New opportunities for MCAE

Named MSC chief executive officer and president in March 1996, Curry had served as president of PDA Engineering prior to its merger with The MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation. Before that, he was vice president of marketing for McDonnell Douglas Corporation's Manufacturing and Engineering Systems Company, now Unigraphics Solutions Inc. A Professional Engineer (structural), Curry is also an MSC director and on the board of directors for LMS International (Leuven, Belgium) and Geometric Software Services Ltd. (Bombay, India).

"Analysis-driven" design, Curry states, is close to a reality at some advanced manufacturers.

Global Design News: What advantages can a specialist company like MSC offer customers that seek a single source for their CAD/CAM/CAE and even PDM needs?

Curry: The answer is in the question: We are "specialists." As much as they may want to be, or even claim to be, the CAD companies can't be everything to everybody. Presently, most of the major CAD vendors are focused on PDM and even ERP because their customers have told them they need better workflow, data management, and integration. They are also providing more CAE as simulation to their design customers who are usually influenced by the engineering analyst. We support this migration of simulation upstream in two ways: We provide tools for the professionals to capture their knowledge and corporate methodology and make it available to their design colleagues, and we "OEM" our technology to companies like UG Solutions and CoCreate for inclusion in their simulation products.

Q: How will industry trends like digital mock-ups and simulation-based design affect the implementation of MCAE in the design process?

A: The use of MCAE in simulation-based design is probably our most exciting area. Our current work centers on a collaborative program, the Robust Design Computation System (RDCS), that uses a parametric version of our MSC/-PATRAN modeler, various solvers including MSC/NASTRAN, as well as deterministic, probabilistic, and Taguchi methods for design scans. We have no doubt that analysis-driven design is close to a reality at some advanced manufacturers and we are collaborating with them in this activity. As for digital mock-ups, they create new needs and opportunities for MCAE. Our aerospace experience, where contractors routinely provide large sub-assemblies for combination and execution by the prime, gives us confidence that MCAE technology is ready to work with digital mock-ups.

Q: Web-enabled CAD, with applications featuring JAVA as the primary programming language, appears to be just around the corner. What strategies does MSC have for the Internet?

A: To date, the best uses of the Web we have seen are in the area of data-management and data communication. We are developing a client-server version of our material properties data management capability we call Enterprise MVISION and we have Web-enabled our pre/-post for results viewing. You can expect a stream of Web utilities from us in the year ahead.

Q: What does MSC say to engineers who may regard MCAE solutions as appropriate for large projects like the design of automobiles and aircraft, but overkill when applied to smaller products such as medical devices or white goods?

A: As to the question of MCAE "overkill" for certain products, we don't see that at all. Any manufacturer concerned with time to market can benefit from simulation in place of prototypes and physical testing. We have both white goods and medical products users in our installed base. In fact, I suspect the highest growth rates in MCAE are to be found in new industries coming to the technology for the first time.

Q: Many analysis products seem to fall into one of two categories: those that are very basic, or complex analysis tools difficult to understand and implement. What are the functionality limits on the lower-end programs?

A: We find that the limits on "low-end programs" are not so much a matter of functionality (linear statics, steady-state heat transfer, etc.) as it is the ability of the user to properly synthesize loads and interpret results. However, there is a great deal more work for the CAE industry to do to automate these tasks.

Q: What kind of training and support does MSC provide to guide, customize, and otherwise manage the analysis activities of design engineers?

A: We have organized by industry (aero, auto, and growth) and expanded our scope from standalone software products to comprehensive solutions to better serve the changing needs of our customers. For example, our new multi-media training program for MSC/PATRAN goes far beyond just instructions on how to use MSC/MSC software--it is a tutorial and finite alement analysis theory and application that attacks the very questions that a design engineer has about what possible directions are offered and how to approach engineering problems. In addition, we offer the MSC Institute, on-site training, and hotlines.