SIMULIA represents Simulation for Product, Nature & Life. We believe that Simulation Powers Sustainable Innovation! And by sustainable, we mean reliable, repeatable, something you can build your business around.  We will deliver a fully-integrated Multiscale-Multiphysics capability across all scales (from molecules to metropolis) and all domains (structures, fluids, electromagnetics, and so forth.  Our Community focus is to enrich our historical audience of experts to Deepen their capability, to push beyond this audience to Diversify to other domains, and to Democratize simulation far beyond traditional analysis groups – in fact, to everyone.

This is the first part in an introductory series about simulation on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and how we are uniting employees, suppliers, customers, consumers and regulators into the framework for sustainable innovation. Stay tuned for the upcoming series that follows where we learn about different simulation roles on the platform!

What is the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform? 

Even though everyone is involved in the innovation process, many users are still disconnected within the enterprise and across the value creation process. This results in the need for expensive corrective action late in the development process. Simulation users struggle to understand what is happening in the enterprise because they lack of visibility into the status of key processes. This results in unexpected wait times, rework and errors. These users need a way to connect to the innovation process, collaborate with other users and contribute towards delivering a better experience to their customers and consumers. The 3DEXPERIENCE Platform’s apps and services digitally connects all users to the development stream – to establish social communities with consumers and customers to share, experiment, and innovate effectively. Businesses can power their innovation processes with collaborative technologies, leveraging legacy tools and systems.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides several important advantages to simulation users.  They are:

• Digitally connected – the platform brings information throughout the enterprise together in a real-time, digitally connected manner far beyond simple electronic document management, from requirements to concept to design to manufacture
• Data driven – the platform allows decisions and processes throughout the enterprise to be driven by data, by data analytics, by the effects of that data, and by models based on that data
• Model-based – the platform connects the data to the models to which the data pertains or from which the data originated providing a single current view of the status of products and processes throughout the design cycle
• Virtual + Real – the platform allows customers to connect the virtual world with the real world and to reduce the distance between them to zero.

We will explore these concepts in future posts.

The 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation portfolio is delivered on top of the platform and so the values listed above are inherited by and enrich simulation activity.  The Simulation portfolio is able to serve a scalable set of roles throughout the enterprise, roles that encompass many more potential users than our traditional expert user base, including these 3 user communities:

• Business Leaders, Managers (Decision-makers in non-technical roles)
• Design Engineers (including Part Designers and Product Engineers), and
• Analysts (including simulation experts)

This is where you might be asking, what exactly is a simulation role on the platform…

What is a “Role?”

Roles on the platform allow users to have a specialized function with a set of capabilities that is used during an industry process. Simulation technology covers structures, fluids, plastic injection molding, acoustics, structural applications, and more. Roles are assigned on the platform to ensure the right technology is delivered in an application context with guided access, allowing simulation technology to drive design and power innovation within product teams.

An immediate advantage of the platform approach is that roles often include technology from other domains, such as design, manufacturing, logistics, and so forth.  Simulation roles are not simply vertical tools used in a silo, but are connected to others in the company to enable simulation to be much more visible and valuable within the workgroup and enterprise.

Simulation Portfolio 

Now let’s take a look at the overall R2018x Simulation portfolio.

The 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation portfolio consists of Roles for a variety of User Profiles and application needs. We have a set of Multiphysics Simulation Roles for Engineers and Analysts, Industry-specific roles for multidisciplinary needs, all on top of platform functionality to power these roles with computing and Simulation Data Science. Simulation Data Science provides next-generation simulation process & data management values for all users.  All Roles in the Simulation portfolio are built on top of this capability. Simulation Data Science allows a customer to capture, manage, explore, analyze, replay, publish as best-practices, and re-use simulation methods.  This capability drives Democratization of simulation allowing the values of simulation be at the center of a company’s core business processes.

On Premise and On Cloud

Customer requirements for simulation are evolving to include both On Premise and On Cloud computing, by all user profiles (from designer/engineers, to analysts, to management and any enterprise function), for all usage habits (from occasional usage to heavy usage), covering all levels of simulation complexity (from the simplest part to the most complex assembly), on all available computing platforms (local, mobile, enterprise, and cloud).  3DEXPERIENCE R2018x on the cloud meets these requirements by providing an On Cloud simulation portfolio matching the existing On Premise lineup, and by incorporating a new comprehensive licensing model that enables routine, sustained, and burst computing.

• For routine simulation needs, that is to say occasional needs from non simulation experts, the simulation license is embedded into roles (hence the term ‘embedded licensing’) for designers and engineers who can use simulation during design.
• For sustained simulation needs, i.e. from simulation analysts, companies can procure a corporate simulation capability in the form of a pool of shareable simulation tokens (hence the term ‘token licensing’). Each simulation job will borrow a number of simulation tokens depending on the complexity of the simulation. This capability is available for both on premise and on cloud users.
• For burst simulation, when ‘peaks’ of simulation computing are occasionally needed, companies can procure simulation ‘credits’ (hence the term ‘credit licensing’) to be consumed by each simulation job. This licensing model provides cost-efficient access for crunch time needs that exceed the sustained licensing capacity. This new capability is offered on the Cloud only in R2018x. In R2018x, a new burst compute capability for Abaqus is available Powered By the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.

Together, these three modes of licensing available in R2018x provide scalability, efficiency, flexibility, and value to all corporate users.

Be on the lookout for our next post in the series where we feature our first role, Additive Manufacturing Analyst (AMA).