There is little doubt that the simulation world is changing. At the 2014 SIMULIA Community Conference, we even called this change a revolution! Such a wonderful word does capture the excitement that pervades the simulation industry today even if you may think that it is too strong a word to use in our familiar world.
So what’s really going on?
Historically, the simulation industry has been focused on the process and end result of the “solve” part of simulation. At SIMULIA, our history from the beginning has been a very strong focus on technology related to the mechanics, functionality, usability, and performance needed to “solve” your most challenging and important industrial simulation problems. We have focused on solver performance and scalability, on features for state-of-the-art mechanics and material modeling, on assemblies and contact problems, on fracture, on multiphysics co-simulation, and on many other areas of deep technical need in FEA.
Let’s be clear: This technology focus at SIMULIA is continuing and will continue.
It is our heritage, our belief, and our mantra that users need as much technology as they can get their hands on. And we are responding with the widest, most scalable, most easily accessible technical portfolio in the business through our Power of the Portfolio established product line delivered with the simple Extended Packaging strategy. With the Power of the Portfolio and Extended Packaging, users today get immediate access to Abaqus for FEA, Tosca for non-parametric optimization, Isight for parametric optimization and process capture, and fe-safe for durability and fatigue simulation, all through a shared token pool that provides efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and is economical. With the Power of the Portfolio, we are offering more technology today than ever before.
But our industry is changing. Today, simulation users need even more than just technology.
We need a way to capture and leverage the knowledge we gain through simulation throughout our companies, to communicate its value more fully and more widely, and to bring simulation to bear on a much wider array of problems facing industry today. The issue for most companies in their hyper-competitive environments is not simply how to “solve,” but how to “innovate.” Simulation plays a very large role in innovation. Unlike prototype testing, simulation is available anywhere, anytime, 24/7/365. Through captured workflows developed by specialists, but deployed to non-specialist users, anyone now has access to the value of simulation and its benefits. And of course, testing often provides a simple pass/fail result.
Simulation, on the other hand, can tell you why your product passed or failed. It can tell you how close you are to failing. It can highlight ways to improve your product design, and can drive learning, understanding, and the entire design process. And with process capture and automation, simulation allows you to explore your design spaces in ways impossible to imagine. We now have many, many examples of customers using our technology to identify design points that could never have been identified before.
Simulation Powers Innovation!
So the industry is going through a revolution: from “solve” to “innovate.” When we have fully made this transition, simulation activities will be the core of what companies do. Analysts will become essential for not only reducing costs and design time, but reducing risk. They will allow their companies to compete with confidence in their crowded marketplace, to develop innovative products that benefit society, and to fully utilize the promise of computing and the virtual world. Those who don’t make this transition will fall behind.
