The Analyzable Product Model: A Representation to Facilitate Design-Analysis Integration
Tamburini, D. R.; Peak, R. S.; Fulton, R. E. (1997) The Analyzable Product Model: A Representation to Facilitate Design-Analysis Integration. AIAA Atlanta Section Aerospace Tech. Symposium, March 22, 1997, Atlanta.
Best Presentation in Session
PWA, PWB, design analysis integration, CAE, CAD, analyzable product model, data modeling, APM, engineering database, idealization, AP210, STEP, ISO 10303, thermomechanical, object-oriented
During the development of a product, designers use a variety of software systems that generate a manufacturable description of the product. This description is scattered across several data sets with different, often proprietary, formats and structures. For engineering analysis purposes, this disjoint description is often both redundant and incomplete. Despite these characteristics and the large mismatch between design and analysis, this description is used as input for analysis models that predict the behavior of the product.
This presentation introduces an engineering data representation, the Analyzable Product Model (APM), that facilitates integration between design and analysis applications. This representation, derived from the manufacturable description, considers the fact that analysis models need information about a) the product, b) its operating environment, and c) how the product should be idealized to make it suitable for analysis. Analysis tools read the data they need from the APM instead of from the manufacturable description, reducing the problem of unfamiliar data structures, semantic mismatch, and complex data transformations.
The design and analysis of Printed Wiring Assemblies was chosen to test the concepts developed in this work. In this example, the goal is to assemble PWA product data created by several E/MCAD tools into an APM that supports the informational needs of specific thermomechanical analyses. However, the concepts developed in this research are independent of the design domain and can be applied to any situation where design-analysis integration is needed.