3DS is enhancing systems engineering approaches by providing a strong link between MBSE activities and detailed engineering activities.
Vincent Delbouys – CATIA Electrical & Fluidic Industry Process Consultant Manager, is sharing the value of this process.
Can you remind us of the objectives of this process?
In the past, we have seen from our customers that, in order to implement an engineering process, they use dedicated engineering tools that master a given engineering facet of a complex product design.
To allow data sharing between these tools and organizations, they created many more-or-less reliable bridges that needed to be maintained. Those tools are design interfaces that often require a unique and specialized database that gathers and consolidates engineering data across product ranges and configurations, as well as automating the engineering processes with business rules capitalization.
However, as product and solutions evolve, their complexity has grown and we see more and more multiphysics products, including software engineering. This introduces issues related to collaboration and digital continuity. Many times, we see late modifications in engineering as, for example, electrical design is coming up after frame engineering in the design cycle.
Also these specialized databases come near the end of life and must be migrated, which is very time-consuming and costly.
This is why Dassault Systèmes and CATIA are promoting an end to end process connecting systems engineering to detailed engineering such as electrical and fluidic disciplines. This process embeds all engineering phases from systems definition to electrical diagrams, electrical detail design and manufacturing.
It is important to maintain consistency across all design processes, beginning with systems architectures, lists of equipment and interfaces, and signals. These will be used to specify the electrical and fluidic design, while CATIA provides an architecture driven process.
Can you tell us more in detail how the 3DEXPERIENCE platform aids with these challenges?
The platform shares a single data across engineering teams and organization. Each engineering application leverages its services to manage modification cycles, configuration, and traceability.
With the end to end systems engineering to electrical engineering process, the platform allows systems architects, space reservation architects, and electrical engineers to collaborate in a common environment.
Rather than using 2D and half architectures created by a disconnected third party party tool, CATIA 3D architecture provides a common understanding of the product’s topology very early in the design process, and allows teams to efficiently validate and select design alternatives.
We then leverage this topological information to proceed with a generative process to automate the electrical diagram creation. Eventually, CATIA applications provide integrated assistants that help with synchronizing modifications, whether they come from EE architectures, electrical diagrams or electrical 3D harness design to the harness manufacturing preparation.
What industries are we addressing? How do we implement and deploy the process?
Dassault Systèmes strategy is to develop generic applications and provide customizable capabilities to configure the apps according industrial use cases. We can thus address a wide range of industrial applications and embed customized business rules and content to address specific needs.
We mainly work with aerospace customers to develop this end to end process but also with automotive, marine and offshore, and infrastructure customers to address construction, building, and plants.
3DS assists the customers in the deployment of our solution. CATIA provides customers with a team of experts to clarify and define customer use cases. Service and support teams help customers and partners to deploy and maintain the solution.
During this complex process, we will implement steps beginning with the most mature part handled by our customers. These steps can be top down from systems definition to engineering disciplines or bottom up, from discipline to systems engineering, to ensure consistency and collaboration.
What ‘s new in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform? Why is it better to switch from CV5 electrical design workbenches to the 3DX process?
We still have many customers who use CATIA V5 mechanical capabilities to design harnesses, without leveraging electrical behavior provided by the CV5 workbenches. This is due to either a lack of awareness of our solutions or a misunderstanding of the value.
Using electrical workbenches reduces much of the harness design process and automates the design and manufacturing documentation generation.
When using 3DX apps, customers benefit from a seamless design process, with full digital continuity between apps within a unique environment. This is greatly decreases the time to market and increases the product and deliverable quality.
The 3DEXPERIENCE provides schematics capabilities, 3D design and manufacturing application and allows full traceability and modification impact analysis and propagation. All new enhancements brought to the electrical design process are delivered into the platform, showcasing the strength of the platform.
I encourage you to view the recent webinar delivered by our team of experts about this end to end process. You will find much more in-depth information there. And please reach out if you have any questions.
Discover a video demo on CATIA Virtual Twin for Electrical Systems Design Process Continuity, by clicking here
Discover a webinar on Model-Based Wire Harness Engineering: End-to-end MBSE-Electrical process, by clicking here