Share and Run Custom Analysis Applications

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

Think about your entire design and analysis process for a minute. Can you name one, easy-to-fix step that trashes your efficiency and productivity but it has never occurred to you that this step is a major bottleneck? Cue the “Jeopardy!” final question theme music.

Time’s up. It’s your high-level analysis brainiacs. But it’s not that these people are lazy bones. It’s what you’re asking of your fluid dynamics whizzes, nuclear physicists, structural mechanics savants, microwave mavens or whomever. Or rather, it’s inertia. What once was the only way of doing business has now become so ingrained in your process that you don’t recognize it as massively inefficient.

See, chances are good that your high-level analysts frequently stop what they’re doing to run a simulation for somebody else working on a design concurrently. Or it could be that somebody else’s work stalls as they wait for analysts to find the time to run a new simulation for them. Either way you look at it, this standard operating procedure from time immemorial puts a stop to somebody’s work for some stretch of time. It undermines your investment in high-level analysts as well as every idling engineer and designer.

OK, I hear you. That stretch of time is only a few hours or days now and then. Well, to paraphrase the late Everett Dirksen, when you start adding up an hour here and a day there, pretty soon you’re talking real time. And real money. Both of which are gone for good. Today’s Check it Out link takes you to an informational webpage that explains how you can eliminate this insidious drain on efficiency, productivity, resources, time to market and just plain old money.

Back in autumn, COMSOL announced version 5.0 of its COMSOL Multiphysics software environment for modeling and simulating any physics-based system. The Windows edition of 5.0 contains a new feature called Application Builder. Application Builder enables your high-level analysts to create specialized, sharable applications out of COMSOL models. To explore the design, other engineers and designers in your organization use the Windows-native COMSOL Client for Windows to run the application on COMSOL Multiphysics. This keeps their part of the development cycle moving and greatly reduces the time your high-level analysts spend tweaking a model so that somebody else can do their work.

Application Builder works by giving your analysts tools to build a user interface around a COMSOL model. They select the parameters that other people can manipulate, and retain full control over the data inputs and outputs in the application. They can even add commands specific to the job at hand. The net effect is that Application Builder can free up everybody’s time, eliminate time-hogging side jobs and help keep your new product development cycles progressing toward completion without continuous stops, waits and restarts.

Now, at the same time Application Builder debuted, the company announced the pending release of COMSOL Server. It’s now ready.

COMSOL Server is a natural extension of Application Builder’s potential described above. It does two critical jobs for you. First, it lets you distribute your custom COMSOL model applications to design teams, production departments and external customers, clients and vendors through your corporate network or through the cloud.

Second, COMSOL Server provides an environment for these innovators to actually run the applications. All they need to access and run an application is the COMSOL Client for Windows or a major Web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. That means that users anywhere in the world can run a custom application whether or not they have access to or experience with COMSOL Multiphysics.

COMSOL Server comes with the mechanisms to control access and password-protect applications. If evolving data means you must change a model, you can revise the application and repost it, giving everyone else immediate access to the latest data.

The short of it is that combining Application Builder with COMSOL Server should streamline your workflows and increase productivity while expanding your pool of potential innovators. The hours of time your high-level analysts and design teams could recoup may be too many to count, but it seems safe to say that you’re talking about a lot of real time and money regained.

You can learn more about COMSOL Server and Application Builder at the far end of today’s Check it Out link. When you get there, take a gander at the tabs running across the top banner. Each of the tabs opens up to further details on COMSOL Multiphysics 5.0, the Application Builder and COMSOL Server. It’s well worth your time.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Go here to learn more about COMSOL Server and Application Builder.