We're all aware of what physical robots can do to improveproduction or manufacturing processes, but what about software robots? Dassault Systemes has the answer with the latestupgrade to its Isight package, which brings similar process automation to theengineering design process.

Isight 4.0, based on technology Dassaultacquired in June 2008 from Engineous Software, is an open system forintegrating design and simulation models created with various CAD, CAE andother design tool - and not necessarily only those from Dassault. Isightcreates an integrated simulation process workflow across a variety of toolsused by engineering teams, reducing the need to manually pass data back andforth between systems and greatly speeding up the simulation process. Theresulting efficiencies from automating the simulation process workflowseliminate costly input errors and allow engineering teams to test and simulatemore iterative designs, according to Alex Van der Velden, director ofsimulation lifecycle management at SIMULIA, Dassault's brand for simulationofferings.

"By creating a simulation process flow, you're formalizing thedesign process-now you know what you did to get certain results," says Van derVelden. "This makes engineering reusable because a (software) robot doesn'tmake mistakes. On average, an engineer makes an entry mistake once every 30mouse clicks. All those mistakes add up in terms of designing products, butthis is virtually error free."

Here's the way Isight works: An engineer changes a parameter like the length of a cylinder, and Isight funnels that change through the proper sequence of all the softwarepackages used to complete that engineering task. So for example, Isight wouldautomatically open a CAD file, change the geometry, load the model into a postprocessor, create a mesh, run a solver, examine the results file and extractattributes like maximum stress. "Imagine that all the steps that the engineerdoes by hand like opening pieces of software or modifying parameters are nowdone automatically," Van der Velden explains.

What's new to Isight 4.0 are capabilities to make simulationprocess flows more reusable along with a variety of collaboration features thatmake it easier to work with different people and different functional areas ofthe enterprise. The software is "simulation agnostic," Van der Velden says, soit can be used with all the Dassault PLM and CAD tools, in addition todatabases, CAD, CAE and simulation products from a host of alternative vendors.

Isight 4.0 provides an Abaqus Unified FEA application component aspart of the base package, which enhances the use of SIMULIA's FEA technologywithin the Isight process workflows. However, enhanced support for scriptinghas also been added to enable Isight to accommodate custom components.

Isight 4.0 Automates Simulation Workflows A