Editor’s Pick: Make Managing Complexity Less Complex

Dear DE Reader:

Complexity runs as a theme in design and engineering articles so often that it seems at times clichéd. Still, complexity is the heart of the matter. You have to make sense out of it. Manage it. And, most importantly, tease out knowledge from it so that you can make informed decisions and develop solutions. Basically, that's what ESTECO's VOLTA and modeFRONTIER are meant to help you do.

ESTECO recently announced the availability of VOLTA and modeFRONTIER Release 2018 Winter. Both see enhancements and added functionality intended to make complex processes, optimizations and simulation data management less complex.

VOLTA is a web-based, multidisciplinary platform offering enterprise-wide simulation data management, design optimization, process integration and the automation of widely deployed engineering solutions. Tracking changes, securing IP, herding collaborators, capturing and sharing knowledge as well as managing uncertainty are within its purview.

VOLTA Release 2018 Winter debuts a new app called VOLTA Advisor. This app gives you the ability to visualize raw data, but with a twist. See, you can visualize and analyze raw datasets as well as session data while simultaneously using multiple, synchronized post-processing tools. This could help you use all on-hand data efficiently, which should translate into understanding your data better.

For engineering design process automation and optimization, modeFRONTIER's modular environment is intended to help manage your engineering design process steps. This includes formal, automated workflows that integrate and combine the output of third-party CAD, CAE and office-type applications. modeFRONTIER also offers a set of design of experiments and optimization algorithms as well as analysis and visualization tools.

The modeFRONTIER Release 2018 Winter has three noteworthy enhancements. For one, it now incorporates machine learning technology in the form of the H2O.ai library of open-source software for big-data analysis. This support extends the statistical and machine-learning algorithms that modeFRONTIER already has.

Users can now optimize design workflow building while doing something else. You can drop a model file on a modeFRONTIER workflow canvas, select the variables and it will then produce a full-function workflow automatically.

On the third-party integration front, there's a new direct integration with Zemax's OpticStudio design solution. This makes it well over 40 design and engineering systems that modeFRONTIER couples with.

In sum, managing complexity doesn't have to be needlessly complex. So learn more about the VOLTA and modeFRONTIER Release 2018 Winter editions from today's main write-up. Links to their dedicated landing pages will get you the full lowdown.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, DE

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