MODSIM: Unified Modeling & Simulation

A New Standard for High-Speed Innovation

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Engineering has long since recognized the potential of connected modeling and simulation. But as technology has advanced, that potential to shorten time to market, to reduce costs, to empower innovative thinkers – and to compound advantage upon advantage – has exploded.

More than just “modeling and simulation”.

MODSIM is a single user experience, a single channel for collaboration, and a single source of truth for all modeling and simulation activities. It has beginning-to-end impact on product development, from requirements to architecture, from validation to certification, and from product development to program management.

A competitive edge in challenging times.

MODSIM turns CAD and CAE into a single process, fully interwoven, working on the exact same data. It includes design exploration, advanced physics solvers, and next-gen modeling processes and automation, and making successful innovative processes easily reproducible. And it’s all within a change management and collaboration framework powered by cloud compute and cloud data services.

Article

A Special Look into Dassault Systèmes Powerful MODSIM Strategy

At face value, the integration of simulation and CAD is not a novel idea. But MODSIM is more than just that. It really is targeted to bring the technology together and then automate a lot of the manual labor that is standing in the way of doing these kinds of things in production.

(Read on at engineer.com)

The Benefits of MODSIM

Faster Time-to-Market

With cloud simulation, process automation, and unified CAD-CAE, dramatically reduce development time by up to 90% and from months to weeks.

Less Physical Prototyping

More comprehensive simulation done earlier in the concept design phase leads to only the most assured designs making it to the costly prototyping phase.

Lower Development & Manufacturing Costs

See significant improvement in development efficiencies of up to 40%, weight savings of up to 20%, and capex costs down by as much as 8%.

Innovate on the Razor’s Edge

Unified CAD-CAE enables automated, objective-based design exploration on a massive scale. Optimizing for competing design requirements has never been easier.

Fix Problems Early & Inexpensively

Heavy use of simulation during the early design phase uncovers issues before fix them becomes complicated and costly. This shift-left strategy reduces the risk of late-stage failures that can upend an entire business.

“Simulation enables us to push ahead. I love simulation because it enables faster development, more precise development, and lets us stretch to the limits of physics. It's really cool.”

– Stefan Menzl
Chief R&D Officer

WSAudiology

“We kind of live and die by MODSIM. Concurrent engineering, besides just being a wise choice, we literally wouldn't survive if we didn't do it that way ...and you won't remain competitive.”

– Joseph Lacey
Sr. Principal Mechanical Engineer

GE Healthcare

“Our designers can jump into the FEA apps on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, quickly change their designs, run another analysis, and see how it compares to previous designs. It prevents parts that aren’t fit for service from making their way through to the more complex analysis and testing phases, which can be very costly.”

– Alex Morley
Principal Analysis Engineer

Helix

The Impact of MODSIM

User Impact

Design engineers are under increasing pressure to satisfy more challenging design requirements in fewer design iterations, and with less physical prototyping. MODSIM makes it possible by increasing the accessibility of advanced CAE tools in multiple ways.

Simulation analysts are pulled from department to department, where they solve complicated and time-consuming problems that are often discovered far too late in the development process. MODSIM provides a singular and more automated user experience for a variety of specialist CAE tools, and it fully integrates them into the design process.

ONE Model for Everyone

Master design data – from CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, and other popular CAD systems – in the 3DEXPERIENCE PLM environment feeds all downstream tools, including CAE and CAM. No more CAD model & CAE results import, export, and conversion; managed access to data (and even software licenses) for partners, suppliers, consultants, and other contributors; and shared CAD-CAE project management.

Automating the Important-But-Tedious

Capture time-consuming modeling practices and reuse them with automation – geometry simplification, midsurfacing, meshing, connections, material assignments, contacts, loads, reporting, and more. Users at any level can quickly preprocess analyses while meeting company standards for consistent, high-quality results.

Democratization of Simulation

Templatize and standardize complex simulations for reuse across the organization. This packaged expertise establishes a standard of quality and consistency, and continues to provide great value at scale, to designers and analysts alike. The template creator moves on to their next simulation challenge, rather than repeating old work over and over.

Team Impact

Engineering team leaders are tasked with managing multidisciplinary teams spanning different departments, tools, and data, working toward different goals on the same products.

MODSIM provides a unified environment in which all these teams can accomplish their goals cooperatively rather than independently, producing better outcomes in less time.

Left Shifting

With all simulation tools working in the PLM system, advanced simulation processes accessible to designers, and all teams’ full visibility of requirements, design validation and verification can influence design from the very earliest phases.

By front-loading this kind of problem solving, better solutions can be found faster and at lower cost, saving enormous amounts of time and money in the overall development.

Design Tradeoff

MODSIM tools pierce the design-simulation barrier to accomplish both at the same time, in tight feedback cycles, with both human and automated approaches. Designers can get feedback from simulation analysts in hours rather than weeks since they work in parallel in the same system.

They can also work together on design exploration tools, setting up design variations and the evaluating analyses. Automated execution and results ranking produces a preferred design for the specified requirements.

(Read more...)

They can go a step further with generative design tools, where they set up their design requirements and evaluating simulations, and launch a fully-automated design generation in the designated design space.

Collaborative Product Development

The 3DEXPERIENCE Platform that enables MODSIM is more than a design-analysis connector. It’s a holistic data and management environment on the cloud. All stakeholders can share ideas and interact, see their contributions in context, and solve problems together. Team leaders can manage their projects from one place, with full visibility and traceability at all times on everything (including 3D designs and simulation results).

Company Impact

Successful product developers need to quickly respond to the market with competitive products, again and again.

MODSIM provides company leadership with the real-time connected data to make informed decisions fast. That same connectivity improves management and collaboration across the board, resulting in faster, more predictable development at lower cost.

Moreover, MODSIM’s next-generation tools and automations allow skilled resources to scale their impact like never before.

Process Transformation

Getting things done becomes exponentially more challenging as companies (and the problems they’re solving) scale. Ambitious product developers can shake off decades of outdated and suboptimal processes and replace them with MODSIM.

(Read more...)

This allows teams to create more complex products that are cheaper to manufacture, with lower development costs, fewer late-stage failures, and less physical prototyping. Effectively adopting MODSIM results in better outcomes, achieved faster and more sustainably (for both the business and the environment).

Streamlined B2B Collaboration

MODSIM’s 3DEXPERIENCE Platform foundation accepts many different CAD systems so the business can work seamlessly with partners, suppliers, consultants, and others who may not be based in SOLIDWORKS or CATIA. This puts an end to CAD-based information and process silos, and it increases the flexibility of procurement.

A Winning Virtual Twin Strategy

MODSIM is a key part of the virtual twin strategy for addressing the growing complexity of product development and manufacturing.

The virtual twin is found in one location, the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, and accurately represents the product for all stakeholders at all levels. It is everyone’s single source of truth.

(Read more...)

The virtual twin is a powerful tool for left shifting. Leveraging simulation – and making changes – earlier in the design phase significantly reduces costly, complicated, and time-consuming late-stage failures. The result is lower total development cost and shorter time-to-market.

Making the Most of the Workforce

MODSIM’s focus on automation of both rote and complex simulation tasks can greatly improve worker productivity (and job satisfaction).

What were once time-consuming and manual simulation processes can now be handled automatically, with enough control to establish consistent company standards.

(Read more...)

Knowledge capture tools allow specialists to templatize their expertise for others to reuse, allowing the specialist to find new ways to provide unique value.

MODSIM Starts Here.

3DEXPERIENCE CLOUD PDM

The Foundation of MODSIM: A secure PDM cloud (as-a-service or self-hosted) that connects all MODSIM contributors. (See more...)

3DEXPERIENCE CLOUD PLM

Manage MODSIM Anytime & Anywhere: Project and product management webapps with concept-to-manufacturing visibility. (See more...)

Modeling

SOLIDWORKS Connected

Where MODSIM Starts: SOLIDWORKS CAD with built-in cloud PDM. (See more...)

CATIA Connected

Where MODSIM Starts: CATIA with built-in cloud PDM. (See more...)

Third-Party CAD Connectors

The End of Import/Export: Natively use third-party CAD tools in MODSIM. (Traditional SOLIDWORKS & CATIA, NX, Solid Edge, Creo, Inventor, Allegro, Altium, and more.)

Mod + Sim

3DEXPERIENCE Generative Design

Simulate First, Model Second: Computer-generated design ideation based on your design requirements and virtual testing input. (See more...)

3DEXPERIENCE Multidisciplinary Optimization

Optimal Designs, All the Time: Automatically model, simulate, and evaluate countless variants in easy-to-setup design studies.

Simulation

3DEXPERIENCE STRUCTURAL

Gold-Standard Structural FEA: Powered by Abaqus with cloud compute and thorough CAD integration. (See more...)

3DEXPERIENCE FLUIDS

Powerful, Scalable CFD: Multiphysics-ready RANS CFD with cloud compute and thorough CAD integration. (See more...)

3DEXPERIENCE ELECTROMAGNETICS

Emag Sim from DC to Daylight: A complete suite for design & simulation of electromagnetic machines and devices. (See more...)