Virtual Engineering at Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Virtual Engineering is the early and continuous support (from process and infrastructure view) of the entire product lifecycle concerning the coordination, assessment and completion of the activities of all partners within immersive virtual environments.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) refers to the product-specific and company-wide information management that can integrate data, processes, business systems and  ultimately people in an extended enterprise. PLM software system solutions allow to manage this information throughout the entire lifecycle of a product efficiently and cost-effectively from the concept, design and manufacture through service and disposal.

Versions are comparable work results or development stages of a task or a product that occur in succession. A newer version, emerges through changes or further development of the latter version and is usually an improvement.

• Versioning in chronological order: Versions arise in chronological order and have exactly one successor (in the simplest case).

• Versioning at different levels: Small changes are recorder in "intermediate versions", while larger development phases are documented in major versions

• Versioning with "based on" sequence: Versions can build on one another in the sense of a "based on" relationship, even if they do not follow the time sequence (e.g. V5 based on V2, even though it follows V4)

• Knowledge is stored in the components of the CAD model as parameters, constraints and rules (design case)
• Design case allows the fast creation of variants of the model through different variants and valid combinations of components
• Knowledge describes the behaviour of the design object (the components of a CAD model) in the design environment
• Contains predefined methods for transforming the components to avoid intermediate stations with time-consuming decision making

Context of use:

• Analysis of optimization potential
• Mapping of design guidelines
• Automation of design processes
• Use of intelligent design templates

• Mimics nature's evolutionary approach to design
• Designers or engineers put in design goals into generative design software along with parameters (materials, manufacturing methodes, cost constraints)
• Uses AI
• Uses cloud computing

• Provides a unified 3D modelling capability on combinations of facet (triangular networks) and B-Rep data.
• Removes common reverse engineering obstacles such as data conversion between facets and solids: (3D scanning and additive manufacturing)
• Combines facets, surfaces and solids seamlessly
• Work with import scanned 3d data

• Benefits:

- Shortening Time-to-Market
- Quality improvement
- Process assurance

• Reasons:

- Parallelisation of individual processes through digital models
- Removal of defects
- Current consistent data
-Transparency between sales, development, production and suppliers

• Customer Relationship Management: CRM systems take care of the management of all customer relationships, including address info, contact history, offers, etc.

• Product Data Management: Systems for managing and archiving recent product and workflow related data and information

• Enterprise Ressource Planning: Goal is to apply all existing resources in a company to the operational process in the most efficient way, minimizing inventory costs, lead times and maximizing capacity utilization

• Manufacturing Execution Systems: Computarized systems used in manufacturing to track and document the transformation of raw materials to finished goods 

• Supply Chain Management: SCM Systems are responsible for the planning and management of all tasks in a supplier selection and procurement, physical flow, storing of raw materials and other logistic tasks.

Is the process of assigning either unique version names or unique version numbers to unique development stages

In analytically described geometric models, the definition of the elements refers to sizes directly related to a coordinate system, while in parametrically described models the definition refers to sizes (parameters) that embody a property of the element

• Corporate use:

• goals of top management input for VE process requirements
• user requirements from line organization input for VE IT-system requirements
• ve IT-System reuqirements input for VE IT-System concepts - input for hardware and software specifications of IT-Systems and -services

• Current trends and issues 

• increasing complexity of products and processes
• shortening of product life cycles
• globalization of sales and
• procurement markets

=> lead to increasing cost and time pressure

• Solutions of VE

• virtual development
• virtual testing
• virtual operation of products and factories