April 2017

////// FOCUS ON: Democratization Simulation P.12 Apps P.12 Education &

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//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// | DEGREES OF FREEDOM | by Jamie J. Gooch

Democratization and Education

AVE YOU EVER HEARD of an engineering from engineers with a comparison: “If engineers are viewed technology degree? If not, you’re not alone. as being responsible for designing the nation’s technological According to a report by the National Academy systems, engineering technicians and technologists are those of Engineering (NAE), nearly 30% of employ- who help build and keep those systems running.” It further Hers of engineering technicians and technologists had never distinguishes technicians as those with two-year degrees from heard of engineering technology education, and 33% didn’t engineering technologists who have four-year degrees. De- know the difference between work performed by engineers scribed another way: Engineers learn the concepts and math- and work performed by engineering technologists. ematics behind engineering design, while technologists learn how to practically apply technology tools to those designs. In We write a lot about what engineering technology pro- 2014, there were nearly 94,000 four-year engineering degrees viders are doing to “democratize” design engineering tools, and less than 18,000 four-year engineering technology de- which is just a fancy way of saying software and hardware grees awarded in the U.S., according to the report. should be easier to use, have affordable options for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and generally be Democratize Engineering Education accessible to more people. There are many reasons democ- Efforts to boost STEM enrollments should extend to engi- ratization is important. The state of the art in engineering neering technology degrees. There will always be a certain design technology has evolved so quickly that many people number of high school students who are thrilled to par- aren’t aware of what is now possible with 3D design, simu- ticipate in FIRST Robotics and other hands-on programs, lation, optimization and rendering paired with high-perfor- but are too intimidated by the advanced mathematics and mance computing. If more people used the latest tools and theoretical study required to achieve an engineering degree. processes, it could spark new innovations, result in better Increasing the amount of entry-level job candidates with products and help solve difficult problems in society. engineering technology degrees would go a long way toward Downstream from design, manufacturing is being dis- filling the need for high-tech skills in product development rupted by new technologies as well—from the connected and manufacturing today. automation of the industrial Internet of Things to more But if employers aren’t familiar with engineering tech- widespread use of additive and hybrid manufacturing. nology, or what an engineering technologist does, colleges More skilled employees are always needed to realize the and universities will have a hard time drumming up enroll- promise of the factory of the future, and democratization ment. To boost the profile of engineering technologists, the expands the pool of those prospective employees. NAE report calls for the engineering technology education community to make the field’s value more evident to K-12 A Two-Pronged Approach teachers, students and parents, as well as to employers. It The responsibility for widening the playing field doesn’t just further suggests that the National Science Foundation should rest with software and hardware companies making their consider funding research on engineering technology to tools easier to access. The people using them need to get the understand why black students graduate at higher rates from proper education and training to make the most out of the engineering technology programs than from engineering tools available. There are plenty of on-the-job training op- programs, why women are less-engaged in engineering tech- portunities for design engineers (see page 17), but the NAE nology than engineering and why only 12% of engineering report, “Engineering Technology Education in the United technologists have a four-year degree in engineering technol- States” (nae.edu/165760.aspx) sheds light on another oppor- ogy, while 39% of them have engineering degrees. DE tunity to boost the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) job pool. Jamie Gooch is editorial director of DE; contact him via The NAE report distinguishes engineering technologists [email protected].

2 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news

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4 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news || FOCUS ON DEMOCRATIZATION Wanted: University of Chicago Launches 12 App Publishers 20 On-Demand HPC Startup Internal simulation apps are growing; public By Kenneth Wong apps still face logistical hurdles. By Kenneth Wong Now Even Better, AutoCAD 21 2017 for Mac The latest Mac version features new commands and a well-organized interface. By David Cohn

Budget CAD, 25 No Subscription Required CorelCAD 2017 offers AutoCAD-like features and Gain and Prove DWG compatibility. 17 Professional Mastery By David Cohn Licensing, certification and accreditation options for design engineers. By Randall S. Newton

10 Consultant’s Corner 46 Next-Gen Engineers Time for a Service Bureau Consult? NASA Challenges Teams to Design Small DEPARTMENTS By Monica Schnitger Satellites 2 Degrees of Freedom Democratization and Education 11 Road Trip 47 Industry Insights By Jamie J. Gooch NAFEMS World Congress 2017 preview. Carl Bass: Work on Unsolved Problems By Kenneth Wong 6 By the Numbers: 43 Fast Apps Facts and figures about the democratization Unexpected IoT benefits, vehicles 47 Advertising Index of technology. equipped with air quality sensors, and rethinking stethoscope design. 48 Commentary 8 Making Sense of Sensors Improve Your Security Hygiene Developing Sensor Fusion Algorithms 44 Editor’s Picks By Martin Nemzow By Tom Kevan Products that have grabbed the editors’ attention. By Anthony J. Lockwood

PUBLISHER ADVERTISING SALES ADVERTISING, BUSINESS, Kenneth Moyes | President and CEO, Tom Cooney Tim Kasperovich | East Coast Sales & EDITORIAL OFFICES EH Media 440-434-2629 Digital Engineering ® magazine EDITORIAL Jim Philbin | Midwest/West Coast Sales SUBSCRIBER Jamie J. Gooch | Editorial Director 773-332-6870 CUSTOMER SERVICE Kenneth Wong | Senior Editor Digital Engineering ® magazine Anthony J. Lockwood | Editor at Large ART & PRODUCTION PO Box 677 • Northbrook, IL Stephanie Skernivitz | Associate Editor Darlene Sweeney | Director Peerless Media, LLC 60065-0677 Sarah Petrie | Copy Editor [email protected] 111 Speen St., Suite 200, Phone: 847-559-7581 Framingham, MA 01701 Fax: 847-564-9453 CONTRIBUTING EDITORS A PEERLESS MEDIA, LLC Phone: 508-663-1500 E-mail: [email protected] Tony Abbey, Brian Albright, PUBLICATION E-mail: [email protected] Mark Clarkson, David S. Cohn, Brian Ceraolo | President and www.digitaleng.news Tom Kevan, Randall S. Newton, Group Publisher Beth Stackpole

Digital Engineering® (ISSN 1085-0422) is published monthly by Peerless Media, LLC, a division of EH Media 111 Speen St., Suite 200 Framingham, MA 01701. Periodicals postage paid at Framingham, MA and additional mailing offices. Digital Engineering® is distributed free to qualified U.S. subscribers.SUBSCRIPTION RATES: for non-qualified; U.S. $108 one year; Canada and Mexico $126 one year; all other countries $195 one year. Send all subscription inquiries to MeritDirect, Digital Engineering®, PO Box 677, Northbrook, IL 60065-0677. Postmaster: Send all address changes to MeritDirect, Digital Engineering, PO Box 677, Northbrook, IL 60065-0677. Reproduction of this magazine in whole or part without written permission of the publisher is prohibited. All rights reserved ©2016 Peerless Media, LLC.Address all editorial correspondence to the Editor, Digital Engineering. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Digital Engineering. Unaccepted manuscripts will be returned if accompanied by a self-addressed envelope with sufficient first-class postage. Not responsible for lost manuscripts or photos.

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 5 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// | DEMOCRATIZATION

3,696,238,430 Do Security Issues Slow Democratization? Internet users in the world. — Internetworldstats.com, Miniwatts Marketing Group, Dec. 31, 2016 0% 62% 93% 100% Amazon Web Services Growth 93% In Millions of data security professionals $3,536 report persistent technical challenges in protecting data. Net Sales $2,405 62% of data security professional Operating Income respondents have no idea where their most sensitive unstructured data $1,420 resides. $926 $687 — “The Data Security Money Pit: Expense $240 In Depth Hinders Maturity,” a January 2017 study conducted by Forrester Consulting on 4Q 2014 4Q 2015 4Q 2016 — Amazon earning reports behalf of Varonis Systems, Inc.

Software Market Metrics Smart Phone Ownership By Age Group The global simulation and analysis software market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate 92% (CAGR) of 11.9%. 88% 74% The global cloud product lifecycle management market is forecast to grow 2020 at a CAGR of 8.79% 42% between 2016 and 2020. 11.9%

8.79% 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ — Global Simulation and Analysis Software Market — Lee Rainie, director of Internet, Science and Technology 2016 2016-2020, Infiniti Research research at the Pew Research Center, Digital Divides based Limited, May 27, 2016. on a survey conducted from Sept. 29 to Nov. 6, 2016

6 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Online Learning Profiles The Digitally Ready group are The Unprepared group has both low levels of digital active learners and confident in skills and limited trust in online their ability to use digital tools to information, so are least likely to pursue learning. They are aware pursue online learning. of the latest “ed tech” tools. 17% 14% Traditional 5% Learners use traditional Cautious Clickers have tech means to resources at their disposal, pursue their trust and confidence in using 31% interests. the internet, and the educational 33% They are less underpinnings to put digital likely to fully resources to use for their learning engage with pursuits. But they have not waded into digital tools. e-learning to the extent the Digitally Ready have.

The Reluctant have very low levels of — From the “Digital Readiness Gaps” report by the Pew Research Center, which explores the attitudes and behaviors that underpin awareness of new “education tech” concepts. people’s preparedness and comfort in using digital tools for learning, This is correlated with their general lack of use October 2015: pewinternet.org/2016/09/20/digital-readiness-gaps of the internet for learning.

CAD Computing Access 3% Fifty-six percent of computer-aided design (CAD) users work on desktop workstations, 42% on PCs, 33% on laptop PCs and 19% on mobile CAD workstations. Six percent use virtual CAD workstations, 5% use tablets and 3% use mobile phones.

56% vs. 42% 5% 33% vs. 19%

— The Business Advantage Group Worldwide CAD Trends 2016 Survey, September 2016

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 7 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// | MAKING SENSE OF SENSORS | FUSION by Tom Kevan

Developing Sensor Fusion Algorithms

CAN THE HEADLINES IN TECHNICAL JOURNALS and you see phrases like “age of context,” “ubiquitous sensing” and “smart devices.” What all of these trends have in common is the preponderant importance of the interaction between sensors and algorithms. Combining these two technologies to perform sensor fusion opens the S door for more sophisticated services for consumers—but it also presents new challenges for design engineers. Tailored Tools of more proprietary tools, such as InvenSense’s SensorStudio. The root of these challenges lies in the complexity of today’s This MEMS sensor development platform seeks to promote the applications and the increased demands they make on sensor- rapid creation of applications by simplifying software and algo- based systems. A major hurdle that engineers must contend rithm development. A key element of the platform is its graphical with is the fact that sensor inputs are sometimes inaccurate and development tool that allows designers to visually assemble stan- incomplete, complicating the extraction of useful information. dard sensor block functions in a logical way. Using SensorStudio, The underlying concept behind sensor fusion is that each sen- developers can program and add sensors to the software frame- sor has its own strengths and weaknesses. Fusion leverages the work via documented APIs to control tasks and timers. strengths of some sensors to offset the weaknesses of others, in- Although many fusion development platforms focus on creasing accuracy and expanding functionality in the process. consumer motion- and sound-tracking applications, the design Although the core concept underlying the fusion algorithm community also has access to an emerging class of algorithm de- seems simple, its implementation calls for a variety of develop- velopment tools for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) ment tools, accommodating a broad spectrum of skill sets and and automated driving applications. serving a rich assortment of industries and applications. On the One example of this type of development tool is Baselabs one hand, the design community requires software development Create, a software library designed for development of complex platforms that enable the creation of complex and customized ADAS data fusion algorithms and environment models. The algorithms to accommodate the unique requirements of high- library consists of a fusion algorithm library, sensor models and end applications. At the same time, engineers new to the devel- use cases, all of which enable designers to either field-test pre- opment of algorithms for this type of application need an easy implemented algorithms or develop custom algorithms. entry point. This is exactly what the MEMS Industry Group’s Accelerated Innovation Community (AIC) hopes to do with its Evolution of Fusion Algorithms open source library of introductory algorithms. The tools enabling the development of sensor fusion algorithms have just begun their evolution. The next stage in this evolution- Libraries, Tools and Platforms ary process will likely see the introduction of tools that harness AIC’s library relieves designers of having to reinvent the wheel technologies such as artificial intelligence. DE for the most basic of codes by providing common fusion algo- rithms, allowing the engineer to focus energy on the develop- Tom Kevan is a freelance writer/editor specializing in engineering and ment of more complex algorithms. communications technology. Contact him via [email protected]. With contributions from companies like NXP/Freescale ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Semiconductor, PNI and Analog Devices, the AIC library offers development tools covering accelerometers, magnetometers and INFO ➜ MEMS Industry Group’s AIC library: github.com/memsindustrygroup/Open-Source-Sensor-Fusion gyroscopes. The library includes a C source library for 3-, 6- and 9-axis sensor fusion, a data sheet providing an overview of electri- ➜ NXP/Freescale: nxp.com/products/sensors/nxp-sensor-fusion cal and computation metrics and a basic sensor fusion tutorial. ➜ PNI Sensor Corp: pnicorp.com In addition to contributing its sensor fusion software, NXP/Fre- ➜ Analog Devices: analog.com escale also makes available its sensor fusion development kit and other development technology under a limited copyright license. ➜ InvenSense: invensense.com/sensorstudio In addition to these resources, designers can take advantage ➜ Baselabs Create: baselabs.de/data-fusion-algorithm-design

8 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news TEN TECH LLC Engineering Services & Software Solutions

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Time for a Service Bureau Consult?

OU BID FOR AND WIN A BIG PROJECT. The first feeling is euphoria: Yay, we did it! But the second thought may be: How are we going to deliver, given the mountain of work we’re already doing? Dread sets in as you ponder your options. Or maybe a project is taking longer than you thought it would, and you’re behind. Or perhaps you discover that you’re missing a key skill—like simulation—to bring your design to life. What to do? You can beg for an extension, lookY for a new hire—or you can explore your options with an external engineering and design service bureau.

A service bureau can supplement your team with a trained more complete consulting that helps you optimize the design. designer or engineer who steps in as needed, bringing skills Understand your limitations, but think ahead: If you have as- and experience. What should you look for as you think about pirations to perform simulation in-house, use this as a learning working with a service bureau? opportunity. See if the outside provider is willing to let one of your team members shadow the service bureau staffer; you Making a Match might eventually be able to bring that expertise in-house. First, make sure they have the skills you need. You’ll have to do One more great reason to work with a service bureau: some work to bring your temporary partner up to speed—after Tr y out technologies before you invest. We see this a lot all, you know the project best—but they should come with a basic in 3D printing, which is becoming highly useful so quickly skill set that complements the task. At a minimum, they should that it will soon be a major part of many companies’ plans have performed a similar task before, using the tools you have. for inventory management and order fulfillment, as well as You want to teach them about the design project, not the toolset jigs, fixtures and prototyping. But are you an expert in the you use. You might look for certifications, check references and material science and the product redesign needed to make it examine project portfolios to determine specific competencies. truly useful? Perhaps not. In this case, a good service bureau Speaking of tools, some service bureaus have their own can help you explore the options available today, in materi- licenses of critical software and others expect you to supply als and printer technology and help you figure out how to them. Make sure you understand who is paying for what, what optimize part designs for this new type of manufacturing. versions are being used and how data will be handed over. This is a much wiser approach to 3D printing than buying When you work with a service bureau you are paying for a cheap desktop printer and winging it. Yes, you’ll get a 3D their expertise, so use it wisely. Share as much information printed part, but it likely won’t be of production quality, as you can to let them fully explore design options. You may won’t use the materials you’ll want in inventory and may take want to consider a legal framework to protect intellectual far longer than a costlier machine to print a part. You’ll get property but, once you’re comfortable, share everything. You the wrong impression about how 3D printing can affect your are paying a service bureau to create the best possible design; business. Instead, work with a knowledgeable service bureau to do that, they need to fully understand it. to get it right. This strategy applies to CAD, CAE and other technologies too—try it before you buy. Learn from Service Providers Look at service bureaus as an extension of your in-house In the case of simulation, small- and medium-sized businesses staff: They are there when you need them, valued for their often work with subject matter experts at service bureaus specific expertise, with access to specialist tools. Make use of because of their domain knowledge and access to expensive the experience of others in order to make the right choice for technology. Depending on how their business is structured, your business. DE simulation service bureaus can offer a variety of services, rang- ing from letting you run simulation on their software licenses Monica Schnitger is president of Schnitger Corporation (and their hardware setup, on-premise or in the cloud), taking (schnitgercorp.com). Send email about this commentary to your model and doing an analytical workup on it, or offering [email protected].

10 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news ///////////////////////////////////// ROAD TRIP Engineering Conference News NAFEMS World Congress 2017 Preview

BY JAMIE J. GOOCH

IGITAL ENGINEERING high-performance computing trends. Universitätsmedizin Berlin who will 8. will be attending the How simulation can address the present “Mechano Biology of Tissue D NAFEMS World Congress 3D printing revolution. Regeneration;” 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden, “One of the major issues we hear • David Ewins from the Imperial June 11-14 to bring you engineering from the community is the prolifera- College London, who will present analysis, modeling and simulation news tion of different tools, process, tech- “On the Balance and Integration of from the show. niques and best practice,” says David Simulation and Test in Engineering Quinn, NAFEMS’ chief marketing Structural Dynamics;” If you’re not familiar with NA- officer. “If we all work in isolation, in • Dirk Ruschmeier from Porsche FEMS, it represents over 1300 member silos, then we’ll see the progression AG who will present “Simulation organizations worldwide from the com- of the technology slow as informa- Data Management—The Next puter-aided engineering (CAE) com- tion and people become ever more Challenges” as part of the Third munity, including original equipment dispersed. That’s the crossroads. Do International Conference on Simula- manufacturers, suppliers, academic we come together as one community, tion Process and Data Management institutions, international research and to share our experiences, and work (SPDM) that is co-located with development bodies and vendors. toward our common goals, or work NWC 2017. in an ever-more isolated way? This is “The Congress will provide mul- Key Themes where the Congress comes in.” tiple training opportunities on various The Congress includes tracks on vari- aspects of the technology, as well as ous aspects of simulation, free master- Expert Keynotes case studies and examples from a mul- classes, workshops and training courses, Hundreds of presentations addressing titude of industries,” says Quinn. “The and an impressive lineup of presenta- these key themes will be presented, Congress will promote the expansion tions. This year’s Congress is centered anchored by plenary sessions. Key- of the technology through multiple around eight key themes that focus on note presenters for the plenary ses- sessions and discussions around the the expansion of simulation in product sion include: topics of democratization and simula- design and development and beyond. • Steven A. Chisholm, Boeing tion governance. Also the 35+ compa- 1. How organizations are gener- Commercial Airplanes, who will pres- nies that will be exhibiting and spon- ating confidence in their simulation ent “Smarter Testing through Simula- soring—they will all be working hard capabilities. tion for Efficient Design and Attain- to create greater awareness of the new 2. How organization are extend- ment of Regulatory Compliance;” technologies they are developing.” ing the benefits of simulation to their • Georg N. Duda from Charité - LEARN MORE «nafems.org/congress non-expert users. 3. How leading companies are using their simulation capabilities to support product certification. 4. Why simulation engineers should be aware of the role played by the systems engineer. 5. What considerations should be taken into account when implementing a simulation data management system. 6. How to embed analysis and simulation into the manufacturing culture of an organization. 7. How major engineering analysis NAFEMS World Congress takes place at the codes are evolving to address new Stockholm Waterfront Congress Center. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons/kallerna.

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 11 FOCUS ON DEMOCRATIZATION | SIMULATION WANTED App Publishers

Internal simulation apps are growing; public apps still face logistical hurdles.

BY KENNETH WONG

AKE IT MORE AFFORDABLE; MAKE IT EASIER TO USE. These two basic rules are the time-tested, foolproof strategies to promote wider technology adoption. Simulation software vendors began looking for ways to broaden their reach nearly a decade ago. Some chose to tackle it by nesting easy-to-use basic simula- M tion tools inside standard CAD programs. Others tried delivering the product from the browser as SaaS (soft- ware as a service) offerings with pay-as-you-go pricing. Many are now looking into simulation apps—smaller, lighter, targeted simulation programs that can be used with little or no training—as the best approach.

They all address ease of use by lation software to improve aircraft model to an on-demand app model lowering the expertise required to a aerodynamics, you need expertise not could prove too risky. reasonable level, but the proliferation just in aircraft aerodynamics but also The reluctance of traditional of apps—in an Apple App Store-like in CFD software. The combo would software developers leaves a void to marketplace where users can down- exclude quite a few engineers from be filled by newcomers. Boston-head- load what they need and pay a nomi- the task. Migrating from that business quartered Front End Analytics (FEA) nal fee for its use—remains elusive. What Are Simulation Apps? Newcomers Can Fill a Void So far, established simulation software lmost all leading commercial or the airflow of a multi-axial fan makers have not shown an interest in Asimulation software titles are blade. You need little or no exper- becoming app publishers. Many think general purpose simulation tise in simulation software usage they are not best suited to take on the programs. They’re designed to let to use an app; you only need to new role, and for good reasons. First, you create a wide range of physical provide certain critical inputs, such they lack the domain expertise nec- events—such as heat distribution, as the anticipated heat load or essary to develop functional apps for airflow, fluid flow and structural col- the shape of the fan, to get your highly targeted markets, such as IoT lisions—inside a computer using answer from an app. devices, footwear and apparel, or self- 3D models. Because of their com- In recognition of the apps’ driving cars. plexity, they demand considerable appeal, many major simulation Furthermore, their business prac- investment in training and time to software vendors have introduced tices and licensing policies are deeply master and use. template- or app-publishing tools in entrenched in the development of By contrast, a simulation app their products. Therefore, a general general purpose simulation products, is designed to simulate a nar- purpose simulation program could sold to people with considerable ex- rowly defined task—for example, be the invisible engine for an app’s pertise. For example, to use compu- the heat transfer inside a heatsink computation and 3D visualization. tational fluid dynamics (CFD) simu-

12 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news The latest release of COMSOL App Server tools for custom visuals so the app creator can brand the app with its own graphics. Image courtesy of COMSOL. describes its offerings as “intelligent of geometry, these materials and these One of the difficulties an app fit-for-purpose applications (Smart- environmental conditions.’” creator faces is the challenge of cap- Apps) that automate processes.” Sim- turing design analysis in a way that’s ulation apps have “the ability to go New Role for Veterans acceptable to the majority. “There’s outside the expert user base, to people On most engineering teams, junior no standard way to do a design analy- who are in sales, in application engi- staff members turn to veteran employ- sis. Different people do it differently,” neering, or in design,” according to ees for the setup of simulation jobs. Betts says. “It requires some stan- Juan Betts, FEA’s marketing director. These experts traditionally do the dardization to ‘app-ify’ a process for AweSim, a service that built upon heavy lifting in the front end. Over people to want to download.” the Ohio Supercomputer Center’s Blue time, for efficiency’s sake, they may However, apps developed by com- Collar Computing initiative, believes have created guided workflows and panies for internal use are growing. online modeling and simulation apps templates for newbies to launch and “Useful apps are highly customized and are a critical component of its mission use without coming to them. In the tightly integrated for specific use cases. to provide small- to mid-sized manu- app-driven simulation workflow, the The apps that we’ve seen that have facturers with simulation-driven design. experts can take on a new role as app good adoption are those developed by a “There are customers who want creator and author. company for internal use,” Hudak says. access to [commercial simulation] “An expert is traditionally the “I don’t think that’s an accident.” solvers,” says David Hudak, director go-to person to solve complicated Within an established company, of Supercomputer Services at Ohio problems,” Betts says. “They’re now the design analysis protocols, the ma- Supercomputer Center (OSC). “Then starting to create apps that are dis- terial database and the manufactur- there are those who say: ‘I don’t need tributed to junior engineers. Their ex- ing methods are fairly standardized; to understand the computer science pertise ensures the physics in the apps therefore, they can be codified in a behind the program. I just want to are correct, (and) the process is cor- series of apps and templates. An app understand how a particular product rect. They work with companies like meant for public consumption, on will behave within certain confines, us to ‘app-ify’ the process. A lot of the other hand, must account for the within certain parameters—this type companies are doing that internally.” diversity of analysis styles, materials

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 13 FOCUS ON: DEMOCRATIZATION SIMULATION

nCode’s new product Aqira includes tools for creating, publishing and deploying web-hosted simulation apps. Image courtesy of nCode. and manufacturing methods used by a First, most simulation software de- Multiphysics software, the company larger set of firms. velopers do not currently have a licens- introduced the Application Builder, a “Suppose you build an app and ing policy that facilitates apps—some- tool that lets the software user create bring it to a company. They’ll prob- thing that can accommodate the Angry and deliver simulation apps, complete ably tell you your app only has mate- Birds’ equivalent in simulation. “The with an application wizard for basic rial models for these types of plastics, ISVs’ (independent software vendors) app interfaces. Since then, COM- but they work with other plastics. license costs are a substantial com- SOL has also launched the COMSOL Material information is highly pro- ponent (of the transaction). Software Server, which can function as the back- prietary. Individual companies build license costs a lot more than computing end platform for hosting and deploy- their materials databases and guard cycles, storage and app-hosting vendor ing simulation apps. The latest version those carefully. This is valuable IP costs,” Hudak says. “If your goal is to of COMSOL Server includes visual (intellectual property),” Hudak says. publish a sim app to make money, you theme customization tools, so the apps The barriers for a simulation app for should use open source solvers if that’s can be presented under the publisher’s public consumption are “not impos- an option,” he says. own brand logos and graphics. To sible to overcome, but they’re signifi- Software licensing cost is usu- lower the barrier to app deployment, cant,” he cautions. ally not an issue with apps developed COMSOL priced COMSOL Server for internal use, because the apps at a tenth of the licensing price of Open Source Option will most likely be designed to draw COMSOL Multiphysics, according to Commerce between simulation soft- against the pool of licenses, tokens or Valerio Marra, COMSOL’s marketing ware developers and software users is credits the company has already pur- director. relatively straightforward. A three-way chased in bulk for departmental use. “We know it’s not efficient for a commerce among the simulation app This may be another reason apps for company to provide hundreds of its creator, the app user and the software internal use are growing faster than employees with a detailed model with vendor whose technology serves as the apps for public use. all its settings. They can’t all be simu- app’s engine is much more complicated. lation specialists,” Marra says. “There It gets even more complicated when the Publishing Tools was a need to reduce complexity to app-hosting platform is incorporated In 2014, when COMSOL launched make a larger group of people benefit into the revenue-sharing scheme. version 5.0 of its flagship COMSOL from multiphysics simulation, but the

14 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news tools weren’t there.” a powerful simulation software would late simulation data.” The apps solve the accessibil- have been impractical. This month, nCode, known for its ity limits by lowering the expertise In version 15.0 of its simulation GlyphWorks data processing software required, Marra says. “Some of our software ANSYS Workbench, ANSYS and DesignLife fatigue simulation customers’ apps are very sophisti- introduced Application Customiza- software, launched a new product cated, with lots of settings, because tion Templates (ACTs) you can use called Aqira. The company writes: they’re created by experts and meant to encapsulate commonly repeated “Aqira enables engineering insights for users with a deep knowledge simulation workflows. The company from more people at the right time.” of physics and processes, and need writes: “With ANSYS ACT, you can It does this by providing an environ- many inputs and outputs. Then there create a customized simulation envi- ment for publishing and distributing are apps where [the creator] has re- ronment that enables your engineer- web-based simulation apps. stricted the inputs to a very limited ing team to capture and use expert “We have simulation tools and set of parameters relevant to the in- knowledge, specialized processes and test data processing tools, and a lot tended projects and users.” best practices, improving productiv- of experts are using it, so just getting But in almost all cases, “the app ity, efficiency and effectiveness. The over the interface would be a barrier needs to be easy and quick to run,” software enables you to encapsulate for many engineers,” says Jon Aldred, according to Marra, thereby allowing APDL [ANSYS parametric design nCode’s VP of product management. others in design engineering, sales language] scripts, create custom “So we want to find a way to enable and manufacturing to conduct several menus and buttons to incorporate those experts to create simplified analysis and evaluate what-if sce- your company’s engineering knowl- front ends to make analysis available narios. Expecting such individuals to edge, embed third-party applications, to others. Rather than us creating the explore and master the full toolsets of and create your own tools to manipu- apps, we enable customers to create

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digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 15 FOCUS ON: DEMOCRATIZATION SIMULATION the apps themselves.” powerful hardware to install and run vendors like COMSOL, ANSYS and In the beginning of 2015, nCode the program, SaaS reduces barriers nCode are well positioned to cater acquired ReliaSoft, which specializes to simulation. But in comparison to to a wider group of simulation app in reliability software and services. apps, SaaS simulation still requires developers, assuming they can create “The initial version of Aqira will users to have a basic understanding of licensing policies that make sense for focus on delivering nCode tools,” general purpose simulation setups. the new model. Aldred says. “Next year, it’ll expand “The SaaS model is more ap- Suppose a developer builds a further into reliability technology. So plicable to existing users,” Betts says. drop-test simulation app to run on it’ll enable you to not only simulate “Through the cloud, the SaaS model top of ACME structural mechanics the physics of failure, but also the gives existing users more horsepower simulation software. The developer probability of failures.” [in the form of virtual workstations cannot hope to sell the app for a rea- The first incarnation of Aqira is available on demand], more multidis- sonable on-demand fee if he or she designed as an on-premise solution ciplinary collaboration tools [through needs to purchase sufficient ACME (to be hosted by a company on its own its cloud architecture], more integra- software licenses to account for every servers, behind its firewalls). But the tion with designers. So it does expand possible app user. (That number will apps published from Aqira are made the footprint in terms of user base. fluctuate over time.) available to users in a web interface. But the focus is still the traditional The token- or credit-based licens- “At the moment, Aqira is not SaaS,” engineering user base.” ing system (the pay-by-the-drink Aldred says. “But Aqira may grow into The majority of the simulation method, as some call it) solves some something more externally facing. I apps for the public consumption will issues—but not all. In the best-case see some benefits in that.” likely be delivered SaaS-style, because scenario, a sudden spike in the app’s that’s the traditional delivery mecha- usage due to popularity could exhaust SaaS Approach nism for apps. But currently, a con- all prepaid tokens, leaving the app In the enterprise resource manage- solidated marketplace for such apps inoperable for latecomers. What is ment, human resource management is not yet established. The apps that sorely needed is an affordable on- and customer relationship manage- have been created are scattered across demand licensing model that can ac- ment sectors, the SaaS approach has vendor-hosted app stores and the commodate simultaneous use of the resulted in more affordable, accessible creators’ own websites, with limited software by an unspecified number of offerings. Some in simulation hope exposure to their prospective users. people on an ongoing basis. That’s the to find new users by delivering SaaS- missing piece of the puzzle that can style simulation products. Ciespace Waiting for App Engines propel the simulation democratization (acquired by ESI Group in April 2015) and New Licensing Models movement to new heights. DE and SimScale are two such examples. There are signs that suggest some “The first obvious advantage of simulation software vendors could mi- Kenneth Wong is DE’s resident blogger SaaS is that all software and hardware grate into the app business by licens- and senior editor. Email him at de-editors@ maintenance overhead completely ing their solvers as the engines behind digitaleng.news or share your thoughts on vanishes—something that can be the apps. Autodesk opened this door this article at digitaleng.news/facebook. quite time- and cost-intensive with with the launch of Autodesk Forge, traditional licensing models and HPC an app development platform based ///////////////////////////////////// hardware requirements,” says David on Autodesk modeling, simulation INFO ➜ ANSYS: ANSYS.com Heiny, CEO of SimScale. “Depending and data management technologies. Autodesk Forge: Forge.Autodesk.com on the implementation, the second With it, enterprising developers could ➜ not so obvious advantage is that SaaS do what Sandip Jadhav, a cofounder ➜ AweSim: AweSim.org fosters a much closer collaboration of the Center for Computational ➜ COMSOL: Comsol.com among all stakeholders of a simulation Technologies in Pune, India, did. He ➜ ESI Group: ESI-group.com project: designers, simulation engi- launched a web-based app collection, neers, external consultants and even dubbed SimulationHub, that provides ➜ Front End Analytics: FEAsol.com the software vendor’s support team. custom engineering templates for ➜ nCode: nCode.com/aqira Know-how is shared easier thanks to simulation. ➜ SimScale: SimScale.com online collaboration that ultimately With their technologies already gets the job done faster.” functioning as the de facto compu- ➜ SimulationHub: SimulationHub.com Without the need for upfront tation engines behind some manu- For more information on this topic, visit investment in a perpetual license or facturers’ internal simulation apps, digitaleng.news.

16 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news FOCUS ON EDUCATION | DEMOCRATIZATION Gain and Prove Professional Mastery Licensing, certification and accreditation options for design engineers.

BY RANDALL S. NEWTON

NGINEERING TECHNOLOGY IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING. Five years ago “the cloud” was more relevant to operations than engineering, and only specialists used simulation and analysis software. Fast forward to today: Many engineering software products are available as cloud-based services, and computer-aided engineering E (CAE) tools are being sold for use in concept design. Regardless of the new technologies available, engineers must stay current with the skills and tools of their profession, and be able to prove it.

NAFEMS offers professional simulation engineer (PSE) certification, which independently assesses, verifies and records skills and competencies of an analysis and simulation engineer.

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 17 FOCUS ON: DEMOCRATIZATION EDUCATION

Licensing and certification are the two formal processes by which engineers prove their skill and competency. A license INCOSE (International Council on Systems is permission granted by a government entity for a person to Engineering) was founded to develop and disseminate practice within its jurisdiction. Lawyers, doctors, accountants the interdisciplinary principles and practices that and engineers must all complete licensing requirements before enable the realization of successful systems. Its being allowed to practice their profession within the boundar- mission is to enable, promote and advance systems ies of the law. Licensing in the United States is handled by engineering and systems approaches. state governments; the National Society of Professional Engi- NAFEMS is the international association for neers (NSPE) offers advice and training for those who need to the engineering modelling, analysis and simulation prepare for a professional licensing exam. community that focuses on the practical application of Certification is when an agency or commercial entity numerical engineering simulation techniques. confirms a person’s competency in a specified profession NSPE (National Society of Professional or skill set (such as using a specific software product). Engineers) was established in 1934 to create an Gaining certification from a professional organization organization dedicated to the interests of licensed such as INCOSE (International Council on Systems En- professional engineers. gineering), or NAFEMS (International Association for Engineering Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Commu- nity) proves you have achieved a specific level of mastery records skills and competencies of an analysis and simula- for a given skill set. tion engineer. To advance professionalism in simulation and Another way to prove professional skill is to complete analysis, NAFEMS offers various training materials, a PSE classes offered by software vendors, their dealer network and Competency Tracker for measuring progress toward certi- other private training companies. Although the certification fication and PSE certification. NAFEMS says its standards that comes with passing a class on using Autodesk Inventor and methods are constantly peer reviewed by technical (for example) is not required by law to be an engineer, most working groups within the organization’s membership and companies like to be able to tell potential clients how many also by external experts. trained engineers are on staff. Vendor certification is also PSE certification requires candidates to have three spe- valuable for those just finishing university studies or who are cific sets of experience or knowledge: currently unemployed and need a resume boost. Many en- 1. accumulation of competency in the specification, plan- gineering schools provide opportunities for students to earn ning, execution and interpretation of numerical analysis ap- vendor certification as part of their curriculum. plied to design, simulation or product verification; Another benefit of taking skills-based classes is how it 2. proof of experience in the use of numerical analysis as “forces the user to review parts of the software not normally previously explained; and used,” says Paul Burden, director of product development at 3. competency in foundational theoretical knowledge ASCENT, a division of RAND Worldwide that provides cur- and product knowledge, to understand the context, purpose riculum and classes for engineering. “People who go through and value of the analysis work. preparing for certification realize they have forgotten stuff INCOSE operates a systems engineering professional or they discover new features in the software. It can be a real (SEP) certification program, which offers the following lev- eye-opener for them on what the software can do.” els of endorsement. ASEP: Associate SEP is an entry-level certification Professional Certification Prep program for junior engineers or new graduates of engi- There is no one right answer to the question: “Which certi- neering school. fication should I get?” Generally, certification on a specific CSEP: Certified SEP requires at least five years of software product or type of product would come before seek- systems engineering experience confirmed by references. ing a more rigorous level of mastery that transcends any one CSEP certification is valid for three years and may be re- product. Becoming a SOLIDWORKS CSWP (Certified newed with continuing education and other approved meth- SOLIDWORKS Professional) is about demonstrating mas- ods of professional development. tery using SOLIDWORKS for mechanical design and design ESEP: Expert SEP certification is available to senior validation; becoming certified by NAFEMS is about proving engineers with at least 25 years of recognized systems en- competency in the safe, reliable use of analysis and simulation gineering experience (or 20 years if one has already earned technology. The process of preparing for professional certifi- CSEP certification), and who has demonstrated accomplish- cation depends on the certification being sought. ments in systems engineering. NAFEMS offers professional simulation engineer (PSE) NAFEMS and INCOSE see their roles as more than certification, which independently assesses, verifies and granting certification to qualified engineers. As INCOSE

18 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news puts it, they “champion the art, science, discipline and prac- Autodesk of interest to DE readers are the Inventor Certi- tice” of engineering. Both organizations provide members fied Professional and the AutoCAD Certified Professional with a wealth of materials on the subject, and they sponsor programs. There are a wide variety of exam prep courses as annual symposiums and conferences. well as the exams, varying in price from $45 to $195. ATCs do not administer the tests, but they do offer classes to help Preparing to be a Licensed Engineer engineers prepare. DE NSPE exists to serve those who seek to become a profes- sional engineer. Specifics of licensing vary state by state in Randall S. Newton is principal analyst at Consilia Vektor, and a the United States, but in general there is a four-step process: contributing analyst for Jon Peddie Research. He has been part of 1. achieve a four-year engineering degree approved by the the computer graphics industry, in a variety of roles, since 1985. state engineering licensing board; ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 2. complete four years of qualifying engineering experience; INFO ➜ ASCENT: ascented.com 3. pass the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam; and ➜ Autodesk: Autodesk.com 4. pass the eight-hour Principles and Practice of Engineering ➜ International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE): (PE) exam. INCOSE.org Preparing for the licensing process begins in engineer- ➜ NAFEMS: NAFEMS.org ing school; in many states the FE exam can be taken before ➜ National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE): NSPE.org graduation. To prepare for the PE exam, larger engineer- ing firms have in-house assistance. There are also review ➜ SOLIDWORKS: solidworks.com/sw/support/solidworks- courses offered by regional NSPE chapters. Many of the certification.htm companies offering training on software products also pro- For more information on this topic, visit digitaleng.news vide PE exam prep classes.

Product-Specific Certification Possibly the most familiar program for product-specific CNC Mill certification is the Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional Starting at: (CSWP) program, heavily promoted by Dassault Systemès $4950 and offered with assistance of most SOLIDWORKS resell- ers. The actual tests are now completely online. Many who realCNC prepare for the CSWP exam choose to take it at the an- nual SOLIDWORKS World convention, held every winter. REALVALUE SOLIDWORKS publishes a set of training courses recom- mended for CSWP candidates: SOLIDWORKS Essentials, SOLIDWORKS Drawings, Advanced Part Modeling and x Design Advanced Assembly Modeling. New Ideas The CSWP exam is taken in three segments, which can be attempted in any order. Failing one exam on the first try x Prototype does not invalidate having passed one or both of the other segments, and all exams are repeatable. Each segment in Without the CSWP exam is $33; there is no discount for buying en- the Wait trance to all three exams at once. SOLIDWORKS also offers certification on a variety of x Cut Real Metal specific skills, such as sheet metal design, using SOLID- WORKS Electrical or use of model-based engineering. Cost for each of these discipline-specific exams vary from x 120VAC - Plug $19.95 to $49.95. in Anywhere Autodesk operates its training program through autho- rized training centers (ATC), which usually are operated as a separate division of Autodesk resellers. ASCENT, an ATC mentioned earlier, is a division of Autodesk reseller RAND Worldwide. ATCs offer dedicated classrooms and TORMACH.COM instructors certified by Autodesk. Certifications offered by

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 19 FOCUS ON DEMOCRATIZATION | ENGINEERING COMPUTING University of Chicago Launches On-Demand HPC Startup BY KENNETH WONG

ILL SMALL and midsize sources if they so desire, giving them the businesses (SMBs) find high capability to burst to the cloud as addi- performance computing tional capacity is needed.” W(HPC) or supercomputing “Bursting” is a term that describes the useful—that is, useful enough to pay for practice of using on-demand capacity from it? The rapid growth of on-demand HPC public or private computing service provid- providers suggests they will. ers, such as Parallel Works or AWS, to aug- Parallel Works allows users to ment onsite resources for large-scale jobs. remotely run simulations, monitor Parallel Works, a startup spawned by progress and visualize results. the University of Chicago and Argonne Simplifying HPC Access Image courtesy of Parallel Works. National Labs, is the latest to bet on the SMBs that need additional computing emerging SMB supercomputing market. capacity can turn to public providers nario that needs to be simulated (for ex- “Our goal is to build a sustainable busi- like AWS. But providers like Parallel ample, a car crash) but lacks HPC exper- ness that enhances the design, research, Works and San Francisco-based Rescale, tise. The encapsulated workflows can serve and development efforts of our custom- another on-demand HPC provider, add as guided templates for non-experts to run ers while supporting the development software and services that make their routine simulation jobs. and innovation of parallel computing offerings more suitable for specialized Research institutions that pioneered technology,” the company announces on workloads, such as machine learning or the use of HPC for top-tier users are well- its homepage. engineering simulation. positioned to widen the market to SMBs. The company’s founder and CEO Mi- Wilde explains that the Parallel Works The rise of on-demand HPC vendors chael Wilde is a software architect at Ar- platform comes with a middleware and is also forcing many traditional simula- gonne National Laboratories and Senior service layer, designed to ease HPC-re- tion software providers to rethink their Fellow at the University of Chicago Com- lated functions. They include: strategy. Some may begin partnering with putation Institute. The company officially • compute management tools to spin companies like Parallel Works and Res- began operating in the spring of 2016 with up large cloud clusters quickly with a few cale to offer on-demand HPC along with a beta test. mouse clicks (but with constraints to en- their software licenses. Such partnerships Parallel Works’ platform is built on sure the usage doesn’t get out of hand); can eliminate one of the major hurdles in Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2. It also • a simple user interface with vali- on-demand HPC usage—the complexity connects to other larger HPC systems and dated input fields and drop-down op- of purchasing compute time and software supercomputers, like the Ohio State Su- tions to make it easy enough for a gen- licenses from two different vendors. DE percomputer Center, according to Wilde. eral user to deploy studies; (The Ohio Supercomputer Center is also • Swift technology (an open source Kenneth Wong is DE’s resident blogger home to AweSim, a startup offering HPC- parallel scripting language developed by and senior editor. Email him at de-editors@ driven simulation apps. For more, see Wilde’s team) to orchestrate the workflow digitaleng.news or share your thoughts on this digitaleng.news/virtual_desktop/?p=11383.) across all available compute resources on- article at digitaleng.news/facebook. “We plan to expand the types of com- site, offsite and in the cloud; and ///////////////////////////////////// pute resources offered to include many • a collaborative development environ- more cloud and HPC platforms,” Wilde ment for engineers to build and encapsu- INFO ➜ Amazon Web Services: AWS.Amazon.com said. “The technology underlying Paral- late workflows. lel Works (the Swift Parallel Scripting Many of these components are de- ➜ AweSim: AweSim.org Language) has drivers to connect to most signed to make HPC and simulation much ➜ Parallel Works: ParallelWorks.com HPC systems and schedulers, so making more accessible to a wider user base. The new connections is relatively straight- simple deployment user interface, for in- ➜ Rescale: Rescale.com forward. This also enables us to connect stance, can be used by an engineer with For more information on this topic, visit to the customers’ in-house compute re- sufficient domain knowledge of the sce- digitaleng.news.

20 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news FOCUS ON SOFTWARE REVIEW | DEMOCRATIZATION Now Even Better: AutoCAD 2017 for the Mac

The latest Mac version features new commands and a well-organized interface.

BY DAVID COHN

UTODESK RECENTLY INTRODUCED AUTOCAD 2017 for Mac, the seventh release of the native Macintosh version of its flagship CAD software. The new release includes many of the same features found in the Windows version of AutoCAD 2017, which began shipping in the spring of 2016 (see digitaleng.news/de/autocad- A 2017-a-new-beginning.) For example, AutoCAD 2017 for Mac includes the same new tools for creating and editing centerlines and center marks and the ability to import and convert geometry and TrueType text from vector PDF files. But the biggest changes in this new Mac release are updates to the program’s user interface.

Back in 1989, Autodesk re- leased its first native Mac ver- sion of AutoCAD. Although it made good use of the Ma- cintosh interface and proved to be a valuable precursor to future Windows versions of the software, it was deemed not Mac-like enough to sat- isfy Apple purists. After one more Mac release, it wasn’t until 2010 that Autodesk once again offered a native Mac version of AutoCAD. Since then, the Mac version has fol- lowed about nine months be- hind each Windows release. That’s not to say that plenty of people weren’t run- AutoCAD 2017 for the Mac features a more organized inter- ning AutoCAD on their Macs. Ever since Apple face, with a toolbar across the top of the drawing area, panels switched from Motorola to Intel processors, plenty anchored on the left and right, and the Command window of users have been running Windows-based ver- and Status Bar anchored at the bottom. File tabs let you easily sions of AutoCAD using virtual machine software. switch between multiple open drawings. That practice still remains popular, largely because the Mac version looks so different than the Win- dows version and the fact that the Mac version still lacks fea- Welcome UI Improvements tures found in the Windows release. But with AutoCAD 2017 Although AutoCAD 2017 for Mac still looks much different for Mac, more of those objections have disappeared. than its Windows counterpart, the new release should appear

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 21 FOCUS ON: DEMOCRATIZATION SOFTWARE REVIEW

and provides file tabs to eas- ily access all open drawings with a single click. And, you can start a new drawing by clicking a plus sign (+), and right-click a file tab to access a shortcut menu, just like in the Windows version. Model and Layout tabs have also been added, again with their own plus-sign button for creating new layouts. The Status Bar and Command window are now both anchored in place at the bottom of the drawing area and the Status bar is nearly identical to the one found in the Windows release, with the same ability to control the Users can open multiple AutoCAD sessions and arrange tools you want displayed. windows to compare drawings side by side. Switching to the The program’s toolsets have mini toolset provides more space for the drawing window. also undergone significant modifications. For example, a customizable toolbar contain- ing frequently used tools— similar to the Quick Access Toolbar in the Windows ver- sion—has been added across the top of the drawing area. The area to the left of the drawing area has now been or- ganized into two tabs—Draft- ing and Modeling—similar to the way tools in the Windows version are divided between workspaces. Tools on these tabs are further grouped into panels. For example, the Draw panel on the Drafting tab includes tools to draw ob- AutoCAD LT 2017 for Mac offers the same new interface as jects such as lines and circles, AutoCAD 2017 for Mac, while providing a more limited set whereas the Modify panel con- of 2D-only tools. tains tools such as Move, Copy and Rotate. The Modeling tab contains tools for creating and more familiar to those making the switch. Instead of the rib- modifying 3D solids, surfaces and meshes. These toolsets can bon interface, AutoCAD 2017 for Mac still puts many tools be reduced to mini toolsets that contain the same tools but where Mac users expect to find them—in the Apple menu bar. take up less room to increase space in the drawing area. Users But AutoCAD 2017 for Mac now has many more similarities can easily add or remove tools from a predefined list, collapse to AutoCAD for Windows. For example, instead of displaying or expand panels and reorder panels. You can also create a cus- each open drawing in its own floating window, everything is tom panel and add commands from the full command list. now contained within the program frame. The Properties Inspector is also part of the application AutoCAD 2017 for Mac now uses a single drawing panel frame. It contains layer controls where you can change the

22 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news properties of layers. The Layer palette has also been ex- a small collection of Express Tools is now available, but noth- panded to include more layer properties. Because all of these ing even approaches the nearly four-dozen tools available in tools are now part of the program frame, they can no longer the Windows version. These now join other features—such as be undocked and moved around the screen. dynamic blocks, data links and layer state management—that were added in previous Mac releases. Multiple Sessions So what is still missing? Unfortunately, that list is still With AutoCAD 2017 for Mac, users can have more than one quite lengthy. Over the past few years, the Mac release has AutoCAD session open at a time. Although that has long been gained some features that are similar to those in the Win- true for Windows, the Mac release adds a new twist. You can dows version. For example, the Content Palette is function- right-click the AutoCAD launch icon, select New AutoCAD ally similar to DesignCenter, and the Project Manager is Session and open a drawing in a new AutoCAD session. Or, the functional equivalent of the Sheet Set Manager. But you can right-click the file tab of an open drawing and choose AutoCAD for Mac still lacks tool palettes, quick select and Move to New Session to close that drawing in the current ses- notification for unreconciled layers. There are also no model sion and open it in a new session. Either way, you can arrange documentation tools, table style editing or point cloud sup- the sessions to see drawings side by side. port. Perhaps most glaring, the Mac version lacks the geo- AutoCAD 2017 for Mac also now supports Full Screen graphic location capabilities that have become so much a part mode. You can click the Full Screen button in the upper-left of the Windows release. You can access the Autodesk materi- corner of the application frame or toggle between full screen als library and assign materials on a per-object basis. But you and normal modes by pressing CMD+0. cannot assign materials by layer, edit materials or adjust ma- terial mapping. There is also no built-in rendering, although Still Missing Mac users can use cloud-based rendering. A number of other aspects long available in the Windows re- AutoCAD 2017 for Mac also still lacks support for lease have NWC_17found DEtheir 1-2 wayPage intoAdvert_Mar_17.pdf the Mac version. 1 For 08/03/2017 example, 13:20DWF or DGN underlays, hyperlinks, data extraction and

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digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 23 FOCUS ON: DEMOCRATIZATION SOFTWARE REVIEW

many other popular features found in the Windows ver- it on a monthly, annual or multi-year basis. sion of the software. Missing features aside, AutoCAD 2017 for Mac is a plea- sure to use. It runs on most modern Macintosh systems with By Subscription Only at least 3GB of memory and an Intel 64-bit CPU. Not only AutoCAD 2017 marked the first version of the program to is the subscription pricing the same as for the Windows ver- be sold only on a subscription basis rather than as a perpet- sion, you are not locked into a single platform. Autodesk’s ual license (in which you own a copy of a particular release cross-platform licensing means that if you already have a of AutoCAD and can use it essentially forever). AutoCAD serial number and product key for AutoCAD 2017 for Win- 2017 for Mac is also now available only by subscription as dows, you can install AutoCAD 2017 for Mac and use that well. You can download a free 30-day trial version of Auto- same serial number and product key to unlock the Mac ver- CAD 2017 for Mac from the Autodesk website and license sion, and vice versa. All things considered, AutoCAD 2017 for Mac is a great update. Its pure Mac user interface will certainly satisfy Apple AutoCAD LT for Mac 2017 purists, while those who crave the missing features can always switch between the Mac and Windows versions. DE s it has done since the 2012 release of its native Mac version, Autodesk has released A David Cohn is the senior content manager at 4D Technolo- a Mac version of its lower-cost sibling. gies where he develops the CADLearning eLearning courses for AutoCAD LT 2017 for Mac addresses the needs of AutoCAD and other Autodesk products. He also does consulting those who require only 2D drafting and detailing and technical writing from his home in Bellingham, WA. He is tools. It shares the same Macintosh interface as a contributing editor to Digital Engineering, has been using Au- AutoCAD 2017 for Mac, while providing a feature toCAD for more than 30 years and is the author of more than a set almost identical to that found in the Windows dozen books on AutoCAD. You can contact him via email at david@ version of AutoCAD LT 2017. dscohn.com or visit his website at dscohn.com. For example, AutoCAD LT 2017 for Mac has a ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// single drawing panel with file tabs across the top INFO Autodesk: and model and layout tabs at the bottom. It also « autodesk.com has the same Status Bar, Command window and AutoCAD 2017 for Mac and AutoCAD LT 2017 for Mac are toolsets, all anchored in place within a single pro- only available by subscription. Upgrade pricing and perpetual gram frame. Because AutoCAD LT is strictly 2D, licenses are no longer available. the area on the left has just a Drafting tab, but it AutoCAD 2017 offers the same capabilities to customize that tab • Monthly Price: $175 as found in AutoCAD 2017 for Mac. AutoCAD LT • 1 Year Price: $1,400 ($1,560 with Advanced Support) 2017 for Mac also includes the same new center- • 2 Year Price: $2,660 line and center mark commands and PDF import • 3 Year Price: $3,780 ($2,646 with perpetual license trade-in) and export capabilities found in AutoCAD 2017. AutoCAD LT 2017 Users can also have more than one AutoCAD • Monthly Price: $45 LT session open at a time and toggle between full • 1 Year Price: $360 screen and normal display modes. Again, because • 3 Year Price: $970 ($679 with perpetual license trade-in AutoCAD LT is strictly a 2D program, it lacks the System Requirements 3D modeling tools found in AutoCAD as well as • Computer: Apple MacPro 4.1 or later; MacBookPro 5.1 or support for AutoLISP and other customization later; iMac 8.1 or later; MacMini 3.1 or later; MacBookAir 2.1 or capabilities. But it does include the same Express later, or MacBook 5.1 or later Tools found in AutoCAD 2017 for Mac. • Operating System: Apple macOS Sierra v10.12 or later; Because AutoCAD LT is also now sold only on Mac OS X v10.11 or later (El Capitan); or Mac OS X v10.10 or a subscription basis, AutoCAD LT 2017 for Mac is later (Yosemite) also only available by subscription. You can down- • CPU: 64-bit Intel processor load a free 30-day trial and license it on a monthly, • Memory: 3GB of RAM (4GB recommended) annual or multi-year basis, with pricing identical to • Disk space: 3GB of free disk space for download and that of the Windows version. If your drawing needs installation are limited to 2D, AutoCAD LT 2017 for Mac is • Video: 1280x800 display with true color (2880x1800 with now an even better solution. Retina Display recommended)

24 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news FOCUS ON DESIGN SOFTWARE REVIEW | DEMOCRATIZATION Budget CAD, No Subscription Required CorelCAD 2017 offers AutoCAD-like features and DWG compatibility.

BY DAVID COHN

OREL HAS BEEN AROUND A LONG TIME. The Canadian software company’s CorelDRAW software, in- troduced in 1989, was one of the first graphics programs available for Windows—and at one time Corel was the biggest software company in Canada. More recently, Corel has acquired numerous programs in markets including C design, illustration, photo editing and video editing. The company recently released CorelCAD 2017, the sixth CorelCAD is positioned as a low-cost alternative to Auto- version of its 2D/3D CAD software. CorelCAD is built using CAD and uses DWG as its own native CorelCAD file format, the ARES CAD kernel from German developer Graebert. That specifically the R2013 DWG format used by all versions of Au- same CAD engine powers Graebert’s own ARES Commander toCAD from 2013 through 2017. CorelCAD 2017 is available and Dassault Systèmes’ DraftSight software. for Windows, Mac OS and Android tablets.

CorelCAD 2017 adds a new centerline command. When you switch to its Drafting and Annotation workspace, its interface looks much like AutoCAD.

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 25 FOCUS ON: DEMOCRATIZATION DESIGN SOFTWARE REVIEW

Patterns along a path represent another new CorelCAD fea- ture added to match similar functionality first introduced in Auto- CAD 2012. In addition to creating copies of selected objects in a rectangular or circular pattern, CorelCAD 2017 users can create copies of specified objects along a spline, polyline, arc, circle or elliptical path. But unlike AutoCAD, patterns in CorelCAD are never associative. In AutoCAD, if you change the path, the objects in an associative array update. In CorelCAD, if you change the path, you will have to delete the copied objects and start again. CorelCAD 2017 also introduces a centerline construction command, similar to the centerline tool introduced in AutoCAD CorelCAD 2017 is also available as a mobile 2017. When you start the command, the program prompts you application for Android tablets and smartphones. to select two entities—which can be pairs of lines, arcs or polyline segments—and places a centerline between them. But, the result- Familiar Interface ing centerlines are not associative to the objects they annotate. When you first start CorelCAD, the program displays its “clas- Other new features include a ChangeSpace command that sic” user interface that includes pull-down menus and a host of enables you to move entities between model space and sheet toolbars with icon-only buttons docked around the perimeter of workspaces. The program’s trimming tools have been enhanced screen. But as soon as you switch to the “Drafting and Annota- to work with hatches as well as solid and gradient fills. tion” or “3D Modeling” workspaces—equivalent to similarly- named workspaces in AutoCAD—CorelCAD changes to a rib- Compatibility and More bon interface quite similar to that of AutoCAD. CorelCAD also offers some 3D modeling capabilities, which have Like AutoCAD, each drawing appears in its own window, not been significantly updated in the latest release. For example, identified by a file tab across the top of the drawing area. You can you can create primitives such as solid boxes, wedges, cylinders and use the drawing file tabs to easily switch between drawings or start spheres. There are also tools to create some solid mesh objects, a new drawing and use tabs in the lower-left corner of the draw- such as ruled, revolved and tabulated meshes. But CorelCAD lacks ing window to switch between model space and multiple sheets— tools for creating mesh primitives and the program has no surface equivalent to paper space layouts in AutoCAD. In fact, some simi- modeling capabilities. You can perform Boolean operations such as larities between CorelCAD and AutoCAD are uncanny. union, subtract and intersect to combine 3D objects, but you can- For example: CorelCAD has a command window and you can not use grips to change the size or shape of objects. start commands by typing, just like AutoCAD. A few commands CorelCAD also provides surprisingly good support for Au- have different names—such as NOTE instead of MTEXT, and toLISP as well as ARX. The program uses the same hatch pat- PATTERN instead of ARRAY—but thanks to command short- terns, linetypes and SHX text files as AutoCAD, so users should cuts, it really doesn’t matter. have no compatibility issues when exchanging drawing files. CorelCAD actually offers some capabilities not found in Auto- Added Features CAD. For example, you can insert audio recordings (called Voice- Although CorelCAD doesn’t include every function found in Au- Notes) into a drawing. These recordings are embedded into the toCAD, the list of missing features has gotten smaller. For example, drawing and can be played back later. Although AutoCAD does the program’s Quick Input feature—nearly identical to AutoCAD’s not support VoiceNotes, it has no problem opening a drawing dynamic input—shows commands and options adjacent to the cur- containing them and after resaving the drawing in AutoCAD, the sor. CorelCAD 2017 also now includes command auto-completion VoiceNotes play fine when the file is opened again in CorelCAD. (nearly identical to the feature introduced in AutoCAD 2012). CorelCAD also supports other industry-standard formats, CorelCAD 2017 also adds context-sensitive object grips, including SVG, ACIS and SAT, enabling users to import files similar to extended tooltips in AutoCAD. When you hover the from other CAD programs. You can also export to PDF and cursor over a grip, the program displays a contextual shortcut include PDF files as underlays, but you cannot yet import PDF menu that speeds editing of existing geometry. geometry into a CorelCAD drawing. Because it is developed As in AutoCAD, you can define attributes and include them by Corel, it makes sense that CorelCAD also provides links to as part of a block. An extended block attribute editor, new in other Corel software. You can import CorelDRAW and Corel CorelCAD 2017, lets you modify attribute values, properties DESIGNER files as model space objects and export CorelCAD and text options for any block that has already been inserted drawings to both formats, but only in the Windows version. The into the drawing. Also new to CorelCAD 2017 is a split dimen- CDR and DES formats are not supported on the Mac OS. sion command that can split dimension lines and extension lines There remains a long list of AutoCAD features not available where they cross other geometry. in CorelCAD, such as sheet sets, dynamic blocks and model docu-

26 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// mentation. But at $699, CorelCAD is much less expensive than INFO ➜ Corel Corp.: corel.com AutoCAD or even AutoCAD LT. The fact that your CorelCAD CorelCAD 2017 purchase gets you a perpetual license may also be very attractive. • Full Version Price (includes 1-year mobile license): $699 AutoCAD is now available only on a subscription basis, whereas • Upgrade Price (from any previous CorelCAD Version: $199 when you buy CorelCAD, your license never expires. You can also • 2 Year Price: $2,660 upgrade from any previous version of CorelCAD for $199. In ad- • 3 Year Price: $3,780 ($2,646 with perpetual license trade-in) dition, you can download CorelCAD Mobile for Android tablets and smartphones from the Google Play store (no iOS version at Windows System Requirements present). The mobile version offers 3D viewing and 2D editing • OS: Windows 10, Windows 8, or Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit) of any CorelCAD drawing, and provides full functionality for the • CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon x2 Dual-Core or higher first 30 days. After that trial period, it converts to view-only mode. • Memory: 2GB minimum (8GB or more recommended) But CorelCAD 2017 licensed customers can continue to use the • Disk Space: 500MB full mobile version for one year and pay $199 per year thereafter. • GPU: 3D graphics accelerator with OpenGL v1.4 (OpenGL v3.2 The similarities to AutoCAD—and its low cost—are defi- or higher recommended) nitely CorelCAD’s strengths. Although it lacks many of Auto- • Display: 1280 x 768 minimum (1920x1080 recommended) CAD’s more advanced capabilities, CorelCAD offers an attrac- Macintosh System Requirements tive alternative for those on a budget. DE • OS: Mac OS X v10.9 (Mavericks) or higher (incl. macOS Sierra) • CPU: Intel processor David Cohn is the senior content manager at 4D Technologies. He also • Memory: 2GB minimum (8GB or more recommended) does consulting and technical writing from his home in Bellingham, • Disk Space: 500MB WA. He is a contributing editor to Digital Engineering and is the • GPU: 3D graphics accelerator with OpenGL v1.4 (OpenGL v3.2 authorDE of more than - a dozen7 books. x You can4.75 contact him via email at or higher recommended) [email protected] or visit his website at dscohn.com. • Display: 1280x768 minimum (1920x1080 recommended)

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digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 27 DESIGN ||| CAD on the Cloud Designing Online with Onshape Onshape’s cloud CAD solution links engineering teams in new ways.

BY MICHAEL BELFIORE

N A CAMBRIDGE, MA, office installed CAD software was unable to tors can use Onshape for free. A profes- park, engineers at Onshape are work- fully serve. sional license costs $100 a month and the ing to overturn the world of com- fee includes updates that the engineers I puter-aided design software—again. Models for CAD on the Cloud push out to the system about every three The idea of online CAD is not unique weeks. SOLIDWORKS, by contrast, When Onshape CEO Jon to Onshape. Autodesk, for example, starts at $3,995 per installation, plus a Hirschtick and his fellow co-founders began working on cloud-based CAD $1,295 annual subscription for updates. set out to reinvent CAD software in in 2010, according to Autodesk acting Not everyone agrees that full cloud 2012, they had a good sense of how to co-CEO Andrew Anagnost. The com- is the way to go for CAD, however. do it. That’s because they had done it pany’s Fusion 360 product is a hybrid “We actually still have both—we have before. “Someone had to try building desktop-cloud package that includes a full, all-in cloud approach and we this,” he says. As he sees it, the first op- not just computer-aided design but also have a hybrid approach,” Autodesk’s portunity to disrupt computer-aided simulation and manufacturing. On- Anagnost says, adding that the hybrid design arrived with Windows PCs in shape is unique in its approach to what approach is where the money is. “Cus- the early 1990s. That’s when he co- aims to be a fully capable, full-cloud tomers need to be able to work any founded SOLIDWORKS, with the goal model, in which no software installation time they want, anywhere they want. of putting solid modeling on every en- is required and it can be used without If you’re constantly slaving them to gineer’s desktop. Now, Hirschtick and restriction on mobile devices as well as an internet connection or a particular a few of his colleagues from SOLID- desktops and laptops. width of internet pipe, you’re not re- WORKS, along with a new team of Marc Halpert, research vice presi- ally respecting what they need to do.” engineers, seek to take advantage of dent for manufacturing advisory ser- Instead, Autodesk is betting on an ap- another platform shift—the move to vices at Gartner, says Onshape’s model proach that Anagnost says combines mobile and cloud computing—along could be a game changer. “Functionally, the best features of cloud software and with changes in the way people design. it introduces a quantum leap in col- installed software. “This change in how people are laboration capability across what we call “Most of our customers—they’re working is profound,” he says. “It’s ‘product development value networks,’” always online,” he says. “But when they about teams being larger and spread out he says. “As a business model, it pro- need to go offline or when they need to more and working on faster time and vides unprecedented access to design go work in some other kind of environ- really following the idea of agile, inno- software at price points that are barriers ment, they can do it.” Autodesk, too, vative iteration. Instead of pre-planned, to entry for the mainstream vendors offers affordable options for its online sequential planning, the premium is on using conventional perpetual licensing product, starting at free for students speed in innovation and trying things.” or SaaS (software-as-a-service) licens- and startups, and $40 a month or $300 To Hirschtick and his colleagues, ing models.” In other words, it provides a year for professionals. fully cloud-based CAD software looked powerful new collaborative capabilities After logging on to Fusion 360, the like a way to both take advantage of the for engineers, and the price is right for system installs a smaller piece of soft- convergence of cloud, web and mobile their companies. ware on a local computer than would computing, and also to meet a need Engineers working on open source be required for a full CAD package. that they felt conventional, individually projects as well as students and educa- Updates get pushed to the local machine

28 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news unobtrusively, ensuring that everything not available elsewhere. Left to right: Onshape CEO Jon stays up to date. Anagnost says that the In February, Onshape released its Hirschtick discusses the software with advantage to the hybrid system is a small Sheet Metal feature, which, like simi- engineers Bob Miner and Steve Hess. install size that works even in low or lar features in other packages, helps non-existent bandwidth situations, like engineers to see how flat sheet metal the room. That audio company Bose, on a plane trip. When an engineer’s ma- designs will appear when folded. The packaging machine maker FEMC and chine reconnects with the cloud, design difference, says Henry, is that the folded Coca-Cola, are among the converts to changes are automatically uploaded as version of the design appears in a side- Onshape’s brand of full cloud CAD is a a branch that can be merged with the by-side view with the flat design, allow- testament to the success of their efforts. main design, along with changes that ing for faster workflows. The system Ultimately, it will be up to individual other engineers have made. also highlights potential clashes that engineers and the companies they work would make manufacturing difficult. for to decide whether the full-cloud Cloud Collaboration In addition, Onshape is rolling out an model is the future of CAD. Hirschtick Still, Hirschtick and his team insist that enterprise version that allows managers thinks the proof will be in the superior full cloud is the future of CAD, one that to keep tabs on the activities of their designs that he says will result from the engineers will increasingly take advantage teams, no matter where each member closer collaboration that online CAD of- of to create and iterate products more is located. Analytics show how often fers. “I think that because of what we’re quickly than ever before, thanks in part and when designs are worked and what doing, whether you use Onshape or you to real-time collaboration. Making the changes have been made. McEleney use one of our future, yet-to-be-released point in a demo, Onshape VP of Product says features like these that non-cloud competitors, you’ll have a better design,” Marketing Darren Henry showed how CAD offerings can’t match will force he says. “I like to think that’s why we two engineers can collaborate in real time competitors to play catch up. come to work in the morning.” DE on any device. He demonstrated how Some investors seem to agree. An- changes made on a desktop computer can dreessen Horowitz and other venture Michael Belfiore’s book The Department update in real time on a smartphone con- capital firms have pumped in $169 of Mad Scientists is the first to go behind the nected to a 4G network. million that should fuel the company’s scenes at DARPA, the government agency that Onshape, which went on sale in growth for the foreseeable future, McE- gave us the internet. He writes about disrup- 2015 after a few months as a free beta, leney says. Gartner’s Halpern says the tive innovation for a variety of publications. is still adding features that users have company should achieve its goals if it Reach him via michaelbelfiore.com. come to expect in a full CAD package. can continue its current pace of innova- ///////////////////////////////////// But Onshape co-founder and former tion and “convince a growing number of INFO ➜ Autodesk: Autodesk.com CEO of SOLIDWORKS John McEle - companies to try it.” During a visit early ney says the team is rolling out those this year, I saw Onshape’s sales team ➜ Onshape: Onshape.com features at a steady clip and should have working the phones to make the latter ➜ SOLIDWORKS: SOLIDWORKS.com everything most engineers need by the happen, standing at standing desks, en- For more information on this topic, visit end of 2017—as well as unique features ergized by rock music pumping through digitaleng.news.

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 29 ENGINEERING COMPUTING ||| Simulation Preconfigured HPC for Simulation Specialized middleware, license negotiations and workflow management tools distinguish turnkey HPC vendors.

BY KENNETH WONG

LOUD-HOSTED TECHNOLOGIES are generally easier to use and deploy. That, at any rate, is the expectation of the consumers. The precedents set by browser-based ERP (enterprise resource planning), PLM (product lifecycle management) and CRM (customer relationship management) offerings certainly reinforce this C notion. This may give the wrong idea about do-it-yourself HPC (high-performance computing) for simulation. “With AWS (Amazon Web Services), you’ll have to create a with job schedulers and storage setup on a public cloud server cluster that’s right for the job you want to perform. There are can easily take months.” some tools for managing queues and the environment. But they “Configuring simulation or deep learning applications in the can’t accommodate some interactive jobs, or people who want cloud is very complex,” says Tyler Smith, director of strategic to use their own schedulers, which is different from what AWS partnerships at Rescale. “Optimizing an application on Azure, provides,” says Kevin Kelly, sales director, Penguin Computing, Google or AWS can take months. You need expertise in both Penguin on Demand (POD). HPC and the simulation use case. Many businesses don’t have “It’s not just cloud-based HPC the customers are looking that expertise in-house.” for,” says Wim Slagter, director, HPC & cloud marketing at ANSYS. “What they want is simple, intuitive job submission Preconfigured HPC procedures, as well as compute and graphics nodes that they can Providers like Penguin Computing, Rescale and other HPC scale up or down easily. If they have to develop the simulation vendors hope to capture the simulation market by bundling environment themselves, they might just walk away. Doing that backend hardware with frontend software, a combo designed to make HPC-powered simulation easier. By precon- figuring the hardware infrastructure to fit the clients’ simulation workflow and providing online tools, they eliminate the IT burden that would have otherwise fallen on the user. “Our heritage is in building optimized, large HPC clusters. That’s the genesis of Penguin Computing,” says Kelly. “When we talk to customers about the ap- plication they want to run on HPC, often we find out it’s an application we already have, ready to run on POD [as a preloaded, preconfigured option]. With AWS or [Microsoft] Azure, you’ll have to put together an appropriate system for your application.” “Rescale’s offerings are extremely turnkey,” says Smith. “We’re not a consulting company. But with enterprise sales, we do act as advisors.” Rescale doesn’t own or operate its own data centers. The POD, or Penguin Computing on Demand, allows you company provides on-demand hardware infrastruc- to run simulation on Penguin Computing’s on-demand ture in partnership with hardware vendors like AWS infrastructure. Image courtesy of ANSYS. and Azure.

30 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news Bare Metal vs. Virtual are metal hardware is a physical piece of hardware whose computing capacity may B users. A simpler pay-as-you-go license that makes it easy to be delivered remotely to the users from the cloud. On the other hand, a virtual machine (VM) predict the cost of a HPC-powered simulation job will go a long doesn’t really exist; it’s partitioned out of a large way to encourage more DOE analyses. cluster’s computing capacity. Thus, a bare metal Cloud for Lease with Unlimited Software Use cluster could host a number of VMs. VMs are designed to be on par with real machines in their In 2014, Altair, the company best known for its OptiStruct processing power. But in some simulation work- solver, launched HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance, a flows, the virtualization protocols may noticeably cloud-hosted simulation platform built on AWS infrastructure. The predecessor to the AWS-based version was Altair’s Hyper- degrade the software’s performance. Works Unlimited Physical Appliance, a turnkey appliance that functions as an onsite HPC cluster for simulation. “Virtualized environments are not appropriate for many “One size doesn’t fit all,” says Rob Walsh, VP of business HPC workloads,” notes Kelly. “A bare metal environment, [like development for cloud solutions, Altair. “We offer HyperWorks POD] runs optimally for many HPC applications. Besides, we Unlimited Physical Appliance for people using it for [the] long meter in three-second increments. Some of the providers meter term. It’s a great value for them. But for customers who need a by the hour.” much more dynamic setup, we offer HyperWorks Unlimited If a simulation job takes five hours and three seconds, for ex- Virtual Appliance.” ample, you’ll be billed for six hours of processing time by a ven- One unique feature of Altair’s offering is the software bun- dor who meters by the hour. Your bill for such a job in Penguin dled with HyperWorks Unlimited. Whether you get the AWS- Computing’s billing method, as Kelly explains, will be strictly for based virtual appliance or the bare-metal physical appliance, five hours and three seconds. the platform comes with “unlimited use of the HyperWorks computer-aided engineering (CAE) suite with PBS Professional, Middleman for Licensing a leading HPC workload manager,” the company writes. Specialized HPC vendors also perform another function that general purpose cloud providers like AWS and Google don’t— sorting out the software licensing needs. HPC licensing for simulation is different from single-user or single-machine licensing. HPC licensing allows the software to run in parallel on dozens, hundreds or even thousands of cores for faster pro- cessing and efficiency. Figuring out the right licensing scheme or the most economic option for a particular HPC job could be a stumbling block. “We have negotiated contracts and proactively figure out go-to market strategies with software vendors,” says Smith. “We’re pushing ISVs [independent software vendors] to imple- ment on-demand licensing. We work closely with companies that haven’t [developed on-demand licensing]. At the end of the day, Rescale doesn’t resell software licenses. But we can facilitate [license acquisition].” Penguin Computing’s Kelly says the company enables cus- tomers to leverage cloud licenses from their software vendors, or can implement workflows with secure access to on-premise license servers. “Many of our customers have great relation- ships with their ISVs and want to keep that direct relation- ship,” he says. Without a licensing mechanism that allows multiple in- stances of the software to run simultaneously on hundreds of cores, engineers can’t perform what is called design of experi- ment (DOE), a type of simulation conducted to evaluate and analyze a sweep of design options to identify the best. Leading ISVs have begun to offer various forms of token-based or usage- based licensing options, but the variety of billing and calculation methods could be difficult to decipher for novices and ordinary

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 31 ENGINEERING COMPUTING ||| Simulation

“We are ultimately a simulation software pro- vider. That’s what we focus on. We’re good at that,” says Slagter. “Cloud-hosting partners are experts at remote hosting and cloud infrastructure—set- ting it up, building it and maintaining it. For the short term, ANSYS has no plan to become [an on- demand HPC provider].” In mid-2015, ANSYS launched The ANSYS Enterprise Cloud, powered by the ANSYS Cloud Gateway and AWS. “The global backbone of public cloud providers like AWS and Azure with cloud data centers around the globe has great appeal to many of our customers,” explains Slagter. “That’s why we’ve developed an Enterprise Cloud solution The cluster-configuration interface of Rescale’s that is engineered to enable end-to-end simulation on-demand simulation infrastructure. to be performed entirely in the public cloud. While our solu- Image courtesy of Rescale. tion provides a complete virtual simulation data center, HPC resources are still at the heart of the system. We have partnered “If you get the cloud cheap, but you need to pay a lot more with Cycle Computing, a company that specializes in enabling for ISV software licenses to run your job, that still inhibits what HPC workloads on public cloud infrastructure, and it is their you can do with on-demand HPC,” Walsh says. “So the value CycleCloud software that powers the auto-scaling clusters that we add [with unlimited software use] is significant.” deliver HPC on demand.” HyperWorks Unlimited is not sold, but is instead leased, and is therefore described as “a fully managed HPC appliance,” Walsh Hybrid for the Near Future says. “We lease out HyperWorks Unlimited hardware on a yearly A startup launching today may have the option to delegate all or term. Either the solver or the hardware itself alone would have most of its IT needs to the cloud. But many midsize and large cost you the same amount, so it’s like getting the other for free.” enterprises that began life in the pre-cloud era didn’t have that luxury. So the majority of them now own, operate and maintain HPC-ISV Partnerships private clusters. Forsaking the hardware they already own for Most simulation software vendors do not own and operate their the convenience of the cloud is still a difficult proposition. own data centers—a prerequisite to support on-demand HPC. “The average lifespan of a cluster is three to five years,” Many also lack the HPC expertise required to put together ap- notes Smith. “If you have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars plication-optimized clusters on the fly. Therefore, a partnership on a cluster, you’re not going to abandon them. You’ll figure out with an on-demand HPC vendor is the most practical approach. a way to use them.” That is the reason many industry insiders Leading simulation software makers Siemens PLM Soft- are counting on the hybrid model—onsite clusters augmented ware, Dassault Systèmes and ANSYS, for instance, have a rela- with on-demand resources—to persist for the near future. tionship with Rescale that enables users to run their software on “Rescale sees opportunity in the hybrid model for the near Rescale’s infrastructure. term,” says Smith. “Currently, many businesses are using on- premise hardware, but that is shifting. The migration can be pretty challenging. We can augment your on-premise resource Hybrid Cloud and make the migration seamless.” DE he term hybrid cloud is often used to Kenneth Wong is DE’s resident blogger and senior edi- describe a combination of privately owned tor. Email him at [email protected] or share your clusters and on-demand computing. The T thoughts on this article at digitaleng.news/facebook. setup is common among manufacturing firms that rely heavily on simulation. Large simulation jobs ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// tend to demand far more computing capacity than INFO ➜ ANSYS: ANSYS.com what’s available in a single machine, or an onsite ➜ Altair: Altair.com cluster. To address the deficiency, a business may augment the processing power of the company- ➜ Rescale: Rescale.com owned cluster with additional CPU and GPU cores ➜ Penguin Computing: Penguincomputing.com from an on-demand HPC vendor. For more information on this topic, visit digitaleng.news.

32 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news Graphics Review ||| ENGINEERING COMPUTING A New Name and a New Look 1

AMD releases new Radeon Pro WX series of workstation-class graphics boards.

BY DAVID COHN

n early November 2016, AMD began shipping the latest generation of its professional workstation-class graphics cards, first announced at last year’s SIGGRAPH I conference (see “AMD Launches New Graphics Cards,” digitaleng.news/de/amd-launches-new-graphics-cards). It has been a few years since we last had an opportunity to do a 2 hands-on review of the company’s graphics boards, so we were quite pleased when a new AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 arrived at our test lab.

Although AMD has long been known as a competitor to Intel in the CPU market, the Sunnyvale, CA com- pany moved into graphics in a big way in 2006 when it acquired Canadian graphics card manufacturer ATI and took over development of the ATI FirePro graphics boards. AMD continued to use the FirePro name on its professional workstation-class cards until now. With the release of AMD’s new Radeon Pro WX series, the name and the ATI red, white and black color scheme appear to be history. 3 A Closer Look at the Three New Boards The new Radeon Pro WX series consists of three new boards, based on AMD’s Polaris architecture: the Rad- eon Pro WX 4100, Radeon Pro WX 5100 and Radeon WX 7100. All three are based on the company’s fourth- generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) technology, but are now manufactured using a 14nm FinFET process that reduces active power consumption and provides FIG. 1: The AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100 low-profile more transistors to allow for more compute units and workstation graphics card. cache. According to AMD, the Polaris architecture also The mid-range AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100. leverages these additional transistors for new intelligent FIG. 2: features such as “aggressive primitive culling,” which FIG. 3: The high-end VR-ready AMD Radeon Pro WX helps to improve performance and energy efficiency, and 7100. Photos courtesy of AMD.

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 33 ENGINEERING COMPUTING ||| Graphics Review

Specifications for the new AMD Radeon AMD AMD AMD AMD AMD AMD Pro-series graphics boards compared Radeon Pro FirePro Radeon Pro FirePro Radeon Pro FirePro with the previous generation AMD WX7100 W7100 WX5100 W5100 WX4100 W4100 FirePro W-series. NEW! NEW! NEW!

Estimated street price (at launch) $799 $799 $499 $499 $399 $399 Average street price (today) $630 $399 $260 SPECIFICATIONS Extra power required Yes Yes No No No No Form factor (inches) 4.38x9.5 4.38x9.5 4.38x6.8 4.38x7.31 4.38x6.8 4.38x6.5 Slots used 1 1 1 1 1 1 Max Power (watts) 150W 150W 75W 75W 50W 50W PCLe version 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 Processors 2304 1792 1792 768 1024 512 Memory configuration 8GB (GDDR5) 8GB (GDDR5) 8GB (GDDR5) 4GB (GDDR5) 4GB (GDDR5) 2GB (GDDR5) Memory interface 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit Memory bandwidth 244 GB/s 160 GB/s 160 GB/s 96 GB/s 96 GB/s 72 GB/s Number of DVI Dual Link Outputs 0 0 0 0 0 0 Number of Display Port Outputs 4 DP 4 DP 4 DP 4 DP 4 miniDP 4 miniDP

Stereo 3D Connector (3-pin) Yes (1) Yes (1) Yes (1) Yes (1) No No

Framelock/Genlock Yes Yes (1) No No No No Multi-GPU (SLI-NVIDIA) Yes Yes Yes Yes No No OpenGL version 4.5 4.4 4.5 4.4 4.5 4.4 DirectX/Shader Model 12/5.0 12/5.0 12/5.0 12/5.0 12/5.0 12/5.0

(2) (2) (2) 4096x2160 4096x2160 4096x2160 Maximum Resolution Support 5120x2880 (3) 5120x2880 (3) 5120x2880 (3) 2560x1600 2560x1600 2560x1600

1. With optional expansion bracket 2. Resolution with DisplayPort 1.2 3. Resolution with DisplayPort 1.1 quality-of-service to reduce contention between graph- W4100. The new board comes with 4GB of GDDR5 ics and compute shaders. The Polaris architecture is memory (double the memory of its predecessor) and 16 implemented using custom and adaptive circuit designs compute units for a total of 1024 stream processors (vs. that dynamically run the silicon at the highest frequency 512 in the older board). Like the W4100, the new Rad- and lowest voltage possible, further boosting the energy eon Pro WX 4100 has a 128-bit interface, a maximum efficiency of Polaris-based graphics processing units power consumption of 50 watts, and provides four mini (GPUs). AMD claims that the combination of all these DisplayPorts. Although display resolution for the W4100 innovations is “a next-generation graphics architecture maxed out at 4K, the new WX 4100 can power a single that is up to 2.8 times more power efficient while helping 5K display or up to four 4K monitors. improve visual quality with high-dynamic range display The mid-range AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 replaces and media encoding and decoding quality for the latest last year’s FirePro W5100. AMD claims that the WX content.” 5100 is the fastest 75-watt workstation GPU. Although The Radeon Pro WX 4100 graphics card is billed it matches the older board’s $499 manufacturer’s sug- as the world’s fastest low-profile workstation graphics gested retail price (and has an average street price of GPU, with a claimed performance of 2 TFLOPS for $399), it provides 8GB of GDDR5 memory (double that single-precision. With a manufacturer’s suggested retail of the W5100) and 28 compute units for a total of 1792 price (MSRP) of $399, it essentially replaces the FirePro Stream Processors (compared with 12 compute units and

34 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news 768 stream processors in the older board). That actu- ally equals the number of processors in AMD’s previous Performance Comparison high-end FirePro W7100. The WX 5100 also has a 256- bit interface, twice that of its predecessor. AMD claims a AMD peak performance of 3.9 TFLOPS for single-precision. FirePro V5800 Like its predecessor, the WX 5100 consumes a single slot and provides four DisplayPort connectors. The WX 5100 AMD also supports CrossFire Pro that enables users to harness FirePro V5900 the power of two GPUs by linking two identical Radeon Pro cards together. The board also supports stereo 3D AMD via an expansion bracket. Unlike its predecessor, however, Radeon Pro WX5100 the new Radeon Pro WX 5100 can support up to two 5K displays. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 At the high-end, AMD introduced the Radeon Pro SPECviewperf Geomean WX 7100, which the company touts as the world’s fasted single slot workstation GPU ready for VR. With an MSRP of $799, the WX 7100 supplants the FirePro The performance of the new AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 W7100. Although it matches the 8GB of GDDR5 mem- compared with previous generation AMD FirePro boards. ory of the W7100, it is equipped with 36 compute units for a total of 2304 Stream Processors. Although the WX AMD’s claimed performance improvements. 7100 consumes just a single PCIe x16 slot, its 150-watt All three new AMD Radeon Pro graphics boards sup- power consumption requires a six-pin auxiliary power port high dynamic-range (HDR) displays, higher con- connection. Like its predecessor, the WX 7100 provides trast ratios and a wider color gamut than the previous four DisplayPorts, but again ups the ante by supporting generation. They also support higher resolutions (up to up to two 5K displays. Like the W7100, the Radeon Pro 5120x2880, or 5K) and higher refresh rates (up to 96Hz WX 7100 supports stereo 3D via an additional bracket, at 3840x2160, or 4K via DisplayPort 1.4 and 3840x2160 supports framelock/genlock via an additional module, at 60Hz via HDMI 2.0b). and also supports CrossFire Pro. Like previous AMD boards, all new Radeon Pro WX series graphics cards are fully certified with most engi- Testing the Radeon Pro WX 5100 neering design applications. The new boards utilize a Because we only received the new Radeon Pro WX 5100, new Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Driver, which is that was the only board we were able to test. We typically different from the unified video drivers used by older compare new graphics cards with the previous generation FirePro cards. But as was true previously, the new driver by testing the new boards and the older boards in the is available for Windows 7, Windows 10 and Linux—but same workstation and using the same video driver so that only for 64-bit versions of those operating systems. the only variable is the GPU itself. In this case, however, The three new boards come with 24/7 VIP customer because we never had the opportunity to test the previ- support, a three-year limited warranty and now feature ous generation of AMD graphics boards, we had to go an optional free seven-year extended limited warranty back a few years. upon product and customer registration. Clearly, AMD is We therefore compared the new AMD Radeon Pro ready once again to go head-to-head with NVIDIA. DE WX 5100 with the older AMD FirePro V5900 and Fire- Pro V5800 graphics boards. We ran version 12 of the David Cohn is the senior content manager at 4D Technolo- SPECviewperf benchmark (spec.org) using a BOXX gies where he develops the CADLearning eLearning courses for workstation (boxx.com) equipped with an Intel Core AutoCAD and other Autodesk products. He also does consulting i7-4790 quad-core CPU (over-clocked to 4.5GHz) and and technical writing from his home in Bellingham, WA. He 16GB of memory, running Windows 10 Pro. We also is a contributing editor to Digital Engineering, has been using used this same workstation to test the latest graphics AutoCAD for more than 30 years and is the author of more cards from NVIDIA (see “Super Computer Graphics,” than a dozen books on AutoCAD. You can contact him via email page 36), so you can make direct comparisons. at [email protected] or visit his website at dscohn.com. The performance improvement over the older boards ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// we were able to test was quite dramatic. Although we would not expect the difference compared with the more INFO ➜ AMD: amd.com recent boards to be as significant, we tend to believe For more information on this topic, visit digitaleng.news

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 35 ENGINEERING COMPUTING ||| Graphics Review Super Computer

Graphics 1 NVIDIA’s new Pascal-based GPUs achieve unprecedented levels of performance.

BY DAVID COHN

AST SUMMER, AT THE SIGGRAPH CONFERENCE, NVIDIA unveiled the first of a new series of graphics cards based on its Pascal L GPU architecture (see “Graphics Power for Intense Work,” digitaleng.news/de/graphics-power-for-intense-work). One of those boards, the NVIDIA Quadro P5000, arrived at our test lab in mid-December. In early February, the Santa Clara, CA-based company used the SOLIDWORKS World 2 conference as the venue to announce several additional Pascal- based boards. Two of those boards, the Quadro P4000 and P2000, soon arrived at our offices as well.

Because it has been a few years since the last time we were able to get our hands on an entirely new family of NVIDIA pro- fessional workstation-class graphics cards, we quickly set about the task of testing these new boards.

Three New NVIDIA Boards Span Mid-Range to Ultra-High-End The new NVIDIA Quadro P-series will eventually include a total of eight cards, ranging from the ultra-high-end P6000 and P5000 announced last summer, to the high-end P4000, the mid- range P2000 and P1000, and the entry-level P600 and P400. The company also launched Quadro GP100, a specialty high- 3 performance computing board capable of 64-, 32- and 16-bit floating point calculations. All eight new P-series boards are based on NVIDIA’s lat- est Pascal GPU architecture, built using a 16nm FinFET+ manufacturing process that allows the GPUs to include more transistors, operate at higher frequencies and deliver better per- formance per watt compared with previous-generation GPUs. The new boards incorporate more CUDA cores and larger framebuffers compared with their predecessors, allowing higher FIG. 1: The NVIDIA Quadro P2000 mid-range graphics performance with larger datasets. board. The NVIDIA Quadro P2000 is the company’s new mid-range FIG. 2: The high-end NVIDIA Quadro P4000 is VR-ready. solution, designed to handle medium-size CAD models. With FIG. 3: The ultra-high-end NVIDIA Quadro P5000 features an estimated street price of just $499, it effectively replaces the 16GB of GDDR5X memory. Photos courtesy of NVIDIA.

36 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news Performance Comparison

NVIDIA Quadro K2200 NVIDIA Quadro P2000 NVIDIA M2000. The new Quadro P2000 features Quadro 4000 NVIDIA 1024 CUDA parallel processing cores Quadro K4200 NVIDIA (compared with 768 in the M2000) and Quadro K4200 NVIDIA includes 5GB of GDDR5 memory, 1GB Quadro P4000 NVIDIA more than its predecessor. Its 160-bit Quadro 5000 NVIDIA interface is also wider than the 128-bit in- Quadro K5000 NVIDIA terface in the Maxwell-based M2000, en- Quadro K5200 NVIDIA abling the new board to deliver a memory Quadro M5000 NVIDIA bandwidth of 140 GB/second (compared Quadro P5000 with 106 GB/s in the M2000). NVIDIA 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 claims peak single-precision performance SPECviewperf Geomean of up to 3.0 TFLOPs. The M2000 pro- The performance of the three new NVIDIA Quadro P-series vides four DisplayPort 1.4 connectors boards compared with previous generation boards. enabling it to support up to four 4K moni- tors at 60Hz. With conversion adapters, these outputs can display any combination of DisplayPort, mini-DisplayPort, HDMI or DVI, allowing users the ability to con- Graphics Card Price/Performance nect to a wide range of displays. For exam- $3,000 ple, the P2000 can support up to two 5K NVIDIA Quadro P5000 monitors at 60Hz or a single 8K projector. $2,500 The high-end NVIDIA Quadro

P4000 is designed to handle large, com- $2,000 plex CAD models, and with the optional new Quadro Sync II add-in card, to $1,500 drive more monitors from a single sys- tem than ever before. When combined $1,000 NVIDIA with a single Quadro Sync II card, up Quadro 4000 NVIDIA to four P4000 GPUs can be seamlessly Quadro P2000 synchronized to drive a 16-display power $500 AMD wall from a single system. The P4000 is Radeon Pro X 5100 $0 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 positioned to replace last year’s M4000, Suggested Retail Price Manufacturer’s yet with an estimated street price of $799, the P4000 matches the cost of its prede- SPECviewperf Geomean cessor. Thanks to the new Pascal GPU, Price/performance of the three new NVIDIA Quadro the P4000 consumes just 105 watts (com- P-series boards compared with the latest offering from pared with 120 watts for the M4000). AMD (based on estimated street price). Although the P4000 uses just a single PCIe x16 slot, its power consumption still requires an additional six-pin auxiliary at 120Hz and 5120x2880 at 60Hz. Like class graphics cards to implement power connector. The Quadro P4000 its predecessor, the P4000 also supports error-correcting GDDR5X memory, provides 1792 CUDA cores (compared stereo 3D using an optional three-pin facilitating operations at up to a 9 GB/s with 1664 in the M4000) and includes connector on a separate bracket. data rate. The P5000 also features 2560 8GB of GDDR5 memory (the same as While both the P4000 and the CUDA cores (compared with 2048 in the the M4000). Although both boards have NVIDIA Quadro P5000 are VR-ready, M5000). Although the P5000 matches the a 256-bit memory interface, the P4000 the more powerful P5000 can handle even 256-bit memory interface of the M5000, increases the memory bandwidth to larger, more complex models. With an the newer board achieves a memory 243 GB/s (compared with 192 GB/s for initial estimated street price of $2,499, the bandwidth of 288 GB/s (compared with the M4000), enabling the new board to P5000 is slightly more expensive than the 211 GB/s for the M5000). As a result, deliver up to 5.3 TFLOPs of peak single- previous generation M5000, but offers the P5000 achieves up to 8.9 TFLOPs precision performance. The P4000 offers double the memory (16GB vs. 8GB). In of single-precision performance. All that four DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and addition, the P5000 and the even more extra muscle increases the maximum can support resolutions of 3840x2160 powerful P6000, are the first enterprise- power consumption in the P5000 to 180

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 37 ENGINEERING COMPUTING ||| Graphics Review

Specifications for the new NVIDIA NVIDIA NVIDIA NVIDIA NVIDIA NVIDIA NVIDIA Quadro P-series graphics boards Quadro Quadro Quadro Quadro Quadro Quadro compared with the previous P5000 M5000 P4000 M4000 P2000 M2000 generation M-series boards. NEW! NEW! NEW!

Estimated street price (at launch) $2,500 $2,000 $799 $799 $499 $499 SPECIFICATIONS Extra power required Single 8-pin Single 6-pin Single 6-pin Single 6-pin No No Form factor (inches) 4.38x10.50 4.38x10.50 4.38x9.50 4.38x9.50 4.38x6.6 4.38x6.6 Slots used 2 2 1 1 1 1 Max Power (watts) 180W 150W 105W 120W 75W 75W PCLe version 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 Processors 2560 2048 1792 1664 1024 768 Memory configuration 16GB (GDDR5X) 8GB (GDDR5) 8GB (GDDR5) 8GB (GDDR5) 5GB (GDDR5) 4GB (GDDR5) Memory interface 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 160-bit 128-bit Memory bandwidth 288 GB/s 173 GB/s 243 GB/s 192 GB/s 140 GB/s 106 GB/s Number of DVI Dual Link Outputs 1 1 0 0 0 0 Number of Display Port Outputs 4 DP 4 DP 4 DP 4 DP 4 DP 4 DP

Stereo 3D Connector (3-pin) Yes (2) Yes (2) Yes (2) Yes (2) No No

Framelock/Genlock Yes (1) Yes (1) Yes (1) Yes (1) No No Multi-GPU (SLI-NVIDIA) Yes Yes Yes Yes No No OpenGL version 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 DirectX/Shader Model 12/5.1 12/5.0 12/5.1 12/5.0 12/5.1 12/5.0 (4) 4096x2160 (5) (3) (4) (3) 7680x4320 (3) 2560x1600 7680x4320 4096x2160 7680x4320 (4) Maximum Resolution Support (6) (4) (7) (4) 4096x2160 2560x1600 (5) 1920x1200 5120x2880 2048x1536 5120x2880 (7) 2048x1536 1. Requires optional Quadro G-Sync or Quadro Sync card 4. Resolution with DisplayPort 1.2 @ 60Hz 6. Resolution with DVI-I single-link @ 60Hz 2. With optional expansion bracket 5. Resolution with DVI-I dual link @ 60Hz 7. Resolution VGA @ 85Hz 3. Resoution with DisplayPort 1.4 @ 30Hz watts (compared with 150 watts for the M5000). As a result, this the NVIDIA Quadro P4000 clearly outperformed the M5000. two-slot board requires an eight-pin auxiliary power connection. Like all other NVIDIA Quadro boards, the Quadro The NVIDIA Quadro P5000 provides four DisplayPort 1.2 con- P2000, P4000 and P5000 are fully certified with most en- nectors as well as a single DVI-I port. There is also a provision for gineering design applications, and all boards in the Quadro an optional three-pin stereo connector on a separate bracket as line use the same unified video driver and support Microsoft well as framelock/genlock. Windows 10, 8 and 7 (both 64- and 32-bit) as well as 32- and 64-bit versions of Linux. The boards are also backed by a Testing the New NVIDIA Pascal-Based Boards three-year warranty. Once again NVIDIA has introduced We tested all three new NVIDIA Quadro P-series boards using new GPUs that deliver unprecedented levels of performance SPECviewperf version 12 (spec.org) in a BOXX workstation across its entire product line. DE (boxx.com) equipped with an Intel Core i7-4790 quad-core CPU (overclocked to 4.5GHz) and 16 GB of memory, running David Cohn is the senior content manager at 4D Technologies. He also Windows 10 Pro. We also retested a number of older NVIDIA does consulting and technical writing from his home in Bellingham, WA Quadro boards in this same workstation as well as the latest and has been benchmarking PCs since 1984. He’s a contributing editor GPU from AMD (see “A New Name and an New Look, page 33) to DE and the author of more than a dozen books. You can contact him to make direct performance comparisons. via email at [email protected] or visit his website at dscohn.com. Our results provide convincing proof of the performance im- ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// provement achieved by each succeeding generation of NVIDIA GPU. Each new board equaled or exceeded the performance of INFO ➜ NVIDIA CORP.: nvidia.com the next higher level of the previous generation. For example, For more information on this topic, visit digitaleng.news

38 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news Design ||| INTERNET OF THINGS

Image Courtesy of ThinkStock.com/weerapatkiatdumrong

Connected products will require engineers to bake in security protection from the start.

BY BRIAN ALBRIGHT

S THE UNIVERSE OF CONNECTED devices to protect their security and privacy. So how do PRODUCTS continues to expand, the security of you protect deeply embedded endpoint devices with lim- the Internet of Things (IoT) has to be a primary ited memory/processing resources? A concern of all stakeholders—and that holds true It will require a mix of traditional security approaches, for the designers and engineers who will play a key role predesign discussions between engineers and security ex- in making sure connected assets, consumer products and perts, and strict testing and quality assurance processes. machinery are fully protected. The IoT is already under attack by hackers and mal- ware. In 2014, security firm Proofpoint found that an Security should be a top concern for any company de- Internet-connected refrigerator helped send more than signing a connected product. The IoT cannot reach its full 75,000 spam and phishing e-mails. Seehotel Jägerwirt in potential unless consumers and other end users trust those Austria had to pay ransom to hackers after they infiltrated

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 39 INTERNET OF THINGS ||| Design

the hotel’s computers, preventing them from creating key- The Industrial IoT Lab is located at NI’s global cards for guests. In October 2016, Internet infrastructure headquarters in Austin, TX. It is a working provider Dyn got hit by a botnet attack that took down a showcase of industrial Internet of Things number of websites and caused outages and network con- technologies, solutions and systems architectures. gestion across the United States. Mirai malware appears Image courtesy of National Instruments. to be the culprit. The malware leveraged several hundred thousand different IoT devices, including CCTV (closed- circuit television) video cameras and digital video record- “There are millions of devices being added to the ing systems from XiongMai Technologies. Mirai searches network that you just plug in and they work,” adds Mark the web for IoT devices that use factory-default passwords. Baugher, principal security architect at IoT platform pro- If there were similar attacks on systems that affect vider Greenwave Systems. “You don’t have to change a public safety (utilities, hospitals, connected vehicles), the password, and they may not even have a user interface.” results could be catastrophic. According to Baugher, IoT systems present unique “It’s never been so easy for attackers to gain access to the problems when it comes to security. Many devices are IoT ecosystem,” says Jason Hart, chief technology officer “headless,” so there is no user interface (or a user to input for data security solutions at Gemalto. “There are multiple credentials/passwords). Semantic gateways also present a attack vectors at multiple levels, and from the manufactur- problem because of the lack of encryption and authentica- er’s point of view, they need to consider risks from all those tion during the data handoff. Commands may be processed different ‘personas’ that are present in the IoT.” in plain text between secure connection points.

40 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news “If I’m talking with a device on a Zigbee network, I can rity fixes in new ways. According to embedded software identify the gateway, but not the device,” Baugher says. specialist Wind River in its “Security in the Internet of “I’m trusting the gateway to handle that. You lose authen- Things” report: tication end to end. Any encryption that was on the wire “Unfortunately, there is no ‘silver bullet’ that can effec- gets terminated once you move to a different connection.” tively mitigate every possible cyber threat. The good news, Engineers and quality assurance teams will have to en- though, is that tried-and-true IT security controls that sure these devices have sufficient protection against these have evolved over the past 25 years can be just as effec- IoT vulnerabilities. There should be rigorous testing on tive for IoT—provided we can adapt them to the unique applications, platforms and hardware prior to release. constraints of the embedded devices that will increasingly Currently, low-cost connected devices have entered comprise networks of the future.” the market with few (if any) security protections. They “We need to revolutionize the way we develop hard- have default passwords that are difficult or impossible to ware and software and secure the development lifecycle,” change, or may lack data encryption or authentication Baugher says. “These technologies have to be incorporated capabilities. Often, this is because manufacturers want to at the beginning and be part of the daily work practices of lower the price or make the devices easier to use. the engineers.” “We do see challenges in adhering to security and still “There’s not only security measure or policy, but sev- allowing ease of use,” says Jamie Smith, director of embed- eral that are layered one on top of the other,” says David ded systems at National Instruments. “It takes a significant Gascon, CTO and co-founder of Libelium. “You start by amount of software investment to provide both. You don’t ensuring you are only communicating with nodes or gate- need to lose ease of use to have a secure system, but it takes ways that are part of the same network.” work to enable that.” There should also be device-to-gateway encryption, and from the gateway to the cloud. Libelium uses an en- IoT Security Issues cryption chipset close to the main microcontroller in in- The IoT presents a number of troublesome security problems. stances where there isn’t enough energy available for open Information could be intercepted and replaced in transit. Data source libraries. “We use small chips, write information to from the connected device could also be manipulated, for ex- the chip and it returns it in encrypted form,” Gascon says. ample, to throw off sensor readings or alter test results. Packets “That’s a good alternative when you are dealing with con- could be sniffed or retransmitted. Encryption keys could be sto- straints on an end node.” len and used to set up false nodes on a network. IoT nodes could For embedded systems and controls, there should be also be hijacked and used for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks a capability to whitelist apps and enable elements with (as was the case with the Dyn incident). Hackers could also, the (often) Linux platform that enhance security. “People conceivably, gain control of operational systems within the con- should have strong Linux skills and a strong level of con- nected device—a possibility that has been demonstrated several sultative security experience,” NI’s Smith says. “They can times with connected vehicles and smart home systems. build security features starting at the OS and working up The data passed back and forth from devices to the net- to the application stack. That’s what is built into the edge work could also be compromised. “In IoT, data integrity nodes that we provide.” will be paramount,” Hart says. “We assume data is correct Other approaches can include: and that data is being used to make decisions. But if it’s • Standard encryption techniques, including encrypting incorrect, we don’t realize that until the data has moved payloads and using app-level encryption as well as trans- downstream. That’s the biggest vulnerability of the IoT. port encryption. We’re going to see more integrity-based attacks.” • The use of “salt” or random data within hashed data These vulnerabilities have consequences beyond the spe- to make it more difficult to compromise. cific connected device. The presence of those insecure items • Rate limiting, which can help prevent attacks that (particularly low-cost webcams) on the network and their involve automatically entering possible passwords mul- sheer number make it possible to launch DDoS attacks. tiple times. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) takes this • Secure booting, so that the integrity of the device problem very seriously and has been willing to prosecute would be verified using digital signatures. at-fault companies that did not take reasonable steps to • Access control that is based on role-based protections. secure their networks, products or services. Privileges should be limited so that if a hacker does com- promise credentials, the damage can be minimized. Making the Security Connection • Deep packet inspection or a firewall to provide con- Fixing these security issues starts early in the design pro- trol over data that terminates at the device. cess and will require engineers to apply traditional secu- • The ability to authenticate patches and updates with-

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 41 INTERNET OF THINGS ||| Design

out consuming large amounts of bandwidth. oritizing code revues and repeat analysis. Developers and Companies should also minimize the amount of data testers should work together more closely from the outset stored on devices or in the network; customer data should of a design project. be considered toxic. “If you keep customer data, it’s just Leverage independent third-party services to conduct sitting there waiting for someone to steal it,” Baugher says. this type of penetration testing. Most companies don’t “No one can absolutely protect anything, so minimize the have adequate security staff, so involving third parties in information you are keeping. If there is sensitive data that security validation at all stages of design and develop- has to be collected, then you do the design work upfront ment is critical. to protect it.” In January, NI debuted its Industrial Internet of Things In the case of Libelium, the company uses AES 256 Lab at the company’s Austin, TX, headquarters. The facil- libraries for privacy and RSA 1024 for authentication, as ity is focused on a number of IoT applications (including well as an encryption circuit that allows data to be en- advanced control for manufacturing and asset monitoring crypted without external software units. for heavy equipment) and serves as a showcase and as a Not all of these protections will be necessary in every working laboratory. instance. Device constraints will require some re-engi- According to Smith, the company follows industry and neering of these security approaches. Many IoT devices other compliance standards (including from the Industrial have to minimize power consumption, have limited con- Internet Consortium) when testing and validating secu- nectivity, and not much onboard memory or processing rity of IoT systems. “By participating in IIC testbeds, we capacity. But security can still be achieved without signifi- can bring together multiple vendors to connect devices cantly increasing costs. and put them up against the security paces outlined in the “People think that making something easy to use, you standards,” Smith says. “Over time we do more work on have to remove a level of security. That’s not the case at those testbeds from a security perspective. As we add new all,” Hart says. “Security can be baked in from day one. capabilities to hardware or management software, we can The technology is there to do it.” look at those changes through a security lens.” “You have to understand the type of data you are creat- In the end, it will be incumbent on designers to create ing and consuming,” Hart adds. “What data is coming in systems that can recognize and react to threats. “In the and going out? Once you understand that, you can un- airport we have a mantra: ‘If you see something, say some- derstand the type of risk you are exposed to and apply the thing,’” Smith says. “We need to have that as part of these right security controls.” edge devices. If they see a request or change in behavior “This often doesn’t happen at the design stage,” that is odd to the device, they may be able to determine if Baugher says. “A big cultural sea change needs to happen they are being spoofed or receiving false commands. The before we have the skills and practices in place to do this. edge device needs to communicate to a higher level of the Those risks have to be assessed upfront.” stack that something is happening.” DE

Role of QA Brian Albright is a freelance journalist based in Columbus, Post-design, quality assurance teams will play a critical OH. He is the former managing editor of Frontline Solutions role in making sure that systems are tested against security magazine, and has been writing about technology topics since weaknesses. That will largely mean leveraging existing se- the mid-1990s. Send e-mail about this article to de-editors@ curity standards. digitaleng.news. “We really don’t need new standards,” Hart says. “You identify the risk and apply the security measures already ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// available in industry; follow best practices. There are Gemalto: Gemalto.com enough standards out there that can be repurposed here.” INFO ➜ The FTC has issued best practices for IoT security. ➜ Greenwave Systems: Greenwavesystems.com Other government agencies are jockeying for position ➜ I Am the Cavalry: iamthecavalry.org when it comes to regulating connected devices. ➜ Industrial Internet Consortium: iiconsortium.org There have been suggestions of developing ratings sim- ilar to UL ratings for electrical safety (a group called I Am ➜ Libelium: Libelium.com the Cavalry has developed a five-star rating system), but ➜ National Instruments: NI.com the threat of accidental malfunction is not exactly compa- ➜ Proofpoint: Proofpoint.com rable to protecting against deliberate attacks or sabotage. The Industrial Internet Consortium also offers guidance. ➜ Wind River: Windriver.com QA should include agile testing methodologies, pri- For more information on this topic, visit digitaleng.news.

42 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news Italian Renaissance Sensing Air Quality in the UK Vehicles equipped with sensors of Manufacturing help control air quality in Glasgow. The Internet of Things is providing some unexpected benefits. magine never having to mow the lawn again. Thanks to Global Garden ountries throughout the world have IProducts (GGP), that’s already possible. Ca need—and in many cases a As Europe’s largest lawn and garden machinery company with over legal obligation—to ensure air quality is 40 product lines and five brands, GGP is constantly exploring how they meeting specific standards. Policies aim can improve their products and manufacturing processes. “Our priority to reduce exposure to air pollution by is developing innovative products including a new generation of battery- reducing emissions and setting limits and targets for AQI. powered products and robots,” says CEO Georg Metz. Public authorities in cities have deployed static stations to monitor air quality data for a set of pollutants with specific, high-cost sensing technologies. These stations provide highly accurate data, but their cost limits the quantity of deployments leaving large gaps in coverage. CENSIS, the innovation center of excellence for Sensor and Imaging Systems (SIS) technologies, has developed a low-cost system with Libelium’s Waspmote Sensor Platform in Glasgow (UK) that can be deployed flexibly and rapidly in mobile configurations to complement static To build self-driving all weather landscaping machines, engineers stations providing more clarity to “smart city” projects. at GGP had to improve the design, manufacturing and operation of their CENSIS has worked in partnership with the University of Strathclyde machines’ engines. They’re using internet-connected sensors and code on this project called “Sensing the City.” The aim was monitoring air generated with Temboo to make it happen. parameters in different areas in a city, in a dynamic way, in real-time. In order to be dynamic, they thought of a mobile wireless sensor network The Next Industrial Revolution system placed on the top of vans as they move throughout the city. Internet-connected sensors and actuators, new sources of data and tools to MORE ➜digitaleng.news/de/sensing-air-quality-uk analyze it, and the proliferation of powerful portable computers and cloud services are all considered key elements of the Industrial Internet of Things. This so-called new industrial revolution results from the dramatic increase of technology’s role in businesses and —whatever you call it (Industrial Rethinking the Stethoscope Thinklabs uses Onshape CAD in the cloud to advance IoT, Industry 4.0, or nothing in particular) —speaks to the potential of technology to transform the economy yet again. But if you read the industry medical technologies. reports and white papers, putting it into practice sounds overwhelming. fter 200 years, is the iconic medical What business wants to change their proven processes by implementing Astethoscope in danger of becoming a total overhaul? Who wants to install thousands of sensors, purchase obsolete? Or is it about to experience a expensive equipment and software and undergo months (if not years) of technological renaissance? planning for unproven gains? It sounds like a gamble. Is that really how In 1816, French physician Rene innovation happens? Laennec was embarrassed to press his Not necessarily. Manufacturing companies don’t need to hire expensive ear to a young woman’s chest. He rolled up a stack of paper and placed consultants to help them decide among high cost solutions for modernizing one end of the cylinder to his ear and the other end on the patient’s their factories. Nor should they sit by and wait for technological shifts to body. Surprised by the clarity of sound, he later crafted a hollow wooden sort themselves out. By focusing on concrete ways to use sensors and version with a brass tube insert. The stethoscope was born. internet-connected hardware to make their existing processes more Fast forward to the Thinklabs One Digital Stethoscope, which efficient, companies can reap gains now as they adopt new technology. was developed by electrical engineer Clive Smith. He introduced an Indeed, they can be on the cutting edge without bleeding red. electromagnetic diaphragm (the large flat side of the chest piece) using a Global Garden Products needed to get from concept to product quickly. high-intensity electric field to measure vibrations. His primary design tool They wanted to manufacture better engines — quieter, more reliable and for the next-generation Thinklabs stethoscope is now Onshape 3D CAD. weatherproof in all conditions — and they couldn’t afford to wait. The key was to find a solution that could launch their efforts immediately and then MORE ➜digitaleng.news/de/rethinking-the-stethoscope scale. That’s why they chose Temboo. ➜ For the full application stories, visit digitaleng.news/de/fastapps MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/italian-renaissance-manufacturing

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 43 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////Each week, Tony Lockwood combs through dozens of new products to bring you the ones he thinks will help you do your job better, smarter and faster. Here are Lockwood’s most recent musings about the products PICKS that have really grabbed his attention.

3D PDFs Enhanced for 3D Print Workflows Tetra4D 2017 launches new functionality to search for 3D data in documents. Tech Soft 3D’s Tetra4D applications convert native 3D CAD data into in- trio is all about integrating 3D PDFs teractive 3D PDF documents and a into engineering, manufacturing, tech- 3D PDF creation tool that requires no nical publications and other workflows. special expertise to use. There’s also a That makes it as much of a productivity server version providing automatic and aid as a communications toolset. on-demand 3D PDF creation. The trio offers an application to MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=35283

New Optics, Electronics Speed Portable Scanning ROMER Absolute Arm integrated scanner delivers wide laser stripe and fast scan rate.

Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence ters between 2m and 4.5m. You can get has a newly engineered laser-scanner optional Feature Packs for functionality for its ROMER Absolute Arm with like Wi-Fi and battery power. Integrated Scanner. The ROMER Ab- The new scanner for the ROMER solute Arm is an all-purpose portable Absolute Arm with Integrated Scanner is measuring arm. It comes in six sizes the RS4. It’s a turn-on-and-go system. with measurement volumes with diame- MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=35094

New Workstations Handle Mobile Design and VR Mobiles include 7th generation Intel Core i7 CPUs and NVIDIA Quadro graphics.

MSI Computer recently announced four and professional-level NVIDIA GPU new mobile workstations of increasing (graphics processing unit) accelera- power that, from the low- to high-end, tion. They run Windows 10 Pro, have are ready to go for CAD, CAM and ports galore for external devices and most of the engineering toolset. FHD (full high definition) displays with The quartet supports the new 7th 1920×1080 resolution. Generation Intel Core i7 processors MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=34961

Engineering-Grade 3D Printing for Workgroups Stratasys F123 Series 3D printers address rapid prototyping workflows.

When Stratasys unveiled the three Modeling) technology-based systems members of its new Stratasys F123 are office-friendly, have a fast draft Series of 3D printers, they described mode for making initial design concepts the systems as intended to make pro- quickly, and have part accuracy within fessional-level rapid prototyping more of +/- 0.008 in. or +/- 0.002 in./in. productive for design workgroups. (0.002 mm/mm), whichever is greater. These FDM (Fused Deposition MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=34896

44 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Workstation Overclocked to 4.8GHz New workstation for engineers and designers features the Intel Kaby Lake CPU. The new BOXX APEXX 2 Model 2403 The APEXX 2 Model 2403 uses the workstation is built around a safely Core i7-7700K, a quad-core proces- overclocked Kaby Lake CPU. Kaby sor with an 8MB cache. Out of Intel’s Lake is Intel’s 7th generation Core box its base clock rate is 4.20GHz with i7-processor. Its new architecture is maximum Turbo Boost of 4.50GHz. intended to improve 3D graphics per- BOXX overclocks that to 4.80GHz. formance. MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=34790

XTract3D for SOLIDWORKS Plug-in simplifies reverse engineering and translating scan data to CAD models.

Polyga Inc. recently launched WORKS-editable solids and surfaces. XTract3D, a 3D mesh processing add- This means that your reverse en- in toolset for SOLIDWORKS. You gineering mesh processing workflow work with XTract3D from inside of becomes: Import the scan mesh data, SOLIDWORKS, and its toolbar offers invoke XTract3D and then manually you slicing, fitting and analysis tools sketch features and elements. to turn 3D scan data into SOLID- MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=34680

Digimat 2017.0 Suite Released Material modeling platform has extended modeling, advanced materials and more.

The Digimat suite of nonlinear, multi- nizes its components in categories la- scale material and structure modeling beled Tools, Solutions and eXpertise. software from e-Xstream engineering is The company just released Digimat a go-to system in industries as diverse 2017.0, and it sounds like there are a as aerospace, automotive, consumer bunch of goodies for Tools and Solu- electronics and medical devices. In tions users. broad strokes, the Digimat suite orga- MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=34555

3D Sprint 2.0 Speeds 3D Printing New version of software for managing and optimizing additive manufacturing.

Version 2.0 of 3D Systems’ 3D Sprint and repair, modeling wizards and print print management and print optimiza- queue management tools. tion software is engineered to provide 3D Sprint will automatically find design tools for additive manufacturing solutions such as fastest print time, best using plastics. With it, you can manipu- surface finish and optimal positioning late, edit and prepare 3D models for of support structures. printing. It has toolkits for file analysis MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/de/?p=34466

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 45 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Q& A INDUSTRY INSIGHTS by Kenneth Wong

Carl Bass: Work on Unsolved Problems

I LOVE AUTODESK and am immensely proud of what we have created together, but it’s time for me to do something new,” writes Carl Bass, who has been Autodesk CEO since 2006. He made his departure public on February 7 in “ a letter published online in the Autodesk blog In the Fold. The post he vacated is being filled by DE: What were the biggest risks you two long-time Autodesk veterans: Amar took during your reign? Carl Bass Hanspal, senior VP and chief product Bass: Certainly the move to pure sub- officer, and Andrew Anagnost, senior VP scription business was a risk. Also, I made and chief marketing officer. The two will an early bet that architecture design was DE: Any advice for a new startup try- serve as interim joint-CEOs while the moving to 3D modeling. I placed a $135 ing to break into the CAD market today? company’s board conducts a CEO search. million bet on Revit, a company with no Bass: I’d say find some difficult prob- As he gets ready to start his post- revenue, no customers. That’s pretty risky. lems that haven’t been solved. I think too Autodesk chapter, Bass sits down with In my last few years, the move to the many people come into this business with DE to share his thoughts on the industry, cloud was a huge bet — just the size and a new technology first, then go look for a the company he’s leaving behind and his scope of the bet that engineering software problem to solve. Much is still needed to rivals in the business. would move to the cloud. help people design, engineer and manu- Digital Engineering: What’s the differ- Note: Autodesk Revit has since become a facture products — like generative design, ence between the company you inherited leading parametric architecture modeler. where people have to partner with comput- from Carol Bartz (Autodesk CEO, 1992- ers. They can use a virtually infinite amount 2006) and the one you’re leaving behind? DE: Reflections on Autodesk’s com- of computing power to come up with new Carl Bass: In some ways, it’s the same petitors? Are there some things they did designs, but add machine learning to it company. For 35 years, the company has that make you say, “I wish I’d done that”? and it gets even more complex. Also look been interested in building engineering Bass: I wish we had bought SOLID- at how difficult it still is for people to get software. That’s consistent. I’d say the WORKS before Dassault did. We had things made. The workflow between the company today is broader than the one I the opportunity to do that, but we didn’t. designers and engineers, and the need for inherited. We’ve become much stronger Then again, Dassault had the opportunity them to work together … these are still in how things are made, manufactured in the early 2000s to buy Autodesk for big problems. I have great respect for the and fabricated. Early on, we were only a fraction of what it’s now worth. I was people at Onshape. But, I’ve said it before, making software for people to build digi- laughing the other day when I remem- they weren’t solving a problem; they were tal models. 3D printing was part of the bered that, at the time, Dassault passed on building SOLIDWORKS for the cloud. broader initiative that resulted from our Autodesk, saying it was a declining asset. Note: Onshape was founded by former interest in how things are made. I also But I look at our market capitals today — SOLIDWORKS executives and talents (see page think we’re leading the industry in many we are virtually identical. 28). It’s recognized as the first fully browser- areas, whether it’s moving to the cloud or Note: Dassault Systèmes acquired based CAD program for professionals. DE in developing generative design tools. SOLIDWORKS in 1997. Autodesk’s stock Note: During Bass’ reign, Autodesk price stands at $87 per share at press time, Kenneth Wong is DE’s resident blogger and expanded beyond the professional design mar- while Dassault Systèmes’ stock is at €76 senior editor. Email him at de-editors@digita- ket into the consumer space. It also acquired ($81) per share. Autodesk’s reported revenue leng.news or share your thoughts on this article HSMWorks and Delcam, whose technologies for 2014 was $2.5 billion. Dassault Sys- at digitaleng.news/facebook. became the cornerstones of the company’s com- temes’ reported revenue for 2015 was €2.8 MORE ➜ digitaleng.news/virtual_ puter-aided manufacturing (CAM) offerings. ($2.97) billion. desktop/2017/03/carl-bass-parting-shots/

46 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Next-Gen Engineers Student Competiton Profile: CubeQuest Challenge NASA Challenges Teams to Design Small Satellites

BY JIM ROMEO

UBESATS ARE miniaturized been used successfully, it becomes very satellites used for space attractive to future mission designers research. Liz Hyde is a who want to buy down risk. Because the mechanical engineer with CubeQuest satellites will be some of the CMillennium Engineering and Integration first to launch outside of low-Earth orbit, In NASA’s CubeQuest Challenge, Company, located at NASA Ames the hardware on them will be some of entrants design prototypes of Research Center. We spoke to Hyde to the first to gain that coveted deep-space CubeSats—miniaturized satellites gain insight into the CubeQuest “flight heritage” TRL. used for space research. Challenge that NASA hosts and better DE: Can you provide some exam- Image courtesy NASA understand the event and its goals. ples of what you expect it to produce? Hyde: One of the oft-shown technolo- successful with crowdsourcing campaigns. Digital Engineering: Can you pro- gies on the bench, and in papers and You- DE: Anything else you’d like to vide an overview of the “CubeQuest Tube videos, is electric propulsion. Elec- share about the event? Challenge” program? tronic propulsion is very attractive to small Hyde: There have been many NASA Liz Hyde: NASA’s CubeQuest Chal- satellite developers because while it may challenges over the years. The thing that lenge is a competition where the best be low-thrust, it can contain much more sets CubeQuest apart from the others is it CubeSat wins. One of the current limita- delta-v in a small space than conventional will be the first competition where hard- tions of CubeSats is they have not left low- thrusters. It is also very difficult to charac- ware will actually fly. The Exploration Earth orbit. The agency’s Space Launch terize in a lab. A CubeQuest mission can Mission-1 launch opportunity is a big System is going to launch 13 CubeSats make the characterization and operation boon for these teams in my mind. DE into cislunar (between the Earth and the of the thrusters the crux of their mission moon) space, opening up a new oppor- without sacrificing a science payload. Jim Romeo (JimRomeo.net) is a freelance tunity for CubeSats to journey into deep DE: Do you have any corporate writer based in Chesapeake, VA. space. The intent of the challenge is to sponsors in the event? stimulate growth in the small satellite in- Hyde: The challenge itself is fully ///////////////////////////////////// dustry, especially in the areas of propulsion government-funded, and as such doesn’t INFO ➜ CubeQuest Challenge: and communications. Any non-NASA, have any corporate sponsors. Teams are nasa.gov/cubequest/details U.S.-based team is eligible; most of the free to do whatever marketing or fund- For more information on this topic, visit teams competing come from the small raising they wish. Some have also been digitaleng.news. business, startup or academic worlds. DE: What becomes of the innova- AD INDEX tions that are presented? Hyde: One of the key aspects of ANSYS ...... C2 spacecraft mission design is the knowl- COMSOL ...... C4 edge that the hardware is going to work csimsoft...... 3 as desired—measured by technology Livermore Software Technology Corp...... C3 readiness levels, or TRLs. Proving out Media Brains ...... 9 designs on the bench or in a simulated NAFEMS World Congress 2017 ...... 23 space environment is great, but proving Okino Computer Graphics Inc...... 31 it on a real mission is key if you’re trying Proto Labs Inc...... 1 to use that hardware on a big-budget, Siemens PLM Software ...... 15 science-centered mission. Rapid + TCT Event 2017 ...... 27 Once a certain piece of hardware has Tormach ...... 19

digitaleng.news /// April 2017 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design 47 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// | COMMENTARY | by Martin Nemzow

Improve Your Security Hygiene

erhaps you think cutting corners pertains to others, but not to you. You’ll get around to security tomorrow rather than today, just like you did yesterday. There’s no way to get around it: Savvy companies have to address security today and P resist the temptation to put it off until tomorrow. Today is the day to formulate your security hygiene. Security hygiene refers to the rules of thumb, not laws or for a before-and-after state; regulations or formalized best practices. It is “hygiene” because • incorporating knowledge from shop floor lore, like g-code it is a consistent undertaking rather than a grab-bag of com- conversion workarounds, into supporting documents; mercial solutions. Security matters on the shop floor as much • including device and connectivity configurations, mesh den- as it does with documents and spreadsheets, perhaps more with sities, scaffolds and anchors for quality assurance repeatability; and output predicated by input data, because shop files position mol- • organize your data for backups, reuse and as a library. ten voxels and spin bits at 10,000 rpm. It is critical to survival Recognize that a transition from novice to mastering pro- suddenly when novice noodling with consumer printers, for duction requires security steps be mastered, too. example, develops into commercial production. Suddenly, security for digital production reflects all of the Safety, once ad hoc, becomes fundamental to security. You following: continuity, trust, quality, compliance and brand. minimize equipment breakage. You control material theft, tool- ing jigs, cutters and waste. You reduce fumes, burns, material Security for Digital Production toxicology, cutting chips or scaffold failures. Such safety is part Poisoning through product tampering is historical; think Tyle- of security but not the data security for data-centric production, nol. It can also happen during the integrated cycle as early as the which while physical, is also intangible. It’s applicable whether planning stages in digital production. It includes not only an in- additive, subtractive, hybrid or a more traditional manufacturing tentional harm but also functional performance errors. Changes method. When files lost are irreplaceable or leaking from partners to technical specifications within CAD/CAE/CAM seed inherent to competitors, security is no longer a corner to cut with fiduciary defects into file templates. Defects found by testing or finite state concerns deferred from yesterday until tomorrow. analysis affect reputation, durability, performance and safety. Such What once was a test bed is now integral to design, mar- audits are data, so modifications after the fact can undermine data keting, production and sales. The security hygiene proscribes templates, and thus production compliance. Security hygiene is continuity and resiliency. It is more involved than adding pass- suddenly about validating data used for digital work starting from words, making backups and limiting access, although it requires design storyboards through quality control to technical support. such essential first steps. Backups go offsite, not necessarily to a Lack of security jeopardizes hard-won trust when it affects the cloud accessible to everyone, but serialized so that defects can well-being of the customer base. be traced under Securities and Exchange Commission law or as No one size in security fits all. Commercial products are a a step for Food and Drug Administration 510(k) certification. start to prevent malware and deter hackers. However, security for If parts go into vehicles, backups sustain an insurance industry digital production means more. It includes infrastructure continu- testing chain of custody. There is also a morality to protect peo- ity, networking protections against an always-on internet and safe ple despite unwritten laws; consider data and process protection communications with affiliates. No perimeter is safe, so security when others depend on digital production. hygiene becomes what you add to protect lifecycle data, a process best monitored every day—and not just today based on yester- Security Concerns day’s guilt. You need security hygiene to breed that trust for qual- Security becomes a broad category involving more than com- ity and compliance that ultimately sells your brand tomorrow. DE puter technology. Consider financial and legal oversight by the corporate board that may include: Martin Nemzow is an expert on information workflow and compart- • embedding contracts as a component into data templates mentalized security. He is the author of more than 400 articles; has with misuse warnings; designed products for industry and managed their manufacture and • filing copyrights and draft usage rights agreements; support; and has been principal officer in several technology businesses, • defining intellectual property and trade secrets; an executive at Fortune 500 companies, and a voice on various boards. • documenting the scales and offsets for zeroing equipment Contact him via linkedin.com/in/martinnemzow.

48 DE | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design April 2017 /// digitaleng.news LS-DYNA® Advanced FEM and Meshfree Methods For solid and structure analyses: manufacturing & material failure simulation

The LS-DYNA® advanced FEM and Meshfree module integrates state-of-the-art numerical methods for solving some of most challenging problems including large topology change of material, manufacturing processes including cutting and jointing, composite material and fracture analysis. Numerical methods are introduced and invented to be able to accurately capture physical behavior of various materials Thermal-mechanics coupled analyses of forging and extrusion under complicated circumstances. This module (EFG adaptive re-meshing with high-order remapping scheme) is coupled with thermal solver in LS-DYNA® to perform Multiphysics simulations. Applications: • Bulk forming: forging, extrusion • Machining: cutting, shearing, polishing • Jointing: Riveting, Welding, Drilling • Brittle, ductile and rubber-like materials • Fracture analysis Metal cutting Riveting Features: • Multiple advanced numerical tools — Element free Galerkin (EFG) — Meshfree-enriched FEM (ME-FEM) — Smoothed particle Galerkin (SPG) — Peri-dynamics — eXtended FEM (X-FEM) • 2D and 3D (shell & solid) Explicit and Implicit analysis • Machining and jointing analyses (SPG) Drilling • Coupled with thermal solver • Adaptive re-meshing • Physics-based failure model

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