Performing calculations is key to all engineers. Math is used to calculate performance characteristics, component size and thickness, and margins of safety. With these calculations, engineers can design CAD models for products.
However, engineering calculations are often disconnected from design models. This is when PTC Mathcad comes into play. The technology provided by Mathcad allows mathematical calculations to drive engineering product definition, so dimensions can update the way we want with changes to other factors. Below are some reasons all design engineers should drive 3D models with engineering software.
More Powerful Than Relations
When you are designing you want to define an equation or mathematical expression to drive the values of model dimensions or the number of instances in a pattern. You also want those values to update automatically whenever other dimensions or parameters change. In Creo Parametric, a 3D CAD modeler, these equations are called relations, and they are powerful.
However, engineering math software can offer even more capabilities, such as:
- Data Analysis- With engineering math software, you can read in spreadsheets or tables of data, process the values, and extrapolate or interpolate new values.
- Functions- With relations, you can access basic functions like algebra, trigonometry, logarithms, string editing, and comparisons. But engineering math software contains functions for advanced mathematics and analyses in areas such as matrices, statistics, curve fitting, data analysis, and Design of Experiments.
- Programming– With engineering math software, you can incorporate loops and conditionals in your own custom programs to perform advanced functions that use iteration and logic in ways that regular relations can’t.
It Can Capture Intellectual Property
Changes occur not just in designs but with those who worked on the calculations as well. Typically engineer’s have notebooks in which they perform calculations, take notes and record decisions from trade studies. This information is critical in the product development process, yet it’s typically kept in an individual’s possession rather than stored with engineering models. If a change occurs, for instance, an employee leaves the company- where do the valuable product calculations end up?
Most likely, your enterprise loses this information, no one can access it, and it can’t get leveraged for future products.
By documenting the methodology, history, and results of your decision-making processes in engineering math worksheets, you can ensure that your company’s intellectual property (IP) remains a vital resource for years to come instead of being lost to the ages.
It Helps You with Solving and Optimization
Engineering math software provides hundreds of functions covering a wide range of areas, including solving and optimization. This allows you to solve for values in complex systems, and in addition, also ensures you can find the best possible solution.
What kind of cost savings, sales, and customer satisfaction can you realize with a 5, 10, or 20% improvement in performance, strength, weight, or other factors? How do engineers and designers find the optimal values for critical dimensions and parameters today?
Instead of forcing you to rely on hit-or-miss guesswork, engineering calculation software can optimize designs, getting you to market faster at lower costs.
It Supports Design Intent
The guiding philosophy behind parametric modeling is to build features, parts, and assemblies in such a way that when you make a change, those changes are propagated throughout our models; this is design intent.
Models can pass dimensions to your math worksheet as inputs to calculations, which then sends other dimensions back to your model to be updated. By linking your models to your engineering calculations, you achieve design intent on a higher level.
There are two different ways in which you can drive parametric models from engineering math worksheets:
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- Embedded Worksheets- As the name states, worksheets reside inside parts and assemblies, and can be updated at will.
- Prime Analysis Features- Using the Behavioral Modeling Extension (BMX) in Creo, for example, you can create features in models that update calculations upon regeneration.
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In Conclusion
Combining the benefits or PTC Creo and Mathcad allow you to save money, time and ease design.
*Please know that MRC along providing personalized support to you and your team can also have your software purchase up and active in less than 72 hours. Unlike other vendors, MRC is centrally located which allows us to increase our speed and response to you.