Commentary - Elements of Analysis, March 2006

By Suchit Jain, SolidWorks Corp.

A product designer, eager to work the bugs out of an engine’s pulley assembly before it goes into production,  uses finite element and motion analysis software to test its durability,  efficiency, and compatibility with related systems. He optimizes the design by reducing mass at key stress points, where he can see that less material won’t compromise strength. He adjusts the location of two bolt holes to ensure the assembly fits seamlessly into the larger engine assembly. He finds and corrects a collision between two parts. When he’s done, his assembly will perform optimally and mesh smoothly with other engine components.

This engineer is using analysis technology to its best advantage,  eliminating errors that cost nothing to fix at the design phase, but can cost thousands of dollars and wasted hours if the company has to fix them after tooling has begun. However, as he analyzes his design, the designer realizes something else: placing the idler pulleys a few centimeters farther apart would reduce wear on the belts by 40 percent. He made preliminary calculations in a spreadsheet before creating the assembly’s geometry, and they confirmed that the pulley array would work as originally designed. He locked himself into that design when he started the time-consuming process of creating the assembly’s 3D geometry in his CAD application. If he changes the pulley configuration now, he will have to recreate the assembly’s geometry. The time he saved by anticipating problems further down the production line is eroded or lost by the time he has to spend redesigning the assembly.

This scenario illustrates the next step in design analysis software’s evolution: the design cycle’s conceptual phase. Between 60 to 70 percent of the time and money spent on bringing a product to market has already hit the table by the time a designer settles on a concept. Analysis software has automated and streamlined product design’s middle to late phases. Now it’s time to move on to the very early stages, where decisions are made to commit hundreds or even thousands of hours of valuable labor to a product. The decision-making early phases are huge opportunities for savings and innovation, awaiting only the tools to act on them and the awareness to use the tools.

Conceptual Analysis as Reality

There are many tools for analyzing a design after the conceptual stage, but few for analyzing during the conceptual stage. The current generation of analysis tools analyze the 3D geometry that represents the product as a physical objects. By comparison, analyzing a concept sounds like grabbing a handful of smoke. What is there to analyze? By definition, a concept is intangible. Unlike a solid model, conceptual sketches have no defined parameters against which analysis software can run calculations. Like with the smoke, there’s nothing to grab onto.

Nevertheless, ideas take form eventually. Designers sketch ideas and do hand calculations to get a rough idea of what they want their products to look like and how they should work. This is rudimentary conceptual analysis, and designers have been doing it for generations. The problem is that they’re still doing it the same way they’ve been doing it for generations. Today, most of that work occurs on paper or in generic tools like desktop spreadsheets; almost 70 percent of the designers who responded to a recent SolidWorks survey said they use one of those methods for their predesign calculations.

Conceptual analysis today is manual, laborious, and inefficient. It is limited in scope and impact. These drawbacks trace back to one cause:  isolation. 3D CAD has revolutionized most of the design process and created the framework that enabled analysis technology to develop. For analysis to extend into the conceptual design phase, CAD has to get there first. Sketching must occur in a CAD environment, with a tool that renders the sketch as an electronic profile. With an electronic “profile” now in the system, analysis software vendors can apply at the conceptual stage the same principles that made analysis software successful later in the design process. Analysis software’s great success has been automating laborious tasks and simplifying complex calculations. That is the challenge at the conceptual stage.

For conceptual analysis to catch on among rank-and-file designers, the work that they do in a conceptual analysis environment must be easily exported into their 3D CAD environment, where most of the intense design work occurs. Some designers use the few stand-alone conceptual analysis tools on the market, but in their own way they’re little better than paper. Designers are unlikely to use tools that aren’t integrated with their 3D CAD systems because they mean recreating sketches drawn in the conceptual analysis system. Seventy-six percent of the respondents in the SolidWorks calculation survey said they spend time cutting and pasting data between applications, or recreating it by hand. That’s time better spent developing better designs.

Freer Innovation, Minus the Risk

Product development must grow cheaper and faster. That’s a given in today’s markets. Companies that implement analysis technology solely as an efficiency program, however, see their returns plateau quickly. There’s only so much saving that companies can wring from their design processes. All discussion about design technology must circle back to innovation, because that’s where the real gains lie.

Saving time and money are important, but the most effective technologies are those that make designers freer to innovate at every phase of the design process. Efficient, innovative, high-quality products determine whether a company succeeds, not just shaving time and cost off their production processes. Business is won and lost with products that change the vocabulary of their markets. Such products come from unrestrained innovation, which is conceptual analysis’ ultimate—and achievable—goal.

Suchit Jain is vice president, analysis products, at SolidWorks Corp. (Santa Monica, CA). Send your comments about this commentary through e-mail by clicking here. Please reference “Commentary, EoA March 2006” in your message.