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TriStar.com > News > Articles
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Pro/ENGINEER and Mathcad - Joining the Puzzle Pieces
- by Jerry Fireman
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Imagine that you are a chief engineer reviewing the solid model of a new product on which the future of your company depends. The model has thousands of different features and dimensions, many of which have been determined by engineers performing detailed calculations.
None of these calculations, of course, are contained in the model. Instead they are scattered around the organization in engineering notebooks, spreadsheets, and special software used for engineering calculations. How do you know what formulas were used and whether they were the right ones?
Hard to verify. Using current methods, verifying the engineering work that underlies the design of a product can be a very time-consuming task fraught with the potential for errors. You would have to trace each of the critical dimensions in the product back to the calculations used to determine it. You might have to speak individually to many or all of the engineers that were involved in the design process, and look over their notebooks, spreadsheets and other documentation. You would need to potentially revisit many or all of the calculations to be sure that an error such as transposing two digits in a calculator did not result in a dangerous design flaw.
The problems you experience in the design review were foreshadowed by problems faced by the engineers and designers who created the model in the first place. As the product evolved, they had to generate a blizzard of phone calls, emails and faxes in order to match engineering work - concerned with the functionality of the product - with design work concerned with form and fit.
With geometry, formula results, and assumptions continually changing during the design process, it becomes very difficult to keep everyone in sync. How do we make sure, for example, that a formula used to predict the strength of an aircraft landing gear is not based on geometry that has changed? Or, by the same token, how can you know if a formula used to determine a certain design parameter has suddenly changed, without the parameter being updated?
A marriage made in heaven. The integration of Pro/ENGINEER with Mathcad provides the answer to these problems and makes it possible to dramatically improve the product development process. The integration makes it possible to link Pro/ENGINEER models to Mathcad worksheets containing the engineering calculations used to determine the geometry and dimensions in the model.
XML-based Mathcad documents can be captured, cross-referenced, configuration-controlled and re-used. When the geometry in the Pro/ENGINEER model changes, the worksheets are updated, and when the worksheet calculations change, the model is updated. Mathcad worksheets can be stored with the model in a Windchill PDMLink database.
The integration of engineering calculations with the design has the potential to dramatically improve the design process. Rather than having crucial intellectual property used to develop the design scattered around an organization (or worse departing the company with a retiree), it now becomes an integral part of the product documentation. Changes automatically ripple across design/engineering boundaries and engineering calculations are easily accessible so they can be reviewed and their assumptions considered.
A key advantage of using Mathcad for engineering calculations is formulas and data are displayed in natural math notation and can be clearly documented with descriptive text. This greatly reduces the possibility of errors that are common in spreadsheets where calculation formulas are obscured by cell data and cryptically formatted. As opposed to a spreadsheet, the formulas are maintained in a consistent format understood by every engineer, which makes them easy to check or share with others.
Normally in an engineering report, you have to have faith that the calculations and graphs correspond to the formulas in the document. With Mathcad, the doubt goes away because the document itself produced the results. An engineer can change the formula or data value and the calculation will automatically be updated. You can enter data in whatever units are available and the software will make the appropriate conversion.
Optimizing your design. A key advantage of integrating Mathcad with Pro/ENGINEER is that it becomes much easier to perform and document optimization studies. Both Mathcad and Pro/ENGINEER have their own optimization capabilities.
The Mathcad optimizer can be used to determine a design parameter, and both the results of the optimization and the study itself can be linked to the Pro/ENGINEER model to document it in perpetuity. If a variable or assumption changes, then the optimization can easily be re-run and the new results will update the Pro/ENGINEER model. At any point in the future, reviewers can drill down on a dimension to the optimization study that shows exactly how it was generated.
Mathcad calculations are integrated into Pro/ENGINEER via the Pro/ENGINEER Mathcad analysis feature and are similar in function to the Pro/ENGINEER Excel analysis feature.
Tagged math regions in Mathcad automatically map to global Pro/ENGINEER parameters with the same name. Manual mapping and direct mapping of Pro/ENGINEER dimensions are also available. Unit compatibility is enforced by the integration, helping to prevent the kind of unit conversion mistakes that can be catastrophic to a design project.
The ability to couple the functionality of the product - as expressed in engineering formulas - with its form and fit, will streamline communications and the review process, reducing the potential for errors. This will help your product development team arrive at the best possible design and bring it to market ahead of the competition.
The integration of Pro/ENGINEER and Mathcad is being offered in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0.
Learn more about Mathcad
Visit the Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire resource center
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Click on images below for larger view
Obscure spreadsheet formulas lead to errors
Mathcad avoids errors by displaying formulas in natural math notation
New integration links Mathcad calculations to Pro/ENGINEER model
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