Convergence of Mechanical and Electronic Design

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Electronics and product design have now become so much inter-dependent that it is difficult to imagine a product that is purely mechanical. Most importantly, the physical form of electronics plays an important role in product design.

Issues with distinct Mechanical and Electronic Design

Mechanical products under development move back and forth between electronics and mechanical design phases during their development life cycle. They also face delays due to reasons such as:

  • A board created by the electronic engineer is sent to a third party to create a prototype.
  • The prototypes often do not fit into the enclosure due to some additional changes.
  • A collective effort of electronic, mechanical, and software engineers also create conflicts.

Uniting Electronic and Mechanical Designs

To resolve such issues, CAD vendors are now making efforts to develop workflows that seamlessly integrate software, mechanical, and electrical parts of product design. For instance, to reduce such delays and improve the overall product development life cycle, Siemens PLM started working with Mentor Graphics in 2017. The product now offers electronics and electrical design with their CAD packages, SolidEdge, and NX.

Similarly, Autodesk is working in association with EAGLE since 2016. EAGLE is Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software that enables the printed circuit board designers to connect easily with schematic diagrams, PCB routing, and component placement.

All of these software vendors strive to create bi-directional associativity without carrying out file translation to develop an easy workflow across electrical, electronic, and mechanical aspects of a product. Designers now enjoy product design benefits such as:

  • The integrated suite now supports importing board outlines from the mechanical model design suite Fusion 360 to EAGLE and vice versa.
  • The application also letsusers update their component placement on the board.
  • It helps to populate each component with a 3D model.

The integrated workflow also faced some constraints in the product design. Typically, the electronics designers have to work under them. Some of these include:

  • Size of the board
  • Placement of critical components
  • Position of the mounting holes

Specialists then developed an integrated EAGLE/Fusion 360 environment which eradicated these issues. Now, any change in one model is directly reflected in another. The best part is, the designer can either choose to accept or reject these changes.

The new functionality has proved to be a game changer in the overall product development and design. Designers can now carry out the product design more efficiently and quickly. The tool also helps the designers to explore new techniques to design electronic products.

5 Tips for Evaluating an Engineering Firm Before You Join

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To grow your professional career as an engineer in your desired firm, you need a proper plan and research. It is important to ensure that the company you work will meet your goals and plan. Here are some tips that will help an individual to evaluate any engineering firm before joining it.

  1. Check for the company’s website

To find whether a company is real or fake

  1. Let Social Media reconfirm the Company’s values

Thoroughly check the company’s Facebook posts and Twitter tweets to closely analyze and evaluate employee relation and organization culture.

  1. The inside scoop

Check reviews on websites such as Glassdoor and get the insights of the corporate culture by reading employee reviews.

  1. Leverage your Network

Make use of in-person networking by contacting your connections on Linkedin who have recent work experience in the firm of your interest. Gather details about the work culture from acquaintances and then choose the right firm.

  1. Keep an eye on Press

Explore both consumer and trade press to gain details about the firm’s expertise and the way it highlights and publicize individual’s professional achievements.

Evolving Industrial Design Technology Trends in 2019

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Manufacturers always prefer technologies that promise to make their firms more productive and profitable. One of the most recent concepts is the Internet of Things (IoT) which would revolutionize the industrial design technology. Additionally, use of Augmented Virtual Reality will offer industries to have more vivid experience of the real world. Digitalization is another concept that would give an apparent idea of development and technology dependent world. Further, Artificial Intelligence will become part of our daily life. So, let us briefly understand the Industrial Design Technology Trends in 2019.

Internet of things (IoT)

IoT is defined as a system of interlinked devices. The IoT for industries will empower new ways of ideation, engineering innovation, production execution, and service excellence. It is not just associated with physical objects but also about designing things in virtual space. It will completely change the connectivity power of electronics and software and their interaction. Such products will have the capability to increase the company’s profits as well as deliver significant benefits to consumers.

Augmented Virtual Reality

Augmented Virtual reality is going to change not only what customers do with products but also what they expect from them. It will provide consumers to experience the virtual world more vividly. In the case of designing, designers can pull their ideas out of the screen and can drop it into the real world at full scale. The designers will be able to visualize, interact, and report their findings on product quality from any part of the world. It will surely, advance the design technology and improve industry efficiency.

Digitalization

The use of Digital technologies changes the business model and distribute new income and value-producing chances to business. Digitalization will unquestionably improve the accessibility and will facilitate better information exchange worldwide. A proper digitalization plan will help industries to reinvent processes, improve quality and promote consistency.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing everything, and the Design industry is a part of this change. It is a section of computer science that highlights the creation of intelligent machines which work and respond like humans. Artificial Intelligence Designers will lead multidisciplinary teams in the formation and designing. So, it is very likely that soon AI would take control of the product design domain as well.

Overall, in 2019 many more technologies will evolve which will completely digitalize the design industry and will promote overall organizational growth.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) for green buildings

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BIM is a 3D process that provides an insight to professionals to plan, design, construct and infrastructure. It has been broadly recognized in the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.

Advantages of BIM in AEC

  • It helps the AEC industry to reduce sustainability concerns such as Carbon dioxide emission, dependency on fossil fuel for energy strategies, and energy consumption by adopting green building strategies.
  • Beside these concerns, BIM software provides solutions and ideas for reducing CO2emission, analyze and evaluate energy performance, optimize natural ventilation system and decreases the impact of the sun on the building, increases the importance of thermal comfort, recommend ideas for controlling water usage, and stimulate acoustic performances.
  • BIM tools are of great use when designing the green buildings or their operational management phase.
  • It can facilitate data exchange and integration, improves the communication channel between stakeholders, and allow people to visualize and analyze the building energy performance.

Use of BIM in the AEC industry increases the quality of work, improves speed and productivity, and lower the cost of projects.

Future Scope

BIM adds value to green building development but has some gaps which can be responded by future research and studies.

  • Future BIM software can integrate with emerging technologies like augmented virtual reality, to allow people to experience the real world more vividly.
  • It not only focuses on evaluating and developing the prototypes. Instead, aim to investigate the real need of BIM software, align with the actual performance from practitioners and their interest in BIM green.
  • It concentrates on strengthening the interoperability between green BIM applications and develop strong industrial standards for green BIM projects.

Proper alignment of BIM development is to be done with green BIM projects in the future.

Sneak Peek on Top Eight Features of SOLIDWORKS 2019

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The SOLIDWORKS World 2018 showed off some of the awe features to come in SOLIDWORKS 2019, and some of these features caused the Los Angeles crowd to break out in unprompted applause. But now, with the beginning of 2019 we will actually see these new features of SOLIDWORKS 2019 live. Before that, let’s have sneak peek on these top 8 features:

3D Texturize Body

This feature promises to be a massive boon in screening products as they look in real life, such as a grip on a lever. It generates an offset mesh body from current stable, with control panels to refine the size and texture.

 

Mesh Slicing and Topology Study

The upcoming version of the software will do a form optimization taking inputs as stress, factor of care and occurrence constraints. More so, the new net slicing feature would help make drawings from the subsequent mesh body and uphold positions.

 

Group Mates by Rank

As you can group mates by their position you’ll be able to cluster mistakes as suppressed, lazy, cracked, and over-defined mates together.

 

Partial Fillet

You’ll like that chamfers and fillets can be partly useful to an edge. You’ll be able to regulate the distance, percentage, orientation, and drag lever offsets.

E-Drawings and VR Support

SOLIDWORKS 2019 will add Virtual Reality to support E-Drawing viewers, thereby allowing users to view virtual drawings.

 

SOLIDWORKS visualize DENOISER

SOLIDWORKS Visualize will integrate NVIDIA’s AI-based Optix “DE noising” technology to quickly provide photo realistic renderings. SOLIDWORKS will give a 10x boost in rendering performance.

 

DEFEATURING ASSEMBLY

Now the users will have capabilities of Defeaturing Assemblies, protecting the form and spirit of an assembly while beating irrelevant or delicate details.

 

ON THE EXTERIOR

People who like to take notes by hand, this 2019 generation software will allow users to markup their model’s handwritten notes, which will be saved with that model. The next generation of software will enable users to bring some exciting possibilities to Microsoft surface users. Microsoft surface pen users will also be able to get most out of their stylus, as the software will automatically convert drawing into an applicable feature.

Notably, SOLIDWORKS 2019 is all set to revolutionize the design industry in the 2019. So, get ready to witness some dramatic transformation in 2019 with these new SOLIDWORKS features.