Large-scale Visualization and the HP Visualization Center SV6
By Philippe Lindheimer, HP Scaleable Visualization Business Manager

Designers in manufacturing and industrial R&D organizations today are driven to keep pace with ever-increasing design complexities, shortened product development cycles and demands for higher quality products. To respond to these realities, companies are aggressively driving front-end-
loaded design processes where the virtual prototype becomes the medium for communicating design information and decisions throughout the enterprise-from concept to detail design; from analysis to maintenance and manufacturability simulations.

With the success of an entire product design in the balance, accurate, real-time visualization of these models becomes paramount to the success of the program. Designers and engineers need to be able to visualize designs as they exist in real-life with photo-realistic image quality. They need a level of performance and interactivity that can keep pace with the thought process. They need to be able to work concurrently and collaboratively across the extended enterprise to harvest the collective experience and insight of the organization. These are the design goals of the HP scalable visualization architecture.

HP visualization center sv6 provides a revolutionary architecture that dramatically exceeds industry capabilities in the key areas of visualization image quality, performance and scalability. The architecture is designed to provide an infrastructure using best-in-class graphics, CPUs, I/O and networking technologies as core building blocks for scalability. This modularity also provides the ability to scale systems to the budget of a smaller supplier up to that of a large scale visualization facility required for huge models at extreme resolutions and image quality.

The scalable visualization technology ensures that the same application can be used in both environments. This facilitates collaboration with more members of the extended design teams, largely independent of their corporate computing budget. The scalable visualization architecture is also built upon the principal of transparent application support. Applications do not need to be coded to take advantage of the higher image quality, performance scaling and resolution scaling of the hp scalable architecture. The same application that runs on a desktop machine will run on the scalable visualization architecture.

To learn more about this new and exciting visualization architecture and the first offerings from HP, please visit http://www.hp.com/go/immersive.

Multi-site Synchronized ENOVIA
By Gareth Evans, HP Global Solution Lead, Product Lifecycle Collaboration

HP Consulting, working closely with its customers and with Oracle, has developed and implemented the ability to replicate multiple sites of EnoviaVPM with real-time synchronization. The main idea behind the replication is to have two or more geographically distributed sites allowing simultaneous work at all sites on the same data at the same time.

The largest production environment running today covers over a thousand users on two sites. Each of the sites has its own high-availability cluster (using HP's MC/ServiceGuard software) -- both sites store all the EnoviaVPM file data on NFS exported file systems and the EnoviaVPM metadata in Oracle databases. All files and metadata between the sites is fully replicated, allowing fast local access and the possibility to completely restore one site with the data of the other in case of any disaster.

Additional features include:

• Synchronous replication of all metadata, including the EnoviaVPM People & Organization functionality. This prevents situations like a dual checkout of a part or two people changing the same data at the same time.
• Asynchronous replication of all file data (CAD etc) makes it possible that the end-user doesn't have to wait for the replication to complete before they can continue with their work.
• Practically all functionality is implemented using Oracle features. Only minimal Enovia customization was required.
• All replication features are designed to be transparent for the user and have only minimal impact on end user response times.
• The replication is designed to handle WAN breakdowns, provide extensive logging features and easy administration.
• The whole replication is designed so that there is no possibility for end users to create inconsistencies in the database.

File operations that have to be replicated from one site to another are handled via a queue list called the replication list. It is filled directly via a small customization in EnoviaVPM. Oracle uses it to identify files to be replicated and then starts appropriate operating system commands from within the database. The replication list is also used to store execution dates of the various operations and their error codes. In case operating system commands fail, they can be tried again until a configurable restart parameter is reached. All this functionality is designed and implemented in such a way that it is hardware independent, and after initial discussions, is expected to also work with the new EnoviaLCA.

If you would like a copy of a white paper that goes into more detail about this solution, please send an email to extended_mfg@hp.com requesting "Concepts of EnoviaVPM IT Replication" by Frank Goenninger and Andreas Miehe.

Knowledgeware Rule-based Engineering

The future of engineering is in the 3D-hybrid model, where parametric relationships between faces, solids and geometries are state-of-the art. Using intelligent software, companies can record design and process know-how, and use it for further automation of engineering design. Knowledgeware is an integral part of CATIA V5, where object-oriented programming makes it possible to deeply embed knowledegware technology. CATIA V5 knowledgeware can record the designer and engineer's process know-how and make it available for reuse, thus facilitating the industrial engineering design process while unleashing new creativity.

For further information see:
http://www-3.ibm.com/solutions/plm/press/materials/presstour_skil.doc

DELMIA Introduces Process Engineering Solutions

DELMIA Corp. announces the launch of Process Engineer, a radically different process engineering portfolio of modules utilizing the most current methodologies within an integrated IT environment. Moving a new product program quickly and accurately from product conceptual design to the execution of the production system, it decreases time-to-market.

The PPR Navigator for Manufacturing structures and visualizes all the relevant planning data. It has an intuitive interface providing access to the information organized by Product, Process and Resource (PPR). A user's position in a team's hierarchy allows him to interact selectively with different Process Engineering modules to create, revise and view data.

The Process and Resource Planning module is used to generate a process graph of the sequence of operations and automatically derive a manufacturing concept.

The Standard Time Measurement module delivers a detailed process description for both manual and semi-automated manufacturing processes based on internationally established guidelines. It determines the required standard times and then documents them fully.

The Product Evaluation module enables the user to filter specific product configurations and evaluate the cost of the proposed production plan against the target costs.

With the Layout Planning module, the engineer can efficiently design and optimize manual and automated workcells and lines. All modules are based on one PPR data model stored in a single integrated database, the PPR Hub for Manufacturing, which allows a customer to share the same data across different locations, departments and disciplines.

By using all the DELMIA Process Engineer modules, a customer is able to create a complete virtual factory and validate the process before the product design is finalized. Thus, significant savings are realized in both design-for-manufacturing and design-for-assembly.

DELMIA Process Engineer has an intuitive Windows user interface and is easy to learn. It is available worldwide on Windows NT and Windows 2000.

"The open architecture of the DELMIA Process Engineer allows the customization of the user interface across all its modules, enabling full integration with a customer's pre-existing IT environment," said Raimund Menges, General Manager of DELMIA, Germany.

Peter Schmitt, Vice President of DELMIA Marketing added, "The combination of the DELMIA Process Engineer with other DELMIA applications such as DPM for Assembly, IGRIP, ENVISION and QUEST provides the user with a complete and extremely powerful range of tools for the entire manufacturing process. Quite literally, from the early product design phase, through the whole planning cycle and continuing through the actual production, DELMIA Process Engineer keeps the user appraised of what has to happen, when, why, where, how and at what cost."

Summary of DELMIA's Process Engineer modules:

• PPR Navigator for Manufacturing Structures and visualizes all relevant planning data

• Process and Resource Planning generates a process graph of the sequence of operations and automatically derives a manufacturing concept

• Standard Time Measurement Produces detailed process descriptions for both manual or semi-automated manufacturing processes

• Product Evaluation Filters specific product configurations and evaluates the cost of the proposed production plan against the target costs

• Layout Planning allows efficient design and optimization of manual and automated workcells and lines

• PPR Hub for Manufacturing allows sharing of data across different locations, departments and disciplines

DB2, The Preferred Database Solution for ENOVIA

IBM and Dassault Systemes announced that Dassault Systemes has selected IBM DB2 Universal Database as its preferred database solution for ENOVIA Solutions.

Under the terms of the agreement, Dassault Systemes will bundle DB2 Universal Database with its ENOVIA Solutions for use on both the Windows NT and UNIX operating systems. This bundle will provide users with a competitively priced, integrated solution that will reduce time and simplify the installation, administration, configuration and maintenance of product lifecycle management (PLM) environments.

"Today's announcement is another example of leading application developers choosing to standardize on DB2 Universal Database as their preferred deployment platform," said Janet Perna, general manager, IBM Data Management Solutions. "The combination of DB2 and ENOVIA Solutions provides customers with a rock-solid foundation for product lifecycle management applications."

"IBM's DB2 solutions have a proven track record for data management," said Lou Pascarella, Executive Vice President, Research and Development, ENOVIA Corp. "By packaging these solutions with the ENOVIA Product Lifecycle Management Solutions, our customers can focus their deployment activities on developing and delivering innovative products to their markets knowing that their product data is protected by a proven data management environment."

ENOVIA's suite of market-leading 3D collaborative Product Lifecycle Management Solutions provide enterprises of all sizes a broad range of integrated, web-centric solutions covering all aspects of product life cycle support, Product Process and Resource (PPR) Management, and integration with supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, and customer relationship management applications. Developed in conjunction with innovative industry-leading customers, and integrating best-in-class business practices for product development management, ENOVIA's integrated solutions capture, promote, and support these best practices throughout the extended enterprise.

As the foundation for e-business, DB2 Universal Database is the industry's first multimedia, Web-ready relational database management system, strong enough to meet the demands of large corporations and flexible enough to serve medium-sized and small e-businesses. DB2 Universal Database combines integrated power for business intelligence, content management, enterprise information portals and e-business with industry-leading performance and reliability to drive the most demanding industry solutions. DB2 Universal Database together with Internet technology makes information easily accessible, available and secure. There are more than 40 million DB2 users from over 300,000 companies worldwide relying on IBM data management solutions.
For more information please visit http://www.software.ibm.com/data.

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