HyperWorks Collaboration Tools: Organise CAE Data from Within the CAE Pre & Post Processor

Ira Goldstein Director HyperWorks Collaboration Tools, Altair

1820 E Big Beaver Rd, Troy, MI 48083, USA ira@altair.com

Venkat Parameshwaran Director Enterprise Solutions, Altair

pvenkat@altair.com

Abstract
Organising and managing simulation data is often a daunting task that companies dread to take up. Some companies let engineers manage data in an ad-hoc way. Others choose to look at commercial product data management (PDM), simulation data management (SDM) systems or home grown systems as a top down approach to managing simulation data. The current paper proposes an alternate bottom-up approach within the pre/post-processing environment as a low entry barrier to organising simulation data. An optional migration path to upgrade to an enterprise system is also discussed
Keywords: Collaboration Tools, Simulation Data Management, Simulation Life Cycle Management, PDM, SDM, SLM

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Introduction

CAE is an increasingly utilised and accepted way to validate a products performance. As a result, more and more simulations are being performed, and ever-increasing amounts of simulation data are being created. The organisation and management of all of this data is critical to the datas usefulness for traceability, and providing access to the data is crucial to an organisations decision-making process. Implementing simulation data and life cycle management is traditionally very expensive and time consuming. It is often a daunting task that organizations dread taking up. Typically, it requires a top down implementation project, and usually takes a very long time before users experience a direct benefit in their day to day activity. The current paper gives an overview of Altairs HyperWorks Collaboration Tools which is a bottom up approach of allowing users to organise CAE data from within their HyperWorks desktop pre & post-processors. Capability to connect to commercial PDM systems and manage the CAE and CAD traceability is also explained. Lastly, the capability to upgrade to an optional enterprise/central database and use additional functionality available as part web based applications is also discussed.

Altair Engineering 2013

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HyperWorks Collaboration Tools

HyperWorks 11.0 introduced a novel and user-oriented approach set of collaboration tools tightly integrated in the HyperWorks desktop products for efficient simulation data and lifecycle management. HyperWorks 12.0 has since extended the capability with additional features. The Collaboration Tools can be used in Personal or in Team mode, which allows users to organise their simulation data and provides them with access to information shared over the network. This enables active collaboration between teammates on CAE projects for pre- and post-processing tasks. 2.1 Explore, Organize, Connect

Documentation, traceability and collaboration are very important in order to improve the efficiency and quality of the overall CAE process. With Altairs approach for the Personal and Team modes, all HyperWorks users can immediately start to organise and manage their simulation data, including their metadata and documents required for the simulation. Meta data from CAD and simulation files is automatically extracted and indexed using Altairs CAE readers making it easy for users to find geometry and simulation files with specific component names or materials. Users can create different versions of files and track changes between versions. In addition, they can collaborate and access shared data and information, all using the out-of-the-box HyperWorks installation with minimal impact to their regular CAE workflow resulting in immediate benefits. Simulation data can be organised into different libraries according to different domains, departments or disciplines. e.g. a material library, load case library, mesh and model library, durability library etc.

Figure 1: Organize simulation data using HyperWorks Desktop

Starting from CAD/PDM, the overall CAE process typically needs CAD geometry and product structure with metadata information to manually mesh or batch-mesh, assemble the meshes, apply load cases, and create the simulation models. To assure the quality of the CAE process, the assessment and comparison of the results, it is very important to know which product structure and geometries have been used to create the simulation models. The interface to a CAD/PDM system is important in order to track traceability of simulation data to CAD.
Altair Engineering 2013 HyperWorks Collaboration Tools: Organize CAE data 2

For this reason, the HyperWorks Collaboration Tools provide a connection to corporate PDM systems, like Teamcenter. Users can seamlessly retrieve information such as CAD files into HyperWorks without launching an external PDM tool, thus eliminating the need to leave their CAE authoring environment.

Figure 2: Pull and push data from/to PDM from HyperWorks Desktop
2.2 Elevate CAE to the Enterprise

Lastly, the natural but not mandatory evolution path, after starting to use the Collaboration Tools in Personal or Team mode, is to upgrade to the Enterprise mode as part of Altairs Enterprise mode closes the loop, bringing knowledge and contents to the Simulation Cloud Suite of application, which requires additional implementation. The implementation of the organisation where they can be easily and securely shared with a larger engineering community with appropriate access rights and privileges in a central database. Upgrading to the Enterprise mode also allows access to additional web based applications for various simulation life cycle use-cases as described below: Compute Manager o A web based application for HPC job submission, monitoring and results visualization Display Manager o A web based application for handling big data by remote visualizing simulation data from the server where the large model/results are stored. Simulation Manager o A web based application for managing simulation projects, KPIs, dashboards and simulation history

Altair Engineering 2013

HyperWorks Collaboration Tools: Organize CAE data

Figure 3: Upgrade to comprehensive enterprise simulation life cycle management

platform from HyperWorks Collaboration Tools

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References
HyperWorks 11.0 and 12.0, Altair Engineering Inc., 2013. Altair Simulation Cloud Suite, Altair Engineering Inc., 2013.

Altair Engineering 2013

HyperWorks Collaboration Tools: Organize CAE data