Engineering design process: An engineering design process is a process used by engineers to help develop products. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology defines the engineering design as … the process of devising a system, component or process to meet desired needs. It is a decision-making process (often iterative), in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing, and evaluation.

This process can be divided up into a ten-step process, which includes identifying a need, defining the problem, conducting research, narrowing the research, analyzing set criteria, finding alternative solutions, analyzing possible solutions, making a decision, presenting the product, and communicating and selling the product. This process is not universal for all engineers or all processes. Individuals utilize their personal knowledge and experiences to follow the path to design success.

Identifying a Need-Defining the Problem-Conducting Research-Narrowing the Research-Analyzing set criteria-Finding alternative solutions-Analyzing possible solutions-Making a decision-Presenting the product-Communicating and selling the product

CATIA (Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application) is a multi-platform CAD/CAM/CAE commercial software suite developed by French company Dassault Systemes and marketed world-wide by IBM. The software was originally intended for the development of Dassault's Mirage fighter jet, but became a runaway success and was subsequently adopted by numerous well known companies world-wide, such as Boeing and IBM. The software was also famously used by architect Frank Gehry in his building of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. CATIA is written in the C++ programming language. CATIA is the corner stone of the Dassault Systemes PLM software suite.

Industries using CATIA: CATIA is widely used throughout the engineering industry, especially in the automotive and aerospace sectors. In this industry CATIA V4, CATIA V5, Pro/ENGINEER, UGS NX, and SolidWorks are the dominant systems. Dassault Systems has expanded its reach into the Shipbuilding Domain with CATIA V5 release 8, which includes additional functionality serving ship builder's needs. The Boeing Company used CATIA V3 to develop its 777 airliner, and is currently using CATIA V5 for the 787 series aircraft. They have employed the full range of Dassault Systemes' 3D PLM products, comprised of CATIA, DELMIA, and ENOVIA, supplemented by Boeing developed applications. European aerospace giant Airbus has been using CATIA since 2001. In 2006 it announced that the production of its Airbus 380 had been set back by 2 years at a cost of $6.1 billion due to development having been done on incompatible CAD software. Specifically, it would appear that German and Spanish Airbus facilities continued to use CATIA version 4, while British and French sites migrated to version5. This caused overall configuration management problems, at least in part because wiring harnesses manufactured using aluminium rather than copper conductors necessitated special design rules including non-standard dimensions and bend radii; these were not easily transferred between different versions.

Automotive companies that use CATIA to varying degrees are BMW, Porsche, Daimler Chrysler Audi, Volvo, Fiat, Gestamp Automocion, Benteler AG, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Scania, Hyundai, Tata motors and Mahindra. Goodyear uses it in the manufacturing of tires for automotive and aerospace and also uses a customized CATIA for its design and development. Popularly, all automotive companies use CATIA for car structures e.g. door beams, IP supports, bumper beams, roof rails, side rails, body components, and the reason behind this is CATIA is very good in surface creation and Computer representation of surfaces. GD Electric Boat used CATIA to design the latest fast attack submarine class for the United States Navy, the Virginia class. Northrop Grumman Newport News also used CATIA to design the Gerald R. Ford class of supercarriers for the US Navy. Outside of those three industries, architect Frank Gehry has used the software, through the C-Cubed Virtual Architecture company, now Virtual Build Team, to design his award-winning curvilinear buildings.[13] His technology arm, Gehry Technologies, has been developing software based on CATIA V5 named Digital Project.[14] Digital Project has been used to design buildings and has successfully completed a handful of projects. Dassault Systemes has announced the release of CATIA Version 6 (V6) in mid-2008. The new interface allows designers to work directly with the 3D solid model rather than the feature based design approach employed in CATIA V5.

UGS NX is the commercial CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite developed by Siemens PLM Software. NX is widely used in the engineering industry, especially in the automotive and aerospace sectors. NX has some presence in the consumer goods design sector. NX is a parametric solid / surface feature-based modeler. It uses the Parasolid geometric modeling kernel. NX was originally called Unigraphics. The software was developed by the McDonnell Douglas' Unigraphics Group. EDS acquired the business in 1991. When EDS acquired Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (SDRC) in 2001, Unigraphics was combined with SRDC's I-DEAS CAD product. The gradual addition of I-DEAS functionality into the Unigraphics code base was the basis for the current NX product line. Additional functionality from SDRC's Imageware styling product was merged into NX to provide reverse engineering capabilities suitable for automotive (Class A) surfacing applications. The styling module of NX is known as Shape Studio.

NX I-deas was developed to provide a smooth transition for current users of the old SDRC I-DEAS product. NX I-deas incorporates NX series features while retaining a consistency with the I-DEAS user interface. It is intended to protect investment in, and continuity of user skills and organizational workflows. NX is commonly referred to as a 3D PLM software application. The prodcuct supports all stages of product development from conceptualization (CAID), to design (CAD), to analysis (CAE), to manufacturing (CAM). NX integrates these product lifecycle stages into an end-to-end process using concurrent engineering workflow, design-in-context and product data management tools that apply across all functional areas. The 2007 release of NX, version 5, provides capabilities which apply across all core functional areas and are intended to benefit new as well as advanced and specialized users. Six key portfolio-wide innovations include:

Tailorable UI: A tailorable user interface (UI), referred to as Your Way which allows the interface to be customized to specific tasks, roles, and skill levels. There are also wizards included to help streamline and automate complex processes. For example, the Mold Wizard module addresses the specific requirements of plastic injection applications while the Progressive Die Wizard addresses the specific requirements of die stamping applications.

Active digital mock-up: A capability referred to as Active Mockup. This feature allows the use of a multi-CAD digital mock-up for visualization and the ability to modify the model within the mock-up.

ANSYS, Inc. is one of the world's leading engineering simulation software providers. It develops general-purpose finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics software. ANSYS develops a complete range of computer-aided engineering (CAE) products, but it is perhaps best known for its ANSYS Mechanical and ANSYS Multiphysics products.
ANSYS Mechanical and ANSYS Multiphysics software are self-contained analysis tools incorporating pre-processing (geometry creation, meshing), solver and post-processing modules in a unified graphical user interface. These are general-purpose finite element modeling packages for numerically solving a wide variety of mechanical problems, including static/dynamic structural analysis (both linear and non-linear), heat transfer and fluid problems, as well as acoustic and electro-magnetic problems.

The software is used to analyze a broad range of applications. ANSYS Mechanical technology incorporates both structural and material non-linearities. ANSYS Multiphysics software includes solvers for thermal, structural, CFD, electromagnetics, and acoustics and can couple these separate physics together in order to address multidisciplinary applications. ANSYS software is also used in Civil Engineering(ANSYS/CivilFEM), Electrical Engineering, Physics and Chemistry.

ANSYS acquired the CFX computational fluid dynamics code in 2003 and Fluent, Inc. in 2006. The CFD packages from ANSYS are powerful and flexible, used for engineering simulations of all levels of complexity. They offer a comprehensive range of physical models that can be applied to a broad range of industries and applications.

Pro/ENGINEER (commonly referred to as Pro/E or ProE) is a 3D CAD parametric feature solid modeling software created by Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC). Its direct competitors are UGS-NX and CATIA, and to a lesser degree SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor and SolidEdge. It runs on several UNIX flavours, Linux and Microsoft Windows, and provides solid modeling, assembly modelling and drafting functionality for mechanical engineers.

Pro/ENGINEER is an integrated 3D CAD/CAM/CAE solution for mechanical engineering and design which was created by Dr. Samuel P. Geisberg in the mid-1980's. It pioneered the CAD industry by introducing the concept of Parametric, Feature-based Solid Modeling. Models are driven parameters and intelligent features, rather than simple dimensional values.

Pro/ENGINEER outputs consist of solid model data for tooling and rapid prototyping, CNC manufacturing, and finite element analysis. A product and its entire Bill of Materials can be modeled accurately with fully associative engineering drawings, and revision control information. It is compatible with Windows and Unix-variants. All data is interchangeable between these platforms without conversion.

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0 screenshot - A typical Pro/ENGINEER software package is made up of different modules, customizable to the customer's specific needs. In the past years some of the modules like Pro/SURFACE and Pro/SHEETMETAL have been integrated into the basic Pro/E offerings. The modules serve different needs, for example, the Pro/CABLING and Pro/HARNESS-MFG modules are used for the design of wire harnesses for the automotive industry. Likewise, free form surfacing is done via the ISDX package.

Advanced modules: Basic Hull, Structural Hull, Behavioral Modeler, Design Animation, Expert Machinist, Import Data Doctor, Mechanism Design ModelCHECK, Pro/ASSEMBLY (Advanced), Pro/CABLE, ROUTED SYSTEM DESIGNER or RSD, Pro/CMM, Pro/COMPOSITE, Pro/DIAGRAM, Pro/DIEFACE, Pro/HARNESS-MFG, Pro/MOLDESIGN and Pro/CASTING, Pro/NC, Pro/NC-SHEETMETAL, Pro/PIPING (Specification-Driven Design Mode), Pro/PIPING (Non Specification-Driven Design Mode), Pro/PROCESS for Assemblies, Pro/PROCESS for MFG, Pro/REVIEW, Pro/SCAN-TOOLS, Restyle - reverse engineering module, Pro/SURFACE, ISDX (Interactive Surfacing Design eXtension)

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