Digital prototyping
Introduction
Virtual prototyping is a method in the product development process. It involves using computer-aided design (CAD), computer-automated design (CAutoD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) software to validate a design before committing to making a physical prototype. This is done by creating computer-generated (usually 3D) geometric shapes (parts) and combining them into an "assembly" and testing different mechanical movements, fits and functions. The assembly or individual parts can be opened in the CAE software to simulate the behavior of the product in the world. real.
Background
The product design and development process used to rely primarily on the experience and judgment of engineers to produce an initial conceptual design. A physical prototype was then built and tested to evaluate its performance. Without any way to evaluate its performance in advance, the initial prototype was highly unlikely to meet expectations. Engineers typically had to redesign the initial concept several times to address weaknesses that were revealed in physical testing.
The advance towards virtual prototypes
Today, manufacturers are under pressure to reduce time to market and optimize products to higher levels of performance and reliability. A much larger number of products are being developed in the form of virtual prototypes in which engineering simulation software is used to predict performance before physical prototypes are built. Engineers can quickly explore the performance of thousands of design alternatives without investing the time and money required to build physical prototypes. The ability to explore a wide range of design alternatives leads to improvements in performance and design quality. The time required to bring the product to market is often substantially reduced because virtual prototypes can be produced much faster than physical prototypes.[1][2][3][4].
End-to-end prototyping
End-to-end prototyping takes full account of how a product or component is manufactured and assembled and links the consequences of those processes to performance. The early availability of such physically realistic virtual prototypes allows testing and confirmation of performance to take place as design decisions are made; enabling the acceleration of design activity and providing more information about the relationship between manufacturing and performance than can be achieved by building and testing physical prototypes. Benefits include reduced costs in both design and manufacturing as physical prototyping and testing are dramatically reduced/eliminated and minimal but robust manufacturing processes are selected.[5].