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Publication Date: June 6, 1997Beyond the Drafting TableA Sampling of Design Applications for Engineers By Sue Mellen A variety of new computer graphics tools -- including virtual reality, visualization and simulation -- are helping engineers cope with compressed design budgets and schedules. Civil engineers, for example, can now determine how their bridge and tunnel designs will handle an onslaught of commuter traffic before ribbons are ever cut on their structures. In industry, product engineers can view representations of their designs and watch them function, without having to snap a single component in place. Getting to Prototype in Record Time Production cycles used to be measured in years. Now, upgrades and innovations tumble over one another into the marketplace, forcing production cycles to be cut to months or even weeks. The breakneck pace of change has made it critical that engineers complete their tasks in record time. This is especially true in any industry segment involved with high-tech components, which become obsolete faster than fads on a high school campus. According to Vincent Manno, Ph.D., chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Tufts University, visualization offers a shortcut to every engineer’s ultimate goal: a working prototype. By viewing 3-D computer models of a product in process, engineers can avoid the time and expense involved in physically building incremental versions of their designs. And several elements of the design process can take place concurrently, saving time and enhancing product quality by promoting closer interaction among those involved in getting the product out to the manufacturing floor. "In the past, you would finish your part of the project, then throw it over the wall to the next department. At that point, it was out of your hands. It wasn’t until the actual prototype was built that you found out what parts of the design did and didn’t work together," Manno recalls. Engineers involved in the design of very large products or structures have found a friend in virtual reality, which "gives you the chance to actually get in and walk around the product, getting a view of it from every angle," Manno says. In some cases, the tool allows an engineer to understand how a product interacts with its anticipated environment. In designing visual capabilities for a robotics system, for example, an engineer might want to see what the robots are seeing. At the same time, the designer may want an exterior view of the product in action. Virtual reality and simulation offer those possibilities, Manno says. A major, often time-consuming component of the design process is functional testing, something that, until recently, required tangible product models. Today, computer applications can simulate real-world test conditions. "Suppose you want to design a new measurement device or probe that will be attached to the outside of an aircraft. In the past, you would have to take it down a wind tunnel 10,000 times to see how it would react to various conditions. Now you can use a computer to simulate those same tests in two or three days. You may only need to do a few tests in the tunnel, and at that point you’re just confirming what you already know about how the product will react," Manno says. New, powerful visualization and simulation tools can turn massive amounts of numerical data into easy-to-read models, Manno observes. For example, complex chemical interactions can be simply represented by different shapes, colors or shadings. A simulation of an industrial smokestack might show pollutants represented by various colors and shades. "New visualization techniques can crunch numbers incredibly quickly, resulting in a picture we can easily understand," Manno says. Boston’s Virtual 'Big Dig' Engineers working on Boston’s Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel -- a massive highway project known locally as the "Big Dig" -- are using a combination of 2-D and 3-D design and simulation tools to integrate construction into the life and infrastructure of the city. From the beginning of the project, numerical data representing the locations of aged utility lines and other underground structures have been fed into the system. As engineers direct excavation and construction, the data are translated into maps that visually depict existing structures. And through a networked system using McDonnell Douglas GDS (Graphical Design System) software, engineers have access to one another’s designs. "We have people at between 30 and 40 workstations. It’s been important to have this kind of continuity. As we’ve gone along, we’re also been able to match our electronic simulations with the construction out in the field. Then we’ve gone back and marked up the electronic version indicating how close we’ve come. In the end, we’ll have a complete electronic record of the project," says senior civil engineer Paul Beede. As an adjunct to the project’s on-site design, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are creating a computer model of anticipated traffic flow demonstrating the effects of such driver foibles as lane-switching and speeding. The MIT group is also using numerical data related to stresses from water, traffic and above-ground structures to create a 3-D model of the tunnel’s underground support system. Whether designing minuscule electronic components or a tunnel system to span a harbor, engineers are increasingly using tools that translate numbers to images. As Tufts’ Manno says, the tools offer a clear map into the foreign world of data. "We humans are not very good at processing numerical data. But we have a wonderful capacity for perceiving things visually," he says. A Sampling of Design Applications for Engineers
Sue Mellen writes from Tyngsboro, Mass. Please rate this article |
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