CAE Data Management from a single Geometry Revision to multi-disciplinary Simulation Results

Development processes for more complex new products and better performance require necessarily verification through digital simulation. Due to shortened development cycles the time to answer questions about reliable product characteristics is cut off and an efficient change management has to be established in the process chain from CAD to CAE. Normally CAE processes start with CAD data from a PDM system. To start CAE analysis it is required to easily filter different product configurations from latest CAD data, automatically prepare data for simulation (i.e. batch meshing) and pass this to simulation processes. Depending on type and number of simulations and change rate of CAD it will be shown what tools a simulation data management system can provide to efficiently guide the CAE process and shorten the cycles between CAD and CAE. Optimized data handling as well as integration of CAE tools will be the key for synchronized and economic development processes. Making decisions on digital simulations mostly involves different simulation disciplines. Therefore decisions for digital optimizations have to run in a multi-disciplinary context, access the same data sources and lead to a common decision of all involved analysis. By establishing a Simulation Data Management this can be done very efficiently keeping the data together and running as fast as possible a decision making process. Tools like workflows and decision tables will support this process.