IEN: What strides do you see in: MCAD? CAE? Other software? Meso-, micro- and nanotechnology? Product management? Product Lifecycle Management? Collaborative manufacturing?
Kelly: Let''s focus on MCAD and CAE. Industrial equipment manufacturing will benefit significantly from four technological advances that will reshape how engineers complete new product development:
- Smart content is on the horizon. It is engineering data with intelligence. For example, manufacturing engineers today can go online and download prebuilt parts into their product models to check form and fit. With smart content, they''ll be able to download a motor that will automatically load, size, and mount itself into the design. This will save engineers time on busy work such as matching bolt and hole sizes and reduce the risk of errors.
- The mainstreaming of design analysis has been one of the most important achievements in the MCAD and CAE software industries. Streamlining the process so engineers have the flexibility to customize their analyses to fit a standard range of boundaries for their company''s products has helped engineers design better products faster. Pushbutton analysis is the next step in finite element analysis (FEA) that will again accelerate design to manufacture. Engineers will launch comprehensive stress, motion, thermal, and fluid dynamics, etc. analyses with just a few mouse clicks within the design window. Smart content will also play a key role in making this happen.
- Vertically specific tools could be a lifesaver for engineers and product designers who spend much of their days working on some niche product development. The transition from 2D to 3D opened up new productivity avenues where a hole feature for example, is no longer just a circle cut, but now has threads for a specific screw. MCAD and CAE software must transcend the broad brush horizontal approach to adding features. Instead, it should provide tools that cater specifically to those who spend most of their day creating molds, doing weldments, refining complex surfacing for consumer products, or any other vertical application, cutting hours out of design time and eliminating errors.
- 64-bit processors have already been unveiled, but it will be a while before they become pervasive. Make no mistake. They will be the platform that runs most MCAD and CAE programs in the next three years. While the added processing power won''t increase overall speed, it will allow engineers to tackle more complex assemblies for heavy equipment, packaging plant machinery, and other large devices. To enable this improved productivity, engineering software vendors will have to make their products 64-bit compatible, particularly when smart content will require even greater addressable memory space. With 64-bit functionality, MCAD and CAE software can access four times the memory as was possible on Microsoft''s previous, 32-bit operating system. Engineers no longer have to break up large assemblies into "chunks" because of memory limits in Windows.
IEN: What improvements can users expect in modeling techniques, rapid prototyping, direct materials analysis, structural optimization, durability, predicting material performance, testing equipment, and elsewhere? Supply chain?
Kelly: Solid modeling technology must continue its constant journey to become easier to use. It''s still too difficult, and often takes too many steps. The industry has come a long way in 10 years. A simple drop test used to be very difficult to effect on a computer. Now, all of the non-linear analysis working in the background is transparent to the user and takes a few seconds. Rapid prototyping is one area of product development that will experience significant productivity gains, both for local and global manufacturing. Currently, most engineers save a solid model as an STL file and export it to some form of rapid prototyping program that sets up the model for the rapid prototyping machine. In the future, tighter integration between the MCAD system and the rapid prototyping machine will eliminate the middle step. Small design shops will be able to buy rapid prototypes on the Internet simply by sharing a model that is preconfigured for prototyping.
IEN: Which R & D advances are closest to commercialization? In which end uses?
Kelly:
- Tight integration between MCAD and CAE programs and rapid prototyping machines will become more widely available in the next year.
- 64-bit processors, operating systems, and MCAD applications have already been unveiled. But it takes a long time for enterprises to replace hardware, and this won''t happen on a large scale for 64-bit systems in the immediate future. Within three years 64-bit technology will be driving most product development.
- Some programs already offer mold-specific and weldment-oriented tools. Software vendors will continue to develop tools that cater to specific functions such as consumer product surfacing.
- Pushbutton analysis for thermo dynamics, fluid dynamics, kinetics, and other factors will be widely available in the next one to three years.
- The foundation for smart content is in place. But the technology needs further developing, and this will take some time. It will likely be widely available within the next three years.