www.engineeringnews.co.nz 33 D E S I G N Maplesoft improves upon the Maplesoft has released the MapleSim CAD Toolbox, a new add-on to MapleSim that allows engineers to understand and improve their mechanical designs by bringing CAD assemblies into MapleSim, the advanced system-level modeling and simulation platform. The new toolbox makes it easy to import CAD models into MapleSim, so engineers can learn how their designs will behave as part of a larger, multidomain system, and apply the advanced analysis tools of MapleSim to investigate and optimize their designs and final application. “Today’s complex engineering designs involve components from many different domains, and these are often designed using different tools, often resulting in problems at system integration time. With MapleSim and the MapleSim CAD Toolbox, engineers now have the means to examine how their mechanical designs work as part of the complete system, in advance,” says Paul Goossens, vice president engineering solutions at Maplesoft. The MapleSim CAD Toolbox imports CAD models directly into MapleSim, recreating the model components and preserving their kinetic and kinematic properties as well as the spatial relationships between components. It offers feature detection, allowing users to easily add new coordinates at points of interest, such as the centre of a hole or along the edge of a component, and it makes it easy to share coordinate frames between separate bodies, ensuring the bodies will be properly aligned when joined. The MapleSim CAD toolbox handles files from virtually any CAD system, through direct support for a large number of proprietary formats, including those from Inventor, NX, and SOLIDWORKS, as well as the widely supported STEP and STL files formats. Once in MapleSim, the models can be shared with other MapleSim users, or online using the MapleSim Server, without requiring that the end user have access to the original CAD system or CAD files. “They can detect and correct problems at the virtual prototyping stage, long before expensive prototypes are built. Even better, with the deeper understanding of the interactions of their overall system, they can make performance-enhancing, cost-saving optimizations, resulting in better products for them and their customers,” says Mr Goossens. The company has also introduced a new release of MapleSim together with important updates to many of the specialized component libraries and connectivity tools in the MapleSim family of products. MapleSim offers a modern approach to physical modeling and simulation, dramatically reducing model development and analysis time while producing fast, high-fidelity simulations. The latest release provides a variety of new features that further support the creation, simulation, and analysis of multidomain, system-level models. Enhancements include advanced diagnostic tools, expanded component libraries, and other improvements requested by customers. The advanced diagnostic tools help engineers identify the source of problems in their models and simulations, and improve their model’s efficiency and robustness. Other improvements include the addition of over 50 new components in the magnetic, thermal, electrical, and signal block libraries, and a new connections manager that makes it easier to keep track of connections and port variables, and allows new types of connections to be made. “MapleSim supports a model-driven innovation process that delivers design insights in addition to simulation results,” says Dr Laurent Bernardin, executive vice president and chief scientist at Maplesoft. “Whether they choose to work with the Maplesoft Engineering Solutions team or on their own, our customers will benefit from the new tools in the latest MapleSim release, achieving better designs faster than ever before.” Improvements were also made to many of the other members of the MapleSim family of modeling and simulation products. Toolchain connectivity has been enhanced with improvements to the MapleSim Connector, for connectivity with Simulink, and the MapleSim Connector for FMI, which allows engineers to share high-fidelity, multidomain models created in MapleSim with other modeling tools. Both connector products now provide more detailed run-time error reporting to assist in trouble-shooting on the target platform. EN mechanics OF DESIGN
EN feb16-HR-nocrops
To see the actual publication please follow the link above