What is Digital Prototyping?

Written by Martyn Day

Published Tue 20 May 2008

Autodesk is promoting a vision beyond 3D modelling, which it calls ‘Digital Prototyping’. Using Inventor, Autodesk believes that Engineers can explore a virtual, yet complete product before it’s ever built, getting higher quality products to market, faster.

If you have read any marketing from Autodesk this year you would have certainly have read something about ‘Digital Prototyping’. This mantra is Autodesk’s big vision for how its suite of manufacturing products can radically improve productivity, time to market and quality for its customers by making the most of the digital model and their tools. The basic concept here is to model and test products in the CAD environment, before ever producing a prototype.

The concept of this is not new but it is true to say that for years, the tools to build, design and test a digital prototype have been out of reach for most manufacturing companies, mainly reserved for expensive Aerospace and Automotive CAD systems. With Autodesk’s success within the volume, Windows-based, design market Autodesk is in a good position to bring its vision of Digital Prototyping to companies of all sizes. Using Autodesk’s growing number of CAD products, mainstream manufacturers can now share a single digital model, from conceptual design through to manufacturing , concept to client. The digital model simulates the complete product, giving engineers an opportunity to visualise , optimise and manage their design, before producing a physical prototype and producing fewer physical prototypes., saving time and money. According to the Aberdeen group, a market analysis firm, companies that operate Digital Prototyping build 50% fewer physical prototypes, get to market 58 days earlier, with 48% lower prototyping costs.

With the rapid development of Autodesk Manufacturing division, plus frequent acquisitions of key technologies, it can be seen that Autodesk is in the process of a multi-year strategy to deliver on its Digital Prototyping vision.

I caught up with Dr.Andrew Anagnost, VP of Autodesk’s Manufacturing Solutions Division to talk about Digital Prototyping and Autodesk’s aspirations in the manufacturing market. The company had just announced the major acquisition of Moldflow, an industry leading application for plastic flow simulation and analysis for $287 million. To coin a phrase, Autodesk is certainly ‘putting its money where its mouth is’.

Question: Digital Prototyping is the new war cry from Autodesk’s Manufacturing division. The concept of building a ‘Digital mock-up’ is not new to the Engineering-tool industry, especially in Automotive and Aerospace, so what’s Autodesk’s reasons to promote Digital Prototyping?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: I think a lot of things went wrong with the early vision and it was never delivered on. 3D CAD became far too related to the abstract concept of modelling, not enough about engineering or solving engineering problems. The CAD software developers who were working in this area moved on to other things. You can almost see where the roads forked in the wrong direction all those years ago. Companies like PTC were well down the Digital Prototyping track. At the time they were buying up superstars in some of these analysis and simulation technology areas and essentially what happened was they abandoned it! It seems they decided there was no growth at the price point they wanted, at the time that was $25,000 per seat, and so they moved on. The result was that they threw all the development into maintenance mode, or divested technologies. Frankly that diversion of Pro/Engineer did more to throw the Digital Prototyping market back, than anything else that’s happened in the market.

At the same time, there was the rise of Windows CAD applications that weren’t designed for UNIX workstations. These tools have matured and achieved market dominance in terms of usefulness. The tools are now pervasive.

So all those years ago, these early attempts were simply abandoned and that left a lot of people with expert level tools, with no backup to help drive their process. There is and has been a deep serious need for Digital Prototyping. It’s not only important to the manufacturing ecosystem, or those that are trying to deploy the techniques and products, but it is important to the entire manufacturing industry. Everybody needs to be Digital Prototyping and that original promise has not yet been realised. We are still far away from it.

Question: So how can Digital Prototyping be a success this time around?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: The interesting thing is a lot has changed over the last 10 years. Look what you can do with your PC today. On my desk I have a laptop, it’s more powerful than the UNIX workstation I had in front of me 10 years ago. It’s significantly more powerful than that old machine but it has also benefitted from improvements in the art and science of the human/computer interface which has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 10 years. When you combine: the maturing of the mathematics, the power of the desktop and your ability to run simulations, visualisations and modelling at very high fidelity, with computer interface design , you just have a radically different climate of technology.

My favourite analogy to describe this is the technology it took to send people to the moon 50 years ago versus what it will take moving forward. It’s significantly less complicated effort. We have different materials, different science, even a different perspective. People look at problems completely differently, because the climate of technology has changed. The same thing has happened with the tools that drive Digital Prototyping. For software developers that are exploiting the latest technologies and platforms and really making it our mission to give power to users, we have a huge palette of technologies and tools to make Digital Prototyping easier and more acceptable.

Question: Does the Digital Prototyping message really separate you from your competition?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk said it very clearly in a conference call about the MoldFlow acquisition recently. We are relentlessly focussed on the product development organisations and what they need to build and use Digital Prototyping. I think that’s what separates us from most of out competition. We believe that it is an unrealised promise and we believe there are huge amounts of innovation and power that can be delivered. Our competition is dividing itself between trying to be like SAP and saying ‘by the way, we also do some CAD’!

Question: With many engineering firms still heavily reliant of 2D CAD tools and processes, how does the Digital Prototyping message impact them?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: The truth of the matter is this: The move towards digital prototyping is going to set apart those manufacturers that continue to be competitive in the future and those that are not. It’s that basic. We went through the same discussion around 3D modelling 10 years ago, with many saying that it’s all too complicated etc. We have to admit that there are firms that have entrenched 2D processes and need 2D software and are struggling to work out what the value is to them but we have no doubt that the future is Digital Prototyping and most people are going to find some project or opportunity to move their process from 2D applications. They are going to come across it in business. Today, companies that have begun the journey to Digital Prototyping are outperforming those that have not. It’s a simple fact. And that trend will continue, in fact ,it will accelerate.

Question: So how does AutoCAD Mechanical fit into the Digital Prototyping vision?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: What we do is that we ensure is that our customers can build an interoperable Digital Prototyping environment. That’s why we have allowed AutoCAD Mechanical to read and associatively create drawings from an Inventor model. That’s also why we have developed some of these workflows around DWG data. So, even if the entire organisation doesn’t sit in front of Inventor and build or interact with the digital prototype, they can still use the drawings derived from the digital prototype. This will makes it easier to transition to a complete 3D Digital Prototype over time.

This isn’t going to happen in one, two or three years but in order to be a complete ‘Digital Prototyper’ you are going to have to have a 3D model at the heart of your process. We expect over the next 2 to 10 years, pick your timeframe, the Digital Prototype 3D model will be at the centre of just about every firm’s design process. Or they are going to be in an ecosystem where they have to interact with the Digital Prototype model. For instance, someone using AutoCAD Mechanical might be a part supplier to another company which is using Inventor but because of the links we have built into Mechanical, they can still be part of this ecosystem.

Question: How are you trying to help the transition from 2D to 3D?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: We have invested a lot in aiding that transition with a lot of effort being put into improving the interoperability between 2D and 3D. We are making the 3D systems easier to use and trying and push the act of modelling away from the user, so the notion of a 3D tool just being a geometric modeller is becoming less and less visible. Inventor is a 3D Digital Prototyping tool, it’s more about the design decisions, not the modelling methodology. So we continue to push the mathematics of modelling away from the engineer and that trend will accelerate. This will make it much easier to move from the 2D to 3D design environment.

We are also sharing user interface components between our 2D and 3D applications, so when someone moves from our 2D application to our 3D application, it’s fairly familiar to them.

Question: So how far from worrying about creating the geometry modeling can you get the designer?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: When I talk about Geometry, I am referring to the commands that user would have to go through to create the geometry, like Filet, extrude etc. We are developing techniques in lots of areas. You can push the geometry quite far away from the user. This is hard in extreme cases like very complex plastic parts but what you are doing there is really digital sculpting, so that may be the last area that will get addressed here but I think ease of all modelling issues are being addressed rapidly.

Question: How would the ultimate Digital Prototyping system work?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: In terms of what I think is valuable and important, a Digital Prototyping system shouldn’t force the user to invoke geometric commands that have noting to do with design. The modelling system will allow the user to quickly create the geometric representation of their design from simple sketches, in an automated and reliable manner. So a designer would use the conceptual ideas and concepts they are familiar with, like sketches and the system creates the 3D geometry, which may be edited in a simple and straightforward way. The concept of simulation and the notion of ‘what if’ should only be a moment away and in-context with what the designer is doing. There should be no separate environments and interfaces for these, and there should be no additional complex set-up. All answers an engineer needs should be quickly available from within the application.

These notions of: conceptual sketches, automation of the modelling function, deeply integrated ability to simulate, interrogate and ask questions about the function, should be the way Digital Prototyping applications will work in the future. It’s not outlandish or speculative to say that all of this is possible. You are seeing all of the technologies converging together right now.

Question: So what’s the plan to build towards that with Autodesk’s current Digital Prototyping capabilities?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: We have a complete suite of 2D and 3D design tools that allow the creation of a Digital Prototype or use the Digital Prototype to create drawings for downstream applications. We have acquired numerous simulation tools, the latest one being the Moldflow, which will be integrated into the Digital Prototyping tools in such a way that engineers will be able to intuitively get answers at various points during the design process.

One of the things you are going to see us work on over the next two or three years is the deep integration of simulation into the design application, driven by the context in which the designer is using the design tool. Certainly we will be extending our portfolio downstream into the manufacturing arena, into tool design and other aspects of manufacturing that are related to getting the Digital Prototype on the shop floor. Anything that gets the Digital Prototype used all the way through the process we are excited about.

Our current portfolio covers all the way from conceptual design, with the Alias products, to manufacturing on the drawing side. You will see us continue to develop our portfolio of Data Management products. But our view of Data Management is to just make sure the right Digital Prototypes get to the right people at the right time. Autodesk doesn’t see Data Management as a panacea to every problem in a products development, it’s just a way of ensuring the right information is in the hands of the right people when they need it. We see management as being seamless and deeply embedded, not an add-on. We will also enhance the visualisation experience.

As to where we will stop, I can’t tell you!, The customers and the market will tell us. What is niche today, will not be niche in 5 years.

Question: The acquisition of Moldflow and the development of a Mold application (on test in China) certainly give an indication of a greater focus on manufacturing. So what CAD technology is high end now?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: We are moving much more into the tool and manufacturing market. Our mold development and acquisition of Moldflow are indeed indications of that. We intend to integrate some of that capability very deeply with the design applications that are used by tooling engineers.

Tell me what is high-end anymore? Perhaps something that does the complete dynamic analysis of a car is high-end and specialised. You could convince me that a crash analysis tool is high-end but outside of examples like that, I really am struggling to see what really is high-end anymore. With all the desktop power, interface accessibility and computer automation, there are a lot of technologies that we can make accessible now, in a robust and reliable way that we couldn’t have done 5 years ago. There have been significant changes. And that what makes this a really exciting time.

There have been many recent announcements about new ‘direct or expressive modeling’ technologies from your competitors. What is Autodesk’s position here?

Dr. Andrew Anaganost: People want parametrics and they want the freedom to edit the model anyway they want, via direct editing or manipulation. A CAD system really needs both. It is inevitable that all these techniques will blend together inside the CAD environment. It’s funny that all these announcements are coming out now because all the vendors are working on this and we have all released something, some more or less than others but the truth of the matter is that that this is an obvious technology for all the CAD vendors to include. But, we are back to discussing the geometry again, and the question is not how simple do you make modelling the geometry, it’s actually how simple do you make the Digital Prototyping environment?

Question: What’s the most important thing to take away about Autodesk’s concept of Digital Prototyping?

Dr. Andrew Anagnost: The most important thing is that a Digital Prototyping enables an engineer to design, visualise, simulate their products. This allows design teams to iterate virtually on more design concepts than they were ever able to before and it allows them to more rapidly customise the design for more people than they were ever able to before. The bottom line is that just makes you more competitive in the market . The whole idea of designing, visualising and simulating within the computer is going to be the way everyone works and that is not a hyperbolic statement, it’s really the most powerful way to innovate effectively.