Abstract

A growing number of CAE tools manage complexity through their own data and process management. This stands in the way of a higher-level simulation data and process management (SPDM) because the tool-internal relationships and metadata are not revealed. The coupling of CAE tools with general SPDM systems is thus considered one of the greatest challenges for simulation data management. GNS Systems realized the integration of such hermetic applica-tions into an SPDM system for an international automotive supplier. In combi-nation with the complete automation of the product development process, the company now benefits from increased efficiency, better data quality and even generates new capacities for the development of innovative products. At the start of the project, the picture was as follows: The customer uses a software solution such as PDTec's SimData Manager to couple the CAE simu-lations with the task management of an ERP system and a design database (PDM). The analysis engineers work with a simulation environment such as Ansys Workbench, which hinders efficient data management with its internal data and process management. GNS Systems therefore designed and imple-mented a workflow which, with the software solution as the hub, creates, ex-ports and imports Workbench bundles. The required CAD data is provided during the export procedure. In addition, a concept was developed for mapping the internal structures of the simulation platform to data elements of the CAE data management solution. The new implementation closed the crucial gap that previously prevented end-to-end data management for users. This resulted in an efficient workflow: it links the analysis tasks with the bundles of the simulation environment and the reports. In addition, the implementation enables the efficient collaboration of computational staff from different locations through central storage and man-agement. Mapping the internal workbench structures in a central CAE data management solution, such as SimData Manager, opens perspectives for com-parisons between simulations of different Workbench bundles.