster is not a trivial task. It means the solver needs to be changed from a multithreaded structure (designed to work with multiple CPU cores in a single machine) into an MPI (Message Passing Interface) structure (designed to work with multiple machines in a distributed environment).

Derrek Cooper explains the differences between the two and the limitations of multi-threaded code in relation to CFdesign. “With multithreaded code, one solver (a CFD calc) tries to spread its information over multiple CPU cores.

Eventually it will saturate and you won’t get any additional speedup,” he says. “With the MPI approach you get multiple CFD calcs all running independently of each other and the interface collects the information and knows how to spread it intelligently over multiple machines. In this case the speed up is substantial.”

With CFdesign and all its supporting CAD applications, running on the Windows platform, developing a solution for a Linux cluster was not seen as the most suitable option.

Instead, Windows HPC Server 2008, Microsoft’s secondgeneration HPC cluster technology, was preferred.

For Blue Ridge Numerics this was easier than developing and supporting a whole new set of Linux technologies. It also meant that users would feel more comfortable working in an environment that was familiar to them.

A mini CFD cluster The next challenge for Blue Ridge was to make the hardware affordable and easy enough for non-expert users to put together. “We recognised very quickly that people weren’t going to spend $50,000 on computers just to get some speed

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up in CFdesign,” explains Derrek Cooper. “So what we focused on primarily was leveraging the workstation and expanding that into a cluster environment.”

Blue Ridge chose to develop its HPC solution for a mini cluster with two, three or four workstations (nodes) hooked together with fast interconnectors. It initially tested with Core 2 Duo-based Dell and HP workstations running Windows HPC Server 2008 side-by-side and with certain models experienced performance increases of up to 4.0 with two nodes and 5.5 with four.

Each machine was fitted with high-speed InfiniBand PCI cards and connected with an InfiniBand cable. With complex problems holding huge amounts of data, the speed of this interconnect is vital to the overall performance of the cluster.

“You could hook up the workstations with Gigabyte Ethernet, but the performance will drop off substantially,” stresses Derrek. “It might save you a few hundred dollars by not buying InfiniBand but you might as well not bother [making a cluster] because the amount of information that needs to pass between the machines is tremendous.”

Blue Ridge Numerics wanted its solution to be easy enough for non-expert users to build a mini-cluster and particularly in these credit crunch times, this may be an attractive solution. However, ready-built systems are also available from the likes of Dell and specialist hardware manufacturers.

If trailing cables infuriate you, mini clusters are also available in a single compact chassis with all the nodes and interconnects stored internally. While these solutions cost more, Cray’s new CX1-LC deskside supercomputer, for example, looks to be a very elegant solution.

3

eight cores it’s in the order of 3.0. The downside is that when you move to a cluster-based solution, the additional benefits are much smaller (see Figure 3).

Conclusion

Using CFD as an integral part of the product development process is the foundation on which CFdesign is built. But having to wait for results to come back can seriously hinder the efficiency of this practice.

By introducing an HPC solution, Blue Ridge is not only providing a way of slashing solve times, but enabling users to do many more iterations to help come to a better solution.

The Nehalem advantage The Windows-based setup of the system is likely to appeal At the tail end of last year and in the middle of Blue Ridge’s to smaller companies who may not have in-house Linux development cycle, Intel unveiled a brand new CPU expertise. However, the introduction of Nehalem (Core i7) architecture code-named Nehalem. This has now been with its excellent performance with MPI code in a single brought to market with the Core i7 and Xeon 5500 series workstation, means that a cluster may not even need to be processors. At the heart of this new architecture was a built. And while some users will always need clusters to change in the way the chip accesses memory. Instead of reduce solve times to their absolute minimum, with eight the CPU communicating with the memory via the Front core CPUs coming soon this will make single workstations Side Bus (FSB), Nehalem receives data directly from the even more powerful. system RAM. This has had a huge impact on performance Unfortunately being able to take advantage of such for CFdesign, which supports Nehalem (Core i7) in the new processing power inside a single workstation is not free. Blue version, CFdesign 2010, due to be released this month.

When running multithreaded code on the older generation Ridge considers anything over four cores to be a HPC system, regardless of where these cores are located, and an additional Core 2 Duo workstations, performance peaked at two cores cost is levied. While this is often a contentious issue in on a single workstation (node) with a 1.3 or 1.4 boost over the CFD community, when Blue Ridge sets the fee in the a single core. With Nehalem (Core i7) though, because the forthcoming release of CFdesign 2010, it is likely to be a small memory talks to the chip directly, it is able to run MPI code on a single machine very efficiently. So efficiently, in fact, that price to pay for the potential to transform the role CFD plays according to Blue Ridge, with four cores in a single machine in the product development process. (node) the performance boost is in the order of 2.3 and with www.cfdesign.com

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3 Graph showing ●

relative performance of CFDesign’s new HPC Solver under different hardware and node/core combinations

26/8/09 12:35:55

PROFILE

FLEXIBLE FRIENDS

» With a wide range of services including stereolithography, product finishing, vacuum casting and silicone tooling, Paragon Rapid Technologies (RT) recently extended its rapid prototyping repertoire to offer parts produced in silicone Stephen Holmes reports

D

iversity is something Paragon RT thrives on, as the Darlington-based rapid prototyping bureau continues to seek out new ways and means to meet the needs of its customers. As the economy falters, the company is looking to stand out from the crowd by increasing the range of services it offers, adding new materials and by working very closely with customers to identify new solutions to their problems.

“We add value with our technical support and our innovation,” says Darren Webb, business development manager. “Our innovation is one of our strengths. We already offer a lot of solutions but with research and development we are continually expanding our processes and materials.

“We’re not the type of company to just say ‘that’s the limitations of the process, that’s what you’re going to get’, we always strive to exceed the perceived limitations.

Many of our customers come to us with specific requirements, whether it’s chemical resistance or a specific technical issue with a project. We’ll go away and do some research, trial new materials and prepare samples.”

This dedication and ability to seek out new processes has seen customers coming back with further work and more intricate ideas.

“We have worked closely with some of our most innovative customers and in many cases they’ve jointly funded R&D projects with us.

There’s an obvious benefit for them to have a working prototype but there’s also a benefit for us if we can identify and add new services,” says Darren. “Many of our new processes, finishing techniques and materials are a result of these successful R&D projects and now our customers have the confidence that nine times out of ten we can rise to the challenge.”

“We’ve proven that this approach helps build relationships and that’s why our customers come back to us time and time

Paragon RT now produces specialist parts in silicone, including the skin for this prosthetic hand

again. We work very closely together, more like a partnership, rather than just another link in a supply chain.”

Silicone science Paragon specialises in stereolithography, product finishing, vacuum casting and silicone tooling. Most recently though it has been developing processes for the production of silicone prototypes, a service for which it has created its own dedicated department to mix specialist blends and to improve processing by avoiding contamination.

“We’ve adapted the vacuum casting process, applied what we’ve learnt from tooling and moulding, and now we’re producing parts in silicone,” continues Darren. “Initially they were quite simple parts such as keypads and seals, but now we produce some really complex mouldings such as full face respirators, and twin shot silicones and foams. There are very few other companies that would consider these projects This has also opened up new opportunities in the health sector and a recent project with Touch Bionics drew on Paragon’s expertise in materials technology to develop a siliconebased transparent skin for a prosthetic hand.

Road tested Paragon’s most high-profile customers come from the automotive sector and scattered around the workshops are all manner of parts,

most of which are for high quality, low run projects. These are commissioned for life-size concept cars, such as the latest Nissan Qazana displayed at the Geneva motor show.

“It’s always exciting working on concept vehicles, but as always Nissan and CGi push the boundaries of innovation and we in turn have had to expand our processes and techniques, investing in research and design to come up with a solution,” explains Darren.

In addition to concept projects, Paragon’s parts also find their way into production and the company has carried out work for luxury cars, which are produced in low numbers.

Building for the future The business has recently focussed resources on increasing the size of the projects it can handle. An extension chamber for the vacuum casting machines has allowed it to manufacture components up to 1.7m in a single form. Elsewhere an extension to the building allows for vehicles to be driven inside and worked on directly, while also creating a space for confidential projects, which is essential when the company has competitors using its services concurrently.

Finding business between all the various market fluctuations seems to have allowed Paragon to sweep through the credit crunch relatively unscathed. By working to its strengths and expanding its range of services, the risk of diversity is paying off. www.paragon-rt.com

Over the page How Paragon RT manufactured the exterior plastic parts on Nissan’s Qazana concept car DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2009 33

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PROFILE

concept manufactUring » How Paragon RT manufactured the exterior plastic parts on Nissan’s Qazana concept car

T

he Qazana is the latest concept vehicle from Japanese car giant Nissan. A baby brother of Nissan’s Qashqai, already in production, the Qazana is a study into how a small car of the future could look, taking cues from SUV and sports car styling.

However, unlike most motorshow concepts nearly 75 per cent of this car should make it onto Britain’s roads next year.

The car took centre stage at the recent Geneva Motor show and this would not have been possible without the help of Paragon RT, who manufactured almost all of the exterior “plastic” parts.

Here’s how it was done.

Wheels The individual spokes of the “alloy wheels” were produced as PU vacuum castings from SL masters and silicone tools, painted a metallic graphite colour and assembled to an aluminium hub and steel rim, giving the illusion of a robust, cast alloy

Front grille

The full width grille is an interpretation of current Nissan styling, but this grille is a one piece clear epoxy casting, produced from a CNC master and silicone tooling. The ribs on the back are fully visible through the clear polished front face, creating an optical illusion of depth and form

34 SEPTEMBER 2009 DEVELOP3D.COM

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Rear lights

These innovative lamp units were machined from ABS, vacuum metalised and lacquered. The lenses were machined from acrylic with the internal lens tinted red with lacquer and the external lens smoked. The illumination is via optical fibres with a single central light source. The fibres feed up through a loom with 127 individual strands per side, emitting through custom made tubular holders to position the light just below the surface of the lens

Door mirrors Master patterns were machined from acrylic with a highly polished surface finish, before producing silicone tools and clear PU castings.

The one-piece mirror housings were tinted to create a smoke effect and suggest a continuation of the windows. Within the mirror housing sits a vacuum metalised “chrome” floating, cone, on which the actual mirror is fixed

Front running lights The cans were CNC machined from ABS and the lenses and light guides were machined from acrylic. The ‘wave’ design directional indicator is cast PU from silicone tooling. The whole assembly was vacuum metalised and then lacquered to achieve a dark chrome effect, in keeping with the overall styling

Front lights

Fully CNC machined cans and lenses, painted and polished with vacuum metalised reflectors. The light source is a combination of superbrite LEDs around a luxion star for the main beam and a flexible LED array for the ‘halo’ side lights

DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2009 35

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Cell phone, printed on an Objet 3-D printer

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It’s time to call Objet To make the best choice for your business, call us. One of our 3-D printing systems will be ideal for you.

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REVIEWS

SOFTWARE REVIEW

IronCAD Next Generation

» IronCAD has been a leader in direct modelling methodologies for many years, but the latest release sees this enhanced with more traditional history-based design tools. Al Dean takes a look at what’s new and how it works

T

here’s been a lot of discussion about the rise of Direct Modelling in the pages of DEVELOP3D this past year. Ever since Siemens launched Synchronous Technology in the Summer of 2008, there’s been a renewed interest in nonhistory based modelling methodologies all across the industry.

IronCAD has been there from the very beginning and since its inception as Tri-Spectives a decade ago the system has proved that there is a viable alternative to history-based processes. Its flexible modelling technology allows users to define design intent with ease and uses feature-based modelling to great benefit.

The product has evolved over the last few releases to grow into an impressive modelling system. Its approach has always been highly interactive, using a combination of direct manipulation of geometry, standard forms and user defined features to enable users to get their thoughts down digitally in the shortest time possible.

The fact that IronCAD contains not one, but two modelling kernels has also set it apart.

The use of both ACIS and Parasolid within a single application is still something unique to IronCAD. This can bring benefits in problem modelling situations. If one can’t build the geometry, the chances are the other can. With ACIS and Parasolid under the hood, plus PTC’s GraniteOne technology, the other huge benefit is that IronCAD has a very rich native data translation capability, allowing users to work with geometry from a much wider set of systems and with a much reduced chance of error.

Historically, IronCAD hasn’t seen the mainstream success of other modelling systems - but this has begun to change somewhat in the last few years. IronCAD is now part-owned by Chinese software solution power house CAXA and the system has been growing in adoption in the company’s home market. This has lead to increased development resources and funding and the next release looks to bring the company from one of the ‘also rans’ to perhaps achieve a bigger place in the grand scheme of things.

The irony is that this release sees a new direction for IronCAD. While IronCAD has been distinctly nonhistory-based for years, the next release, entitled IronCAD Next Generation, sees the introduction of a history-based modelling approach for the first time. Alongside this, there’s been an overhaul of the interface

1 » Product: IronCAD Next Generation » Supplier: IronCAD Price $3,995 www.ironcad.com

1 IronCAD Next ●

Generation incorporates historybased modelling alongside direct modelling. Both use the same dynamic feature editing tools, allowing the drag, drop, snap and positioning of geometry

and extensive work done to bring greater tools for downstream processes, such as drawing and annotation. So let’s dive in and have a look.

A new look The first thing that’s noticeable is the adoption of the Windows Ribbon interface scheme. While there are still the IronCAD favourites, such as the catalogues to the right hand side of the screen for standard features, parts, and rendering materials, the system now looks much fresher and more modern.

Commands are segregated into panels for sketching, features, surfaces, assemblies, visualisation (for display states and rendering), annotation and add-ins. Each is logically ordered and you’ll find that you adapt to the ribbon with ease.

Adding history With the introduction of the new history plus feature-based approach, users now have to make a decision when starting work – whether the part lends itself to a feature history based approach, where each action is recorded and available for editing, or is suited to the world of direct modelling.

This decision depends on the form of the geometry and the experience of the user, but as a rule of thumb, complex shapes lend themselves to a history-based approach (where feature shape may become obscured, meaning editing might be problematic), whereas more prismatic parts, where feature forms are maintained lend themselves to a direct modelling method.

Whichever route is chosen, the user still has the same highly dynamic method of dragging and dropping geometry features, faces and edges that IronCAD mastered some years ago. And if the sketch/build feature/repeat method is preferred, the two can be mixed and matched within the same design environment.

New draughting tools Alongside the huge change to how part and assembly geometry can be constructed, this release also sees a change in how IronCAD handles drawing production. In previous releases it used some homebrewed technology to build up a drawing environment. While it was perfectly capable of producing production-ready drawings, with all of the annotation and documentation required, the deal with CAXA gave IronCAD a more advanced tool DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2009 37

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

that’s sold very well in the Far East.

CAXA is known for its CAXA Draft application that brings a complete and extensive set of draughting tools, working as you would expect from any modern 2D CAD system.

The IronCAD team has integrated this application directly within the IronCAD interface making that rich set of tools available to its users. This provides a fully-integrated, bullet proof drawing system that allows 3D parts and assembly geometry to be used for the creation of documentation required to move a product into production. It follows a similar user interface style to many of the leading 2D design tools on the market today. Alongside this integrated 3D/2D approach, adoption of CAXA draft also means that IronCAD can now offer it as a standalone application, for those looking to maintain separate 3D and drawing seats within their design office.

Conclusion IronCAD is adapting to changes in the industry. While the system has always taken a direct modelling approach, the addition of history-based techniques changes the game somewhat. In recent years while it may have been considered one of the minor players, this could be set to change with the Next Generation of the product. The relationship with CAXA in China is obviously paying dividends as development resources are clearly being made available and the introduction of CAXA Draft into the main IronCAD system is a clever move. But when you’re looking at technologies such as this, you also have to consider the financial benefits.

IronCAD costs $3,995 per license. For that cost (which is a straight exchange from US dollars), you receive all of the core system functionality, but in addition, as part of the launch of Next Generation, IronCAD will also provide an additional license of CAXA Draft free of charge that can be used

2 alongside it (or installed on a different machine as it’s not tied to the host IronCAD license). There is a much lower cost version of IronCAD, called Inovate, and this is a pure modelling system costing $1,295, which represents great value for money.

So, what does the introduction of historybased modelling mean for IronCAD? There’s a huge resurgence of interest in direct modelling at present and almost every vendor is jumping in with its answer. Autodesk has its Fusion Technology preview, Siemens has Synchronous technology, PTC acquired CoCreate and you’re seeing the filtering of direct modelling, history-less modelling introduced into Pro/E. Finally rumours have it that the next release of SolidWorks will have more direct modelling tools.

 In recent years while it may have been considered one of the minor players, this could be set to change with the Next Generation of the product



2 The introduction ● of a fully integrated version of CAXA Draft sees IronCAD’s existing drawing capabilities extended 3 The new User ● Interface brings the Ribbon to IronCAD, but the core parts of the system remain, such as the standard features Catalog to the right of the screen

3

History and n0nhistory in practice

Karling Racing has been working with IronCAD Next Generation since the beta release and the company has been using the history and direct modelling tools on the development of the world’s fastest Harley Supertwin, which packs a breathtaking 2,000 horsepower.

Anders “Charley” Karling, owner of the Swedish company,

4 shares his experiences, “When we set out to build the world’s fastest Harley Supertwin, we needed to be flexible in our thinking and dynamic in our approach to design. Throughout the development process and later in testing at the track, we had to make radical changes sometimes completely rethinking

our approach to a problem. IronCAD’s dynamic approach to design was the only tool that allowed us to make those changes quickly and on the fly.”

“Today, things have settled down and our design is at the leading edge. We are fine tuning to ensure that we stay at the top of our game.

To help us do this, we now embed more design

4 IronCAD is quick at ● creating mock-ups of products

I’m convinced that a combination of Direct and History-based modelling represents the future of 3D design. The two, seemingly disparate approaches will merge over the coming years in release cycles from every vendor. What’s interesting is that IronCAD is starting from the opposite end to most. It has mastered direct modelling and the introduction of history-based modelling can only serve its users better, giving them the freedom to work how they want.

If you’re looking at Direct Modelling as a potential weapon in your armoury, then IronCAD certainly has an impressive wealth of tools at your disposal. There will be a trial version of IronCAD Next Generation available on www.ironcad.com shortly and I’d encourage you to take a look.

intent into our models, today we have a lot more data about how changes should impact other parts around them, and we now want to build that intelligence into our core model data. IronCAD’s unique combination of history-based and direct modelling is the only product on the market today which allows us to achieve this.”

DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2009 39

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

DriveWorks Solo

» DriveWorks Solo is a new rules-based design product designed to bridge the gap between DriveWorksXpress, the free SolidWorks-based solution and the high-end software, DriveWorks Pro. Can it bring design automation to the masses? asks Al Dean

L

et’s start with a question. Why do we use Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools? The number one reason is editability - the ability to dive in and edit geometry, be that a 2D drawing in AutoCAD or a complex 3D model. Before CAD, editing engineering information involved razor blades and a whole lot of scratching, which for those that remember the pain is incentive enough!

The second reason is reuse. By having access to all of your design data in a digital format, you can reuse almost any portion of anything, from blocks and Xrefs in AutoCAD, through to complex subassemblies in 3D modelling systems that adapt to their surrounding components.

The third reason is related purely to 3D working practices and is the removal of ambiguity. Orthographic drawings are possibly the most complex way to show how a part, assembly or product will look. Yes, they are still heavily used, but the point is that by taking advantage of collision and interference detection tools within 3D, we can ensure that parts fit together, subassemblies do not interfere with each other and the whole thing, when built, works.

For me, the fourth and fifth places are tied. Simulation tools allow the performance of a product to be tested, before it comes even close to a physical manifestation. This is incredibly powerful, but despite the marketing claims of vendors, has yet to go mainstream. Tied with simulation is automation, something I’ve been a great advocate of for many years. Modern CAD systems allow incredible levels of intelligence to be built into near fully functionally digital models and if used properly and appropriately can provide huge benefits. This is particularly true when

applied to a family of products that are based on the same core design, but adapted to fit customer or user requirements. If the intelligence is built in correctly, simply by tweaking the inputs, huge amounts of time can be saved designing different variations on what are essentially common parts, subassemblies or even entire products.

The problem with automation is that it is typically very difficult to manage on anything other than the most basic of components or assembly stacks. What you need, particularly if you’re a SolidWorks user, is DriveWorks.

DriveWorks is a British company I’ve come to know well over the last ten years, and I’ve watched it evolve from a one-man company with a bunch of Excel macros into a global company with a much more sophisticated toolset with seats installed in the US, Australia, Europe and many other geographies. While there have been many other design automation vendors within the SolidWorks space, none have achieved the traction of DriveWorks. This was cemented two years ago when DS SolidWorks incorporated DriveWorksXpress into SolidWorks, providing every SolidWorks user with basic design automation tools to experiment with.

Alongside DriveWorksXpress, the company has always had its higher-end, DriveWorks Pro, offering for those looking to push automation further. This allows team wide access to the technology to push design automation tools into the hands of non-expert users, such as those in field sales, or customers through a web-connected server. The problem with DriveWorksXpress and the higher-end offering is that the gap between them has always been quite wide. And this is where DriveWorks Solo fits in.

2

1 » Product: DriveWorks Solo » Supplier: DriveWorks Price £2,400 including first year subscription www.driveworks.co.uk

1 One of the first ● steps is to capture dimensions and parameters from an existing SolidWorks assembly 2 DriveWorks Solo ● allows users to capture, drive and automate the creation of drawings 3 Forms can ● incorporate many fields and controls including images to help the user make appropriate selections

3

The underlying concept behind DriveWorks Solo is that it brings the most popular capabilities of the full DriveWorks Pro software to the single seat user. It provides the ability to set-up standardised products and product ranges, with all of the appropriate design inputs, alternatives and variations, and then have the system automatically generate 3D models and drawings for each required variant.

However, if you want to open up this automation to a wider audience of nonexpert users then you need to buy the Pro version.

The practicalities Once DriveWorks Solo has been installed as an add-on in SolidWorks, it will appear in the task panel and it’s from here that everything within the system is driven.

The first step is to create a new project and within that project, there can be multiple rules-based products to work with. To begin the automation process, the source model is captured and held within DriveWorks - it’s important to note that although you are working with master data, DriveWorks takes a copy of that data so that the integrity of the master model is maintained.

Once the working model is defined, you then begin to grab dimensions and features from it to use as the basis for the automation. This is most likely to be named dimensions and parameters from the 3D model, but the truth is that DriveWorks has an incredible granular level of access to almost everything within a SolidWorks data-set, meaning it can be easily controlled at the required level of detail.

The next stage is to capture or add custom properties that will be either used

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

as inputs to the design or driven by it.

Drawings are next to be captured and it is good to see the level of thought that the team has put into creating an intuitive way of working with sheets, views, annotation text, annotation properties and layers. If you have well laid out drawings based on one model, the chances are they’ll transition well to another variant and 90% of this process can be automated.

The penultimate stage of data capture is to define any features, parts or sub-assemblies which might be swapped out - perhaps different product variants have different actuator sizes to handle greater loads, or maybe different electronics are required for different variants.

The final stage is to define the file format that the data should be translated to on completion, whether that’s a standard 3D CAD format, an eDrawing for sending to a customer, or a PDF.

Form and input design Now that’s the basics defined, the next step is to define how users will interact with the data and generate each design variant in practice. This is done using a fairly Windows-standard form creation tool, which gives control over the appearance, behaviour and layout of the form. It allows all the usual field types to be added, such as options, toggles, and drop down lists, as well as tools to add images, labels and guidance messages for users.

Defining the rules The final stage is to define how those inputs interact with the data in the form of rules - and of course, the resultant outputs required. DriveWorks Solo has a very rich set of functionality for defining intelligence within a model. A nice touch is the pervasive search facility that allows users to find precise data and to filter out what’s not required. This pays huge dividends, as the potential parameters for a reasonably complex model can be vast (N.B. The DriveWorks team says that some customers have upwards of 14,000 potential rules and variables in some projects).

Some items are filled in automatically (such as file names) or you can dive in and do it manually. The good news is that the DriveWorks team has been working to make this very much a ‘grab, define and run’ type process for rules definition, using intelligence where needed and giving users access to the tools to do more complex work manually.

Tables for look up lists are a snap, allowing manual creation or copying and pasting from Excel to ensure that standard sizes and options are available.

Aside from the really comprehensive Help file and the ability to make comments on the

Getting started

DriveWorks Solo is available as a 30-day trial, downloadable from driveworks.co.uk While this isn’t particularly unique

rules – the how and why they are as they are - the Rules Builder also provides feedback as you build rules including a step by step breakdown of what the rule will evaluate to.

The result Once a project has been set up, creating new variations is simply a matter of filling out the forms. Enter the criteria and hit preview and DriveWorks Solo creates the new variation in SolidWorks immediately showing the results of your work. Any changes can then be made, and the system will then preview again and again to ensure it works, live. Once you are happy with the result, the inputs are finalised to generate the required outputs, all with the correct file names and based on your rules.

A really neat feature is the fact that a DriveWorks Solo project can be deployed in a single file which means it can be passed to others really easily. It strikes me as being a great application for a roving engineer or sales person who wants to go off site with a laptop and configure new products with others.

4

Conclusion The main aim of any DriveWorks project is to give your team a set of tools that can drive variant-based designs of a product or sub-system in a very automated manner. By removing a significant amount of time from your design processes and by automating routine tasks, this can give engineers and designers more time to work on more challenging problems, and to identify new areas for innovation to help push your products and your business forward.

But to achieve that, the system needs to be able to handle the definition of that automation environment, as well as being easy to use by a non-expert, rather than a costly consultant. By combining the power of its automation and its very deep knowledge of SolidWorks, the DriveWorks team has created a product that is not only easy to use in terms of creating variants through automation, but also to create the automation projects in the first place and maintain them on an on-going basis.

Automation can be a complex business, but the good news is that complexity is more likely to arise from your geometry and the intelligence you put into it, rather than the enabling automation, which is where you will find the benefits.

There’s been a concerted effort to make sure that the system works in the same way that SolidWorks does. Help is available directly within the interface giving good guidance and examples. Yes, the process requires some thought and planning to achieve a good automation level, but by providing good solid worked examples and pointing its users towards the best way to

4 Once the ● automation project has been completed new variations can be generated by filling out the requirements on a form

get something done, it should make it much easier to deploy on the first live project.

At the outset, I asked if DriveWorks can bring automation to the masses. The simple answer is no - automation is not for everyone. However, if your products are modular, designed to order and based on variants, then there is huge potential to transform your business. DriveWorks Solo is easy to use, easy to deploy and easy to adapt as your products change. The only question should be - if you have a need for design automation, why aren’t you using it already?

these days, it stands out due to the wide range of support tools that back it up.

On the website there are a number

of traditional tutorials as well as video resources. There’s also a selection of templates and quick start content with industry-specific

examples. These not only include worked examples in terms of geometry and rules capture, but also a further extension of

of resources to assist the user in getting up to speed with and proficient in the system. Online training is available in the form

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that with templates for sales quotes and the like, all of which can be adapted to your own processes and business requirements.

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

Inventor Simulation 2010

» Inventor Simulation 2010 adds the most powerful analysis and simulation functionality that Inventor has ever seen including the long awaited assembly analysis. Wasim Younis takes a look at what’s new and how it works

T

he first generation of stress analysis was first introduced into Inventor around six or seven years ago. Based on technology from Ansys it allowed users to perform basic stress and modal analysis, but it had one major drawback - it only worked with single parts. While it gave a quick way for users unfamiliar with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to get a foot in the door, the facts are that most engineering processes involve multiple components and the system wasn’t up to the job. As a result, those looking for analysis and simulation turned to the wealth of third-party Inventorintegrated simulation tools. This all changes with this release.

For Inventor Simulation 2010 Autodesk has incorporated technology from its recent acquisition of Plassotech to finally bring native assembly-based simulation capabilities to Inventor. Alongside the assembly analysis tools, the software includes parametric analysis functionality that automates the simulation of design configurations and variants, allowing the user to determine the optimum product design without the need to perform a time consuming series of repetitive analyses.

So let’s dive in, work through the process and see what’s new and improved. The best place to start is the user interface (see Figure 1). As with all things Inventor 2010, the interface is ribbon-based and works in a logical manner, presenting commands and options in a logical order, making it pretty straightforward to learn.

Idealisation & simplification The first step is to decide whether you want to conduct a stress or modal analysis (natural frequencies). Inventor Simulation 2010 also

1 » Product: Inventor Simulation 2010 » Supplier: Autodesk Price on application www.autodesk.co.uk

1 The new Ribbon● style user Interface of Autodesk Inventor Simulation 2010 2 Exclusion of non ● structural components for simulation 3 Lifting mechanism ● with bolt-type connections

offers the ability to analyse different level of detail representations of the assembly removing the need to create multiple copies of the assembly for stress analysis purposes.

Like the in-built analysis within previous releases, motion loads transferred from dynamic simulation can be used as well.

The contact tolerance settings can also be altered to allow for the automatic contact generation between components that have clearances or gaps. Non-structural components of the assembly can be disregarded for the purposes of simulation by right clicking the component and simply selecting ‘exclude from simulation’ (see Figure 2). This will significantly simplify the analysis by reducing the number of automatic contacts produced and will speed up runtimes.

Setting up your study Once the assembly model has been simplified to the desired level, the next stage is to apply load and constraints. Perhaps the most notable change here is the contacts and mesh control. There are various types of contacts available including bonding, separation, separation/no sliding, sliding/ no separation, shrink fit (interference fits) and springs. The contacts between the components will be automatically created and can then be manually modified to any of the other available contacts. For example with the lifting mechanism in Figure 3 it’s very easy to alter bonded automatic contact between the bolt and hole to sliding-no separation contact-which simulates reality more accurately. While we’re talking loads and constraints, Inventor Simulation now offers an additional remote load type in addition to pressure, force, bearing, gravity, moment and body loads.

Moving on to mesh control, there are two types of mesh controls; global and local.

Global meshing allows the user to control the overall size of the mesh, in addition to controlling the number of elements on a curve - for example, around holes. Local mesh control can be used to size the mesh on any component face or edge and is particularly useful for detailed and large components.

Results convergence

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

advisable to avoid applying constraints and forces on points or edges as it will result in very high stresses - also referred to as stress singularities. It is normal practice to re-analyse the same model with different mesh sizes to see if the maximum stress changes, and if results are similar the user can assume results have converged – also referred to as manual convergence.

In previous versions of Inventor there was the ability to perform an automatic convergence of results where the software refined the mesh in the area of high stress. However, in cases where models were either constrained or loaded on points or edges the results did not converge using this automatic convergence process. This made the feature impractical for most analyses.

This deficiency can now be overcome in Inventor Simulation 2010 by selecting these problem points and edges and exclude them from the convergence results process. The results that can be used for this convergence process include von Mises, principal stresses and displacements (see Figure 4).

The convergence can also be controlled by setting the number of iterations and the percentage stop criteria. This is 10% by default and was the criteria used in the previous versions –but could not be modified. One other unique feature of the convergence process is the ability to include part or all of the mesh elements of a model.

A value of 0 will include all the mesh elements in the model as candidates for refinement –and can be useful when a model contains multiple peak stresses. A default value of 0.75 will refine the 25% of the mesh elements around the peak stresses.

Solve and results analysis Inventor Simulation 2010 now offers a comprehensive list of results plots in addition to the von Mises, principal stresses and displacement, including planar stresses which enable plotting of tensile and compressive stresses in components (see Figure 5). In addition to displaying the maximum and minimum values, the user can now use the probe feature to pinpoint the key areas of interest in the model. This is especially useful when the model has maximum results distorted due to stress singularities present. Other useful additions include the convergence plot which illustrates that convergence has been reached and the uniform scale feature, which when activated allows users to see

5 the results plot of an isolated component within the context of an assembly, without altering the maximum and minimum values of the colour bar.

Optimisation Of all the new functionality in Inventor 2010 optimisation is the most impressive and allows users to see the affect that different design parameters have on defined goals and constraints including stress and deflection limits. Users can access design parameters by right clicking any component in the stress analysis browser and selecting Show Parameters (this is only available if Parametric Dimension is selected as Design Objective).

The user can then select the parameters to be investigated.

Different design parameters, based on the original can be generated from within the parameter table within the stress analysis environment. Once these have all been done the user can define design goals and constraints from a predefined results list. This includes stress limit, maximum allowable deflection, factor of safety and minimise mass.

Once all the design parameters, goals and constraints have been defined the user can then begin to run the optimisation study.

By default, the simulation will be set to run using the Smart Configuration setting that cleverly analyses a sample of the design parameters. The solution is reached much more quickly than when using the Exhaustive option that calculates every conceivable design parameter.

Beware if you have a lot of design parameters, as the simulation can take a very long time. To get round this the user has the option of running the simulation by preselecting the design parameters for

6

4 4 Convergence ● Settings dialogue box 5 Tensile and ●

compressive stress plot

6 Alternative ●

designs resulted from an optimisation study

each feature (done using the parameter sliders) and then selecting Simulate This Configuration, which can be considerably quicker than running all design parameter configurations (see Figure 6).

Conclusion This release of Inventor Simulation is a vast improvement over its predecessor, if for nothing else, by providing the ability to perform realistic simulations based on assemblies, rather than just single parts.

The Parameter studies functionality is also very important. This helps users explore the impact of design parameter changes, against defined design goals and constraints, without the need to investigate and analyse an excessive number of options – with the ability to promote the optimum design parameters to your CAD Models. All in all it greatly helps to analyse and modify designs efficiently enabling users to turn around designs faster by working seamlessly with the CAD models, helping to reduce costs, reduce failures and thus warranty costs However, there’s still room for improvement. Within future releases of Inventor Simulation I’d like to see additional functionality including buckling, thermal and CFD analysis, plus more post-processing functionality including dynamic probe display, clip planes and the ability to compare results from different studies side by side in the graphics windows.

Wasim Younis is an Autodesk Simulation training and support consultant, and Director of VDS Solutions. His new book ‘Up and Running with Autodesk Inventor 2010 - A step by step guide to engineering design’ was recently published by Elsevier. www.vdssolutions.co.uk

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

Abaqus 6.9

» Al Dean takes a look though at Abaqus 6.9, the latest release of one of the industry’s leading analysis applications. Among the many updates across the board there are new tools to simulate crack propagation

F

or years Abaqus has been one of the leading lights of the simulation world. Its strength is in highly complex, advanced structural simulations that feature multiple factors, including nonlinearity, large deformation and more common static analyses.

In 2005 Abaqus was acquired by Dassault Systèmes and has since become the cornerstone of the company’s Simulia brand. The depth of the product is phenomenal, and there’s simply far too much functionality to cover in a single review. Instead, we’re going to take a look at what’s new, what’s changed and how some of the key parts of the system work.

Co-simulation In Abaqus, there are two main solver codes.

Abaqus/Standard is an implicit solver, most commonly used for non-linear, static stress simulations. Abaqus/Explicit is an explicit solver, more tuned for simulations where the product is subject to rapid events that create heavy deformations, such as impact or crash. The big news for this release is that both of these solvers can be run in tandem.

This is often referred to as co-simulation.

While both simulation types are usually quite separate, there are many instances where it would be advantageous for the two to interoperate and solve concurrently. For example, picture the simulation of a vehicle driving over a curb. The implicit solver would be used on the body and suspension parts, while the explicit solver would simulate the effect of the tyres impacting the curb. The benefit of doing both things concurrently is that the result of one event will have an impact on the other (and vice versa).

In Abaqus 6.9 the process of setting up co-simulation jobs is relatively simple. This is done using Abaqus/CAE, the pre- and

» Product: Abaqus 6.9 » Supplier: Simulia Price on application www.simulia.com

1 Abaqus is the ● cornerstone to Dassault Systèmes’ Simulia brand

post-processing tool in the suite. Starting with two studies, one implicit, one explicit, the 3D data is copied into each, then linked and the simulation inputs defined. Once the set-up has been completed for both the implicit and explicit studies, the co-simulation can be created. This defines how and where the data is passed between the two analysis types in terms of specific geometry references for load transference (typically the point of contact). The final step is to define the time step attributes and run the analysis.

Once the analysis is complete, the results data is fed back as separate standard and explicit results files and an overlay technique is used to merge the results. This allows the user to visualise the results in a single environment.

While co-simulation is something that’s a step towards the multi-physics-based future of simulation, let’s also step back and look at what’s changed in the usual workflow of mesh, solve, process.

Mesh preparation One of the first things learned when training for any form of simulation (be

that FEA or CFD) is that simplification can be used to reduce the complexity of your mesh and hence reduce calculation times.

This process, commonly referred to as abstraction, is the removal of features from the underlying part geometry that hold little influence on that part’s behaviour, but have a large affect on the mesh complexity. For example, fillet radii applied to edges can increase mesh element size to accommodate their form, but for most structural simulations these are inconsequential to the results. The same can be said of small holes that exist in the model. They increase mesh complexity but have little impact on a part’s stability.

To help with this feature removal process, Abaqus 6.9 includes new tools to help deal with more granular geometry problems.

The new Virtual Topology tool takes the source 3D geometry (from SolidWorks, Pro/Engineer or Catia) and automatically removes all manner of small features, distorted surfaces, or sliver surfaces. The end result is a surface that is much more suited to the process of meshing.

The interesting thing about this technology is that it retains links to the underlying source CAD geometry. You can dive in and adapt the surface patches to merge multiple surfaces to give you the control you need.

These activities, as well as others, such as hiding or removing geometry, are stored in a feature tree and can be edited or suppressed if needs be. This means you can have multiple states of a single model, by simply switching features on and off (although there’s no formalised way to do this).

Abaqus also has new mesh verification checks (for distortion of elements, aspect ratio, interior angles etc). It will give warnings if a mesh will fail or if there are near bad elements. The deviation of the mesh from the underlying geometry can also

Workflow for crack propagation simulation using Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) (Continued on PAGE 50)

1 XFEM can be used with any geometry in CAE. In this example a ● three-point bend test is modelled in 2D. The XFEM crack is defined using the create crack dialogue

2 Using the edit crack dialogue, an initial mesh-independent crack ● location can be specified, and the crack allowed to grow. Contact properties for the exposed crack faces can also be specified

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2 be checked. This is done using a chord height value (a la STL files) as well as minimum edge length and aspect ratio. While for many, this won’t be critical, for those looking for the highest quality mesh and the closest match to geometry, it’ll prove invaluable, allowing you to tighten up your mesh to achieve more accurate results.

Study set-up When preparing simulation tasks, the way contacts are defined has been enhanced.

Contacts can initially be found with a search (within user defined tolerances).

The user is then presented with a preview list of possible areas of contact, and can then define the type of contact and its properties – in terms of friction parameters, for example. If the user does not want to define specific contacting pairs of surfaces, the system can also set up analyses automatically with general contacts.

The set-up of fastener features, (used to model rivets and bolted joints) has also been made more intelligent and patterns of fastener points can be easily created and managed. All fastener features can now be edited or suppressed from a model.

3 Here the XFEM-related field output requests are made. ● This allows for a visualisation of the XFEM crack following the analysis

crack propagation

2 The Extended ● Finite Element Method (XFEM) has been implemented in Abaqus 6.9 to provide a powerful tool for simulating crack propagation

4 This and the previous image confirm that the initial XFEM ● crack is independent of the mesh

Within many industries the ability to simulate material failure is essential. This is a complex process, particularly when using traditional techniques, but this release introduces some new tools that make it much easier.

Abaqus 6.9 includes dedicated technology for the simulation of crack propagation. This is done using a technique referred to as the Extended Finite Element Method (or XFEM for short).

Beginning with the 3D mesh, there are two options. The first is to predefine a crack

5 Here you can see that the XFEM crack has clearly ●

propagated during the analysis. The XFEM crack is displayed automatically on opening the ODB

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

(done easily with geometry). The second is to allow the system to find the point of failure organically.

The next stage is to define the region in which the crack will propagate (this can be the whole model or a selective area) followed by a few options. These include specifying whether or not to allow crack growth, defining contact properties (including the type of contact model applied if the crack should close again), and whether or not to allow multiple cracks. If you do allow multiple cracks the system also simulates the interaction between cracks when they meet.

Once this stage is complete, the simulation is run and the visualisation tools allow the user to see exactly how and where the cracking begins and propagates. The user also has the full wealth of Abaqus’ post processing tools to investigate and report on the findings.

Results visualisation The big push for this release is to take advantage of the rapidly advancing world of graphics hardware and greater caching capabilities. This means more data can be managed which makes working with very large data-sets a reality for the majority, rather than just the ‘hardware-rich’ few.

For instance, now when you open a model database that contains a large number of parts and part instances, Abaqus/CAE loads the parts and instances on demand, based on the parts or part instances that you display. This enhancement provides improved performance and optimised memory usage.

For those working on 32-bit Windows systems Abaqus/CAE provides improved memory usage. When a user-specified percentage of the total memory allocated to the kernel is reached, Abaqus/CAE optimises the display data to enable more operations to be carried out.

By default Abaqus/CAE now uses coarse curve refinement to display the curved faces or curved edges in a part or part instance. This modified setting provides improved performance and requires less memory, especially when you are working with a large number of part instances or if you are working on parts with very complex geometry. Users can override

this default behaviour to use a finer curve refinement setting if required.

There is also a new view cut (clipping plane) tool that allows instant visualisation of data. Alongside this, users can now display the applied loads and resultant forces and moments, so there is a very graphical, but very usable sanity check of the simulation.

Conclusion Abaqus is a huge offering that brings all manner of tools to the advanced user looking for higher-end simulation capabilities. But let’s not misconstrue that to mean that it’s the restricted to FEA boffins and those with PHDs. The system is easy enough to be used by designers and engineers and while there are complexities inherent with many of the more advanced methods and techniques, it’s by no means an exclusive product with an exclusive user community.

The thing that is essential is that the user has a solid understanding of the behaviour and the operating conditions of the product

 Watching the system find the point of failure, split the mesh and then propagate the crack across the surface of a part before finally failing, is quite something



that’s under simulation. The perfect example here is the fact that something as deeply complex as crack propagation can be simulated with apparent ease.

Watching the system find the point of failure, split the mesh and then propagate the crack across the surface of a part before finally failing, is quite something. It shows exactly how far simulation has moved on in the last few years and how close we are to achieving the ability to truly simulate a product’s performance, with less reliance on assumption and being able to get closer to reality than ever before.

Workflow for crack propagation simulation using Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) (Continued FROM PAGE 49)

6 This crack is visualised using the visualisation modules ‘View ●

Cut’ tool. A cut is automatically created based on PHILSM, which is the XFEM output value that defines the crack location

7 Here you can see the full (scaled) deformation of the plate with ●

the Von Mises stress output plotted as the crack propagates

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

Geomagic Studio 11

» Geomagic is a name synonymous with software used to connect digital workflows with physical objects. Al Dean reports on the latest developments in Geomagic Studio, which see tighter integration with more traditional 3D software

T

he headline update for Geomagic Studio 11 is the introduction of Parametric Exchange, a set of tools designed to bridge the often wide chasm between physical data capture and digital design. Geomagic has been working towards this goal for the last few releases, most notably with the introduction of the Fashion module.

This offers the ability to extract design intent and, with a wide variety of surface fitting tools, reconstruct clean, accurate surfaces which can be read into your workhorse CAD system. This release not only extends these tools further by consolidating commands and workflow and adding new tools, but it also adds another level of intelligence to the process.

The high-level concept is that, by using this set of tools, the physical form of a component can be captured and rebuilt not only as a set of CAD-readable surfaces, but with a reconstructed CAD-native feature tree. This allows users to make much more use of the geometry than would be possible with dumb surfaces. It also means design intent can be added.

In its first release, Parametric Exchange interoperates with Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3 and 4, Inventor (2009 and 2010) and SolidWorks (2008 and 2009). The workflow is something a little like this.

The user begins by working on scanned data within Geomagic. For those unfamiliar with the system, it presents a wealth of tools for working with point cloud data.

Separate scans can be registered, data can be cleaned, a watertight polygon mesh can be built and unwanted features removed.

The user then dives into the system and inspects the poly-mesh to find fillet radii and all manner of surface types (such as planar surfaces, cylinders, etc). See Figure 1.

Mesh Doctor

1

» Product: Studio 11 » Supplier: Geomagic Price on application www.geomagic.com

1 An imported ● polymesh that has all manner of errors within it. The Mesh Doctor runs a series of checks for common problem areas and reports back the results.

The system can then automatically fix them or the user can dive in and work on them manually

The next stage is to start to define each of those to the level of detail required. Initially, open surfaces are created. See Figure 2.

Fashion now includes all manner of tools for extracting curves and sketches from the point cloud, and editing as required to create “good” curves. The end result is a mixture of untrimmed and trimmed surfaces (and boundary curves) that are ready to be transferred to the CAD system.

See Figure 3. At any point in the process users can inspect how much that surfacebased definition of the part deviates from the scanned data.

In the SolidWorks example shown in Figure 4 when transferred to a CAD system, the API is used to reconstruct the features, surfaces and curves in a logical history tree. It’s worth noting that each entity is contained within the feature browser to the left of the screen - and this works much the same regardless of whether Inventor, SolidWorks or Pro/Engineer is used. The next stage is to use that data to add the final trimming, cuts and splits to create the final watertight model. See Figure 5.

Alongside Parametric Exchange, the other big news for the Studio 11 release is the introduction of the Mesh Doctor. When dealing with reverse engineered data, whether coming from a processed point cloud, an imported polymesh or anything else, errors within that data are very common indeed.

The nature of any reverse engineering process - whether using traditional CMM style processes or the increasingly common non-contact scanning devices – means that holes, gaps or other errata appear. This is the main reason that systems such as Studio exist in the first place.

What Mesh Doctor represents is a persistent set of checks that can be carried out on polygon meshes to ensure users have the best quality data to work with.

Mesh Doctor is initially used when opening the dataset and runs a series of checks that look for errors, such as non-manifold or highly creased edges, self intersections, and spikes, or small components and holes that may typically appear.

The system analyses these and presents the user with a list of errors that can be selected, inspected (using the 3D view to zoom into problem areas automatically) and dealt with accordingly. Common problems can be rectified automatically and Studio handles that following a click of a button. In cases where the automated tools can’t be used, Studio enables users to dive in and work with the geometry manually, replacing geometry, filling holes and fixing errors.

Other updates In terms of the less ‘headline grabbing’ updates there are new tools related to working with new geometry, rather than data generated by scanning hardware.

GEOMAGIC STUDIO 11 workflow: from mesh to Parametric CAD model

1 The polygon mesh is intelligently classified into regions ● according to the surface types (For example, orange for extrusion)

2 Primary surfaces of different types are fitted to each of the ● mesh regions

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The first, the Mesh Radius Analysis tool, allows the use of curvature analysis to find the radii of either all edges within a part (perhaps a moulding which is typically more filleted than a metallic component) or a specific selected area. Mesh Radius Analysis gives a reading for each radius found which can then be used when defining proper fillets downstream in a CAD system. This tool is incredibly useful to restore design intent with used or retired components where time has taken its toll, and provides a decent baseline set of data to work with further.

Hole filling is something that every reverse engineering user will be familiar with mostly because in many cases it can mean major headaches, particularly when working with complex, sculpted surfaces. Studio now includes a Tangent Filling option that fills holes while maintaining the tangency of the surrounding geometry. This is intended as an alternative to the Curvature Filling option which, although incredibly powerful, can sometimes give erratic results, particularly with complex forms.

An interesting update is the Relax Polygon option. Previous versions of the software smoothed out errors with ease, but this could have a rather undesirable effect on edges. The new release provides a Curvature Priority option that ignores areas where high degrees of curvature are found (namely, edges) and these will be locked out from smoothing operations. The tool provides a visualisation of what’s locked and what’s not.

Also on the subject of smoothing, the new Sculpt Knife tool provides much greater control over manual smoothing (where the user paints in smoothing operations interactively on the geometry). This provides control over the width (or to use the painting analogy further, brush sizes) and the amount of offset allowed (or the distance polygon vertices can move to achieve that smoothness away from the original geometry).

Finally, there’s been some crosspollination from the Fashion module into Studio, with the ability to trim polygons with a curve. This allows the use of a curve to define the boundary of a sub-set of a model, either sketched in manually or using curvature change to drive the creation of the sketch.

2 CONCLUSION By taking a broad look at the process of reverse engineering or the capture of digital data from physical parts, there are two forces at work. There is currently an explosion in the hardware available to capture the raw data. Some are highly complex and accurate, but costly solutions, while others make use of consumer grade electronics to achieve a lower price point, but this often comes at the expense of accuracy. While there’s a boom in reverse engineering hardware, perhaps the most critical part of the process is doing something with that raw data.

It’s in this field that Geomagic has built up its expertise over the last decade, providing tools that allow users to work with raw source data and create usable geometry.

With the Studio 11 release, this advances greatly, particularly with the introduction of Parametric Exchange, which allows users to take physical data and create solid, accurate, clean and above all, intelligent CAD models - and by doing so, adding design intent and editability back into the process.

Alongside Parametric Exchange, the other

3 Surfaces are automatically trimmed if the user wants a ● stitched or solid output

 Parametric Exchange allows the physical form of a component to be captured and rebuilt not only as a set of CAD-readable surfaces, but with a reconstructed CAD-native feature tree



2 The Sculpt Knife ● tool provides much greater control over manual smoothing where the user paints in smoothing operations interactively on the geometry

4 Surfaces are directly transferred to CAD, where they are ● reconstructed with parametric history and associated sketches

major updates for this release continue much of the good work Geomagic has been putting into the products over the last few years. While all of the tools have been there in some shape or form for a while, the last few releases have seen much consolidation of commands. A good example is the Mesh Doctor. While this doesn’t represent new functionality, it takes existing tools, brings them into a single, persistent dialog and allow users to work on geometry, fixing errors and re-running checks, all from one place. This can only serve to make these processes, which are often time consuming, much more efficient. And you can’t ask for much more than that in my book.

5 Surfaces are trimmed into a parametric solid body, ready ●

for design changes, if desired

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Dell Precision T3500

» A compact single processor workstation, suited to high-end CAD users due to its powerful graphics, RAID 0 hard drive system and memory speed and capacity

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eaturing a single processor the Precision T3500 is specifically targeted at CAD users, but this particular T3500, with its top specification components has a definite skew towards high-end CAD and applications like NX, which are particularly graphics hungry. The FirePro V8700 is one of the most powerful CAD graphics cards on the market and its pedigree is shown in our benchmark tests topping the charts under SolidWorks and coming a close second to the Workstation Specialists WSX114 (see page 57) despite having a much slower CPU clock speed.

The T3500 features six memory slots, all of which are occupied by 2GB DIMMs running at their top speed of 1,333MHz thanks to the top end Intel Xeon X5570 processor. To work with this amount of memory - which should be plenty for even the most demanding of CAD users - a 64-bit operating system is essential and the T3500 came custom installed with Windows XP x64 Edition.

The compact chassis is packed with technology and while it doesn’t look particularly pretty it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the design. There’s a big open space for airflow over the CPU and

memory, with low duty fans pushing air from the front to the back of the machine. The end result is an incredibly quiet machine, even under load.

The storage system is high-end in the extreme with 3 x 160GB 10,000RPM hard drives configured in a RAID 0 array. This means that data is spread across all three disks so they work together to boost performance. The downside is that if one drive fails all data is lost, so a solid backup plan is essential.

Dell ships its workstations with Intel’s HyperThreading (HT) technology switched off by default. This is easily turned on in the BIOS and remained on for our tests. While HT has major benefits for rendering, it may actually slow down other applications, so check with your software vendor for recommendations.

With high-end components across the board our T3500 test machine is unlikely to have mass market appeal but, of course, all of these can be stripped back resulting in a much more cost-effective and mainstream CAD solution.

The T3500 might not be the most stylish of workstations, but it’s well built and quiet and another solid machine from Dell.

Greg Corke

» Intel Xeon X5570 Processor (2.93GHz) » 12GB (6 x 2GB) DDR3 1333MHz ECC memory » Dell motherboard » 3 x 160GB Western Digital (10,000RPM) VelociRaptor SATA hard drives (RAID 0) » AMD ATI FirePro V8700 (1GB) graphics card » Windows XP x64 Edition (downgrade from Windows Vista business 64-bit)d » 3 year basic warranty - Next business day £3,278 www.dell.co.uk » Benchmarks Graphics (frames per second - bigger is better) SolidWorks 2009 - 37.2 3ds Max Design 2010 - 4.8 Inventor 2010 - 3.4 CPU (secs - smaller is better) 3ds Max Design 2010 - 320

Scan 3XS X58 WS Core i7

» The storage system, made up of a total of four drives, tends to overshadow what is otherwise an excellent all round workstation for CAD offering good price/performance

S

can’s 3XS X58 is one of two overclocked workstations on test this month.

However, unlike the Workstation Specialists machine (see page 57) Scan hasn’t used overclocking for performance reasons alone. Its aim is to get high-end performance out of a mid-range CPU, so customers don’t have to pay high-end prices.

The CPU in question is Intel’s Core i7 920, which has been overclocked from 2.66GHz up to 3.2GHz. Customers pay a slight premium for this, which goes towards R & D costs, and to honour guarantees on CPU, memory and motherboard not covered by overclocking.

Any cost saving from the CPU is eroded by the specialist hard drive system where each drive has a very specific role. For OS, applications and current datasets there is a new generation solid-state drive, the 128GB Corsair Extreme Series X128. This uses flash technology and unlike traditional hard drives has no moving components. We found it booted up Windows quickly and offered excellent performance when opening, copying and saving files. However, this advantage was lessened when working with

lots of small files, which is typical for CAD. Speed-wise it was on par with the three disk RAID 0 array inside the Dell Precision T3500.

For data, there are 2 x 1TB Samsung hard drives, which are configured in RAID 1 to keep data safe should one drive fail. Portable data requirements are taken care of with an Icy Box docking station sporting a 250GB drive.

This neat device lets the user release the disk from the front of the machine simply by pushing it in and it popping it out.

In terms of performance the machine scored very well. The 3.2GHz CPU coupled with an Nvidia Quadro FX 1800 graphics card put in a solid performance under all of our application benchmarks and it’s clear the system is well balanced for mainstream CAD. In summary, while covering all bases, the hard drive setup is extravagant to say the least, and it’s probably more of a technology demonstration than an essential purchase.

However, this can easily stripped back to take a few hundred pounds off the cost and reveal what is a good all round CAD workstation with excellent price/performance.

Greg Corke

» Intel Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.2 GHz » 6GB (3 x 2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 » Asus P6T SE Intel X58 Motherboard » 128GB Corsair Extreme Series X128 » 2 x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 » Icy Box docking station (256GB drive) » PNY Quadro FX1800 (768MB) graphics card » Windows XP x64 » 1st Year on site + 2nd year parts/ labour £1,599 www.scan.co.uk » Benchmarks Graphics (frames per second - bigger is better) SolidWorks 2009 - 35.3 3ds Max Design 2010 - 4.6 Inventor 2010 - 4.0 CPU (secs - smaller is better) 3ds Max Design 2010 - 315

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Dell recommends Windows Vista Business TM

From Precision to Perfection

Dell Precision T3500

3DConnexion SpacePilot

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- Intel® Xeon® E5506 processor (2.13GHz,4.8GT/s ,4MB Turbo) - Genuine Windows Vista® Business 32Bit SP1 - ATI FirePro TM V3750 256MB GDDR3 PCIe x16 - 3x1024MB DDR3 SDRAM PC1066 ECC - 250GB (7,200 RPM) SATA 3.0Gb/s Harddrive - 16x DVD+/-RW - 3 years Next Business Day Onsite Support

Dell SmartValue Code: W083502

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Whether its animation, rendering special effects in HD video or creative retouching of your digital imagery, the combination of Dell Precision™ workstations and ATI FirePro™ professional graphics accelerators will help deliver the performance you need to let your creative juices flow.

£ 899 (excluding VAT)

Value: + Smart W083506

£ 1150 (excluding VAT)

Discover the pixel-perfect accelerator for your application at: http://ati.amd.com/products/firepro/

To purchase call Dell on +44 844 444 3152 or www.dell.co.uk/precision © 2009 Dell Inc. Dell, the Dell logo, Ultrasharp and Dell Precision are registered trademarks or trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel, the Intel Inside logo, Pentium, Xeon and Core2 Duo are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and Windows XP are registered trade marks of Microsoft Corporation. Other trade marks or trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names of their products. ATI FireGL and ATI FirePro are registered trademark of AMD. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Response times may vary according to the remoteness or accessibility of Product location. Service may be provided via telephone or internet where appropriate. Certain restrictions apply. Dell Corporation Limited, Milbanke House, Western Road, Bracknell, Berks, RG12 1RD. Prices excluding VAT and delivery. Monitor not included.

+£

HP Z600 workstation

» An incredibly compact and quiet dual processor workstation which innovates in all areas of its design, though the low-end CPUs could leave many users in no -mans land » 2 x Intel Xeon E5530 processors (2.4GHz) » 6GB (6 x 1GB) DDR3 memory » HP motherboard (Intel 5520 chipset) » 500GB Samsung hard drive (7,200RPM) » AMD ATI FirePro V5700 (512MB) graphics card » Windows Vista Business x64 (with free Windows XP x64 downgrade) » 3 year worldwide parts, labour and next business day on-site warranty £2,906 www.hp.com/uk » Benchmarks Graphics (frames per second - bigger is better) SolidWorks 2009 - 18.3 3ds Max Design 2010 - 2.7 Inventor 2010 - 2.6 CPU (secs - smaller is better) 3ds Max Design 2010 - 218

T

he Z600 is the mid-range offering in HP’s new generation workstation family, the Z Series. It’s a dual socket machine, meaning it can have up to two physical CPUs (each with four cores), but is incredibly compact at the same time. In fact, despite being the only dual socket machine on test this month, it is the smallest out of all four. Our sensitive little ears also picked it out to be the quietest, and much of this is down to the impressive engineering that has gone into its design.

In addition to the carefully positioned fans and ductwork, one of the reasons for the excellent acoustics is the power supply, which has been completely redesigned from scratch. Unlike the standard box types, which have been around since desktops began, the Z600’s power supply runs the entire length of the chassis, taking in cool air at the front and expelling warm out of the back. This efficient process means it runs cooler so there’s less fan noise.

HP has also paid close attention to maintenance and in the unlikely event that the power supply should develop a fault it can be diagnosed and replaced without having to call an engineer out or return the whole machine to base.

The user simply pulls the supply out by its handle, plugs it in to the mains and if there is no green light, the fault is confirmed and HP will ship out a replacement power supply which can be easily installed by the user.

The ease of maintenance is reflected throughout the chassis, which is almost toolless, bar one cable. The graphics card and hard drives clip in and out with ease, as do the cooling fans which don’t even need wires to draw power as funnel shaped blind mate connectors guide them into place. A

BENCHMARKing workstations and what it all means To help assess the performance of all the workstations we test at DEVELOP3D we have recently updated our suite of 3D application benchmarks. We only use application benchmarks with real engineering datasets as we deem these give a much better idea of

relative performance of hardware than synthetic benchmarks such as Viewperf.

For 3D graphics performance we use SolidWorks 2009, 3ds Max Design 2010, and Inventor 2010. While all applications work differently, we believe these applications give a good cross section of the kind of performance you

can expect from most 3D software. Of course there’s no substitute for testing all of the major 3D applications, but to do this we would need to dedicate an entire magazine (and our lives) to this cause.

Each application benchmark runs a script that manipulates a 3D model along a set path and rotation and measures the average number of frames it can display each second. The faster the ‘frames per second’, the smoother the 3D experience for the end-user.

When 3D graphics become too jerky it

lot of thought has also gone into the exterior design of the chassis and two handles make it incredibly easy to lift and move the machine about.

In terms of specifications, our review machine was kitted out with two Intel QuadCore E5530 Xeon processors. Running at 2.4GHz these moderately specified CPUs are not going to set any performance records as far as CAD is concerned. However, when we got all eight cores working flat out in our 3ds Max Design rendering test, the advantage of a dual processor set up was clear.

Obviously higher GHz processors would be preferred, as you’d also get better performance in single threaded applications like SolidWorks and Inventor. However, this would bump up the price a fair bit and dual processor machines don’t come cheap.

6GB RAM is standard in modern dual processor workstations and plenty for average CAD users. However, those that work with particularly large models, or want to run multiple applications or CAE simulations concurrently would need to think carefully about an upgrade at time of purchase. With all six slots taken with 6 x 1GB DIMMs, a later upgrade to 12GB would require all the modules to be swapped out for 12GB DIMMs. Of course, anything over 3GB requires a 64-bit operating system and in this case it’s Windows Vista Business. For those that prefer Windows XP, and there are many, then this is also available as a free downgrade.

All in all the Z600 is a beautiful piece of engineering. It’s one of the most innovative designs to have graced this sector in years.

However, choice of specification is crucial.

While many other specifications are available, as it stands with two 2.4GHz Intel E5530 Xeon processors, the machine will probably only

appeal . to a niche group of 3D users. While it delivered good performance in our 3ds Max rendering test, dedicated design visualsation specialists are likely to find the mid-range AMD ATI FirePro graphics card, coupled with a 2.4GHz processor, a little uninspiring. As a result, it’s in the realms of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) - with multithreaded CFD and FEA applications the likely beneficiaries of its eight processing cores – that it should find most interest.

Greg Corke

becomes very hard to work fluently. To avoid this, some applications, including SolidWorks and 3ds Max, can automatically reduce the level of detail of the geometry to a point where consistent frame rates can be maintained.

However, as the level of detail varies according to how powerful the workstation is we switch this setting off when testing.

While the raw power of the graphics card is important for 3D, performance is also governed by the speed of the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

This is why in general it is more important to buy a workstation with a high GHz CPU, as opposed to one with lots of cores.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, and processes such as simulation, rendering, and other elements of CAD software including model can take advantage of multiple CPU cores.

To test multi-core CPUs in DEVELOP3D we use the mental ray rendering engine in 3ds Max Design 2010 to render a scene in HD. This takes full advantage of all of

In all 3D applications the faster the GHz of the CPU, the faster the graphics performance.

In some applications in order to boost graphics performance it is more important to increase the speed of the CPU than to buy a more powerful graphics card.

An extreme example of this is Inventor, whose graphics performance is dictated entirely by the speed of the CPU. In this respect, our Inventor graphics test could actually be considered to be a CPU test.

In terms of CPU, most CAD applications only use a single CPU core.

the workstation’s CPU cores, including the virtual cores created by Intel’s HyperThreading technology. This means a workstation with two CPUs is almost exactly twice as fast at rendering as a workstation with one identical CPU. While most simulation software can take advantage of multiple CPU cores, they are not as efficient at using all the cores as a rendering tool and it is all highly dependent on the types of simulation and model.

This is also true for many CAM applications

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Workstation Specialists WSX114 » An overclocked workstation with phenomenal performance for CAD, but with four CPU cores running at 4.0GHz it’s no slouch under rendering or simulation applications either

W

orkstations Specialists, the company formerly known as CAD 2, has gone for optimum » 12GB (6 x 2GB) performance in its latest WSX114 DDR3 memory workstation. To do this it’s done a little » WSX motherboard tinkering and overclocked a Core i7 950 (Intel X58 processor (which usually runs at 3.06GHz) Express chipset) to a whopping 4.0GHz. The result is the » 300GB Western fastest workstation we have ever seen at Digital VelociRaptor hard drive (10,00RPM) DEVELOP3D, backed up, of course, by some » Nvidia Quadro of the fastest benchmark scores.

FX 1800 graphics The machine is perfect for CAD in card (768MB) particular, with lightning quick performance » Windows XP x64 in Inventor 2010 and SolidWorks 2009. (with free Windows However, with four CPU cores running at Vista Business and 4.0GHz, it’s no slouch under rendering Windows 7 Upgrade) or simulation applications either. This » 36 months full parts and labour warranty makes it an interesting proposition to budget conscious users who need excellent £1,855 performance under multi-threaded workstationspecialists.com applications, but don’t want to compromise on general application and graphics » Benchmarks performance by only being able to afford a Graphics (frames per low GHz dual processor system. second - bigger is better) This is illustrated perfectly when SolidWorks 2009 - 35.8 3ds Max Design 2010 - 4.9 comparing the WSX114 (four CPU cores Inventor 2010 - 4.6 CPU (secs - smaller is better) running at 4.0GHz) to HP’s Z600 (eight 3ds Max Design 2010 - 265 CPU cores running at 2.4GHz). The WSX114 » Intel Core i7 950 ‘ ‘Workstation Enhanced’ to 4.0GHz

A NotE ABoUt oVERCLoCKING Overclocking is the process of making the CPU run at a faster speed than it was originally designed for.

It used to be the reserve of the 3D gaming community, but is now being seen more and more in professional workstations.

Workstation manufacturers that don’t overclock often dismiss the practice, saying it makes machines unstable and prone to overheating.

Those that do overclock their

machines refute this, test every machine to destruction prior to shipping to customers and back it all up with full warranties.

While we haven’t experienced any problems with overclocked machines it is impossible for us to comment on their long-term stability. If you have any experiences, good or bad, on any workstations you have purchased, then we’d be interested to hear from you. greg@x3dmedia.com

was only approximately 20% slower than the HP Z600 under our multithreaded 3ds Max rendering benchmark. However, it was nearly 50% faster under our Inventor 2010, SolidWorks 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2010 graphics tests. This is almost entirely down to the speed of the CPU as the graphics card in the WSX114 (Nvidia Quadro FX 1800), is very similar to the one featured in the HP Z600 (AMD ATI FirePro V5700).

In terms of memory the WSX114 is maxed out with 12GB with all six DIMM slots filled with 2GB memory modules. This is a huge capacity for pure CAD and only those working with hardcore simulations are likely to get close to filling this.

Still, there’s plenty of room to grow for the future.

The 300GB hard drive may be a little under capacity for some users, but it is 300GB of very fast storage in the form of a 10,000 RPM Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drive. Those looking for additional storage could always supplement this with a secondary SATA drive.

So what are the downsides of the WSX114? If I had to find any fault it would be that the chassis could be a little smaller and it would have better acoustics.

It’s not noisy by any stretch of the imagination, but when put alongside the other machines on test this month, which were almost silent, there was noticeable fan noise. This was probably down to ensuring the overclocked CPU stays within its thermal limits, something that

Workstation Specialists takes very seriously.

It gives every machine a full 15 day ‘burn-in’ running flat out and backs it up with a 36month full parts & labour warranty.

In summary, the WSX114 is a phenomenal machine. It delivers levels of performance that simply can’t be achieved with mainstream systems that aren’t overcocked.

If you’re looking for the ultimate mid-range CAD machine then you may have just found it.

Greg Corke

INVENtoR 2010 - GRAPHICS (CPU)

SoLIDWoRKS 2009 - GRAPHICS (CPU)

3DS MAX DESIGN 2010 - GRAPHICS & CPU

Heavy machinery manufacturer Mastenbroek provided the model for this test which measures graphics frame rates.

Because Inventor is limited by the speed of the CPU, it is the CPU, not the graphics card that dictates performance

This standard SolidWorks assembly of an underwater camera is tested with a rotation script. The model features complex geometry and has RealView switched on to increase the load (and importance) of the graphics card

For graphics an average frame rate is recorded when a model is rotated in ‘smooth and highlights with edged faces’ mode and a part is moved. For CPU the time taken for mental ray to render a single frame at HD resolution is recorded

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THE LAST WORD

Having overdosed on the Sci-Fi channel during the past few weeks, Martyn Day considers the devastation that could be reaped if killer robots and software bankers continue to be set loose on the world

W

ith the Iraq wars we all got used to the ‘missile cam’ videos as the cruise missile closed on its target.

Now, every week it seems we hear about some strategic strike in Afghanistan or Iraq made by an unmanned drone. There have been over 60 such attacks in Pakistan alone in the last three years, which resulted in a considerable numbers of civilian deaths.

These machines are piloted remotely from 7,000 miles away in California and running unmanned missions in the Middle East has become standard practice every army now wants an air force of drones because it’s ‘war without risk’.

Currently America has 200 Predator and 30 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and next year plans to spend £3.29 billion on unmanned combat vehicles. The UK had two Predators but one crashed in Iraq last year. In total there are now over 4,000 robots deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Besides Britain and the US, another 43 countries have programmes to develop military robots.

South Korea and Israel currently deploy armed robot border guards and China and Singapore are increasing their use. Killer Robots are becoming big business.

With advanced developments under way, current machines will look crude and dumb compared to future generations. Featuring artificial intelligence, these machines will make battlefield decisions on their own - less drone and more killer robot.

This all may sound very ‘Terminator’ but the American Office of Naval Research has recently produced a hefty report which delivers a stark warning. While these robots have cognitive advantages over human soldiers and civilians, the report warns they are not error proof, which could lead to civilian or friendly fire incidents. It goes on estimate that by 2047 unmanned aircraft will be able to determine whether or not to strike a target but, as with all written code, there’s no guarantee that they will do only what

 they are programmed to do, with millions of lines of code to debug coupled with the unpredictability of combat.

The report suggests that rules should be built into the machines, covering legal, social and political issues. It also calls for a debate and research into robot warfare morality.

However, there is a rush to market in the design and manufacture of these robot warriors, with a US congressional mandate stipulating that by 2010 a third of all deep strike aircraft, and by 2015 a third of all land vehicles, must be unmanned. This has given rise to robot tanks such as the Talon Sword which comes armed with machine guns and grenade launchers. These robots and drones are cheap to manufacture, require less personnel and, according to the navy, perform better in complex missions, stating that one battlefield soldier could start a large-scale robot attack in the air and on the ground on an enemy position.

Dr.Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Sheffield University recently gave his own warning, “The military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction. The nub of it is that robots do not have the necessary discriminatory ability. They can’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. It’s hard enough for soldiers to do that. I do think there should be some international discussion and arms control on these weapons but there’s absolutely none.”

Sharkey also pointed out that for the operators, the psychological effects of war are very different to how they would be for someone sitting in the pilot’s seat. The carnage witnessed while chasing back the Republican Guard from Kuwait in a ‘Turkey shoot’, demoralised the US pilots. This would be highly sanitised when done under remote control.

While we probably still have a small amount of time before killer robots rule the world, we have all seen the decimation that can be meted out by a small group of greed-warriors, more commonly known as bankers. Leaving the business landscape looking like something out of Terminator 1,2,3 (take your pick), automation systems also played their part in creating volatility

The next generation of these machines will be akin to what we experience in our sci-fi nightmares



and helping our recent global meltdown.

There’s something called High Frequency Trading (HFT), which essentially uses computers to scour the markets and look for trends in trading patterns. Running on super computers using complex algorithms they are able to buy or sell huge volumes of shares, milliseconds ahead of everyone else. HFT now accounts for the majority of daily trades and is so common that all banks have HFT systems - this is literally machines trading with machines... may the best algorithm win.

When the market has a gravitational change these systems can become self-fulfilling, creating their own momentum chasing a trend and making things worse. It’s hard to tell a computer program to ‘calm down’.

Human beings are undoubtedly very clever and we have mastered so many tools and techniques to design and manufacture very efficient products to do our dirty work. We don’t like dying but do like winning wars and when researching this article I found it shocking to read about the level of automation already in place. The next generation of these machines will be akin to what we find in our sci-fi nightmares. Technologically powerful governments could unleash automated butchery on any third or second world country. By removing the risk, don’t we make war more likely? And what if the technology goes rogue? It looks like WW3 will certainly be a robot war of the kind never seen before.

The other combative environment, banking, is also in an aggressive tech arms race and again here, without human supervision or intervention, they too could work together in a totally unpredictable way, causing untold carnage - not unlike their poorly supervised human equivalents.

While our ‘masters’ are in command, unfortunately engineers are the sole enablers of all this. Pay us some shekels and we will give people what they want. But surely there’s a moral quandary in designing armaments and death machines? We need to remember Auschwitz was designed by architects and engineers.

Martyn Day is Consulting Editor of DEVELOP3D. He lays awake at night wondering where all the nice robots have gone. R2D2, K9, C-3PO, Twiki, and Metal Mickey he misses you all. martyn@develop3d.com

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