Exa Corporation

Exa Corporation is a global innovator of simulation software for enhancing the product engineering design and development process.

Market:CAE and CFD engineering simulation products and services

Product:3D ACIS® Modeler, 3D InterOp Translators

CHALLENGESNeeded high-quality conversion from multiple CAD formats to prepare models for meshing; needed industry-proven 3D solid modeling kernel.

Solutions:• 3D ACIS Modeler integrates into PowerDELTA™

geometry preparation software • 3D InterOp translates models from vehicle design

programs

Results:• Exa focuses resources on core competence of

solving engineering problems associated with the product design and development process

• Exa provides an industry-leading solution that streamlines and automates the simulation model preparation process

• Exa customers reduce costs, improve designs and accelerate time to market

COMPANYExa Corporation is an engineering software company that off ers a suite of CAE and CFD simulation tools in addition to consulting services. The U.S.-based company’s products and services enable engineers to create competitive designs while shortening product design cycles. With engineering offi ces in the U.S., Asia, and Europe, Exa serves market leading manufacturers of cars, trucks, trains, motorsport vehicles, and agricultural construction equipment.

With the Exa suite of engineering simulation products, engineers achieve results within time frames that are unreachable using traditional methodologies; customers benefi t from drastic reduction in prototype expenses, while bringing their products to market faster.

The company’s core product is PowerFLOW®, a computational fl uid dynamics solver that provides the ability to simulate fl uid fl ow in and around objects. Unlike most other CAE simulation providers, Exa provides solutions that bookend the solving process – from model preparation to post processing analysis – in a single integrated software environment.

In 2009 Exa launched PowerDELTA™, a geometry preparation tool poised to change the product development paradigm by streamlining and automating the entire model preparation simulation process. With PowerDELTA, geometry application engineers and other users quickly and effi ciently prepare models for simulations so product optimization can be made early in the design process.

“The result is that Exa’s customers output better performing products at a reduced cost and accelerated time to market. PowerDELTA applies parametric feature modeling and history tree model management to the process of simulation model creation and update, reducing mesh prep time from days

or even weeks to hours.”

-- Paul Stewart, Director of Product Management Exa Corporation

PowerDELTA is geared toward geometry modeling and mesh preparation engineers, but off ers a simpler and easier to use automated approach. This allows companies to devote fewer resources to mesh preparation work, as well as enables people who are less specialized on geometry to handle the task. By reducing the tedious preparation time, experts are freed up to think about high level dynamics and real design problems rather than the meshes and facets associated with prep work.

CHALLENGEMany competitive case preparation tools require the customer to put facets on their CAD models or use external meshing tools in order to begin preprocessing. This makes it very diffi cult to make corrections if there is a problem. And if the fi le is in an IGES format, the model is always fi lled with problems. Correcting issues always adds to the processing time.

Always looking to enhance and accelerate the product development process, Exa conceived the idea of PowerDELTA– a unique and innovative geometry prep tool - to add to its suite of CAE products and services. Exa product developers and managers, though richly experienced in the mathematics behind NURBS and solid modeling, quickly realized that developing the 3D geometry kernel and CAD format translators PowerDELTA required was not something they wanted to tackle.

“It’s one thing to have CAD surface functionality inside software that you’ve written to operate on NURBS surfaces – most of us have written those at some point,” says Paul Stewart, Exa Director of Product Management. “But to develop an actual CAD modeling kernel along with the ability to convert between many native CAD formats for PowerDELTA was far too big a task and not part of our primary agenda, so it did not make sense for us to take it on ourselves.”

The result is that Exa’s customers output better performing products at a reduced cost and accelerated time to market. PowerDELTA applies parametric feature modeling and history tree model management to the process of simulation model creation and update, reducing mesh prep time from days or even weeks to hours.

SOLUTIONExa ran benchmarks to identify the geometry kernel that would best integrate with PowerDELTA. A number were discounted fairly early on, with Spatial’s ACIS and (Siemen’s) UGS’ Parasolid making the short list. Ultimately Spatial’s ACIS kernel and 3D InterOp translator components were selected for their breadth of capability in handling all native CAD formats, particularly CATIA v4 and v5 and Pro/E, essential to the auto and transportation industries.

Once the selection was made, integrating ACIS with diff erent functionalities for meshing and wrapping were developed simultaneously, with the InterOp integration work being done later in the cycle. According to Stewart, this was the most critical aspect in the fi rst release of PowerDELTA. Integrating InterOp with PowerDELTA enables Exa customers to import the original CAD model data without inheriting translation problems.

ACIS holds solid models read in by PowerDELTA. “It is appealing to us to have an actual CAD format inside the tool,” notes Stewart. “Even though we are a meshing tool, the ability to perform CAD operations on the initial geometry was a very attractive plus.” It’s one thing to read in CAD surfaces and then maintain them as CAD surfaces, but with the ACIS kernel Exa customers use CAD model functionality to enhance the meshing process.

Exa simulations early in the product development process allow engineers to evaluate and optimize designs long before physical prototypes are ever made.

“There is a wealth of functionality in Spatial’s 3D components,” says Stewart. “We plan to use Advanced Covering (to create high quality n-sided surfaces) and Defeaturing (to identify and remove unwanted features from a 3D model prior to meshing) for future functionality.”

Exa has discovered Spatial’s support services to be very helpful, and sends an engineer to the annual Spatial Insiders’ Summit and workshops. The company has also used phone support to communicate issues directly with Spatial for resolution.

What sets Exa apart from its competition is that PowerDELTA is a genuine process tool. A customer starts with a full bill of materials for the entire model, brings it in from the originating CAD system and with a process audit trail, organizes, sorts and prepares each of the many components – as many as 5,000 for some. Any changes are easily rolled through the whole process again because they are recorded in the process history tree – a trail of all geometric operations that have been performed in PowerDELTA.

The trail makes it easy to go back to either change the input geometry or change the meshing parameters and quickly regenerate the entire sequence of operations. Unlike typical meshing tools where the user is just pushing points around without knowing where he started, ACIS enables PowerDELTA to function like a solid modeling tool because of the history tree.

For example, an OEM customer of Exa’s may bring a CAD model with thousands of parts into PowerDELTA. The software prepares the entire vehicle by sorting it into perhaps 100 individual mesh components. When the process is complete and the model is ready for simulation, invariably a client has forgotten to provide a number of parts or some of them are wrong. Traditionally the OEM customer would have to throw away several days of work and start over because the missing or wrong parts are so deeply worked into the fi nal components.

With PowerDELTA, since the entire process has been recorded, it’s easy to change some parts at the start of the process and then regenerate the whole tree, quickly getting back to a completed model. Where the original model took four or fi ve days to complete, depending on what is changed where in the vehicle, modifi cations or variations are completed in less than a day or even hours, thanks in part to ACIS. Once pre-processing is complete, the model is ready to be exported into PowerFLOW for solving.

RESULTSSpatial components enable Exa to approach vehicle product development as a process problem by off ering a soup to nuts digital simulation solution, a trend that the industry as a whole is embracing. PowerDELTA represents a milestone for the company because it consolidates functionality of several modules, eliminating the need for customers to rely on multiple tools for case preparation.

“We have a lot of experience in CAD mathematics, functionality and software, but we need to focus our resources on our core business of solving engineering problems associated with computational fl uid dynamics analysis,” comments Stewart.” At the same time we need serious competent help on the CAD development side. Partnering with Spatial allows us to outsource a very important and major component – we view them as an extension of our development team.”

“We work closely with our clients to resolve design issues, not just by providing them with software to work on their own, but by truly understanding the client’s real engineering problem,” concludes Stewart.” Spatial approaches its client relationships in much the same way, which is integral to our partnership.”

Our 3DEXPERIENCE platform powers our brand applications, serving 12 industries, and provides a rich portfolio of industry solution experiences.Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations. Its world-leading solutions transform the way products are designed, produced, and supported. Dassault Systèmes’ collaborative solutions foster social innovation, expanding possibilities for the virtual world to improve the real world. The group brings value to over 170,000 customers of all sizes in all industries in more than 140 countries. For more information, visit www.3ds.com.

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AmericasDassault Systèmes175 Wyman StreetWaltham, Massachusetts02451-1223USA

Europe/Middle East/AfricaDassault Systèmes10, rue Marcel DassaultCS 4050178946 Vélizy-Villacoublay CedexUSA

Spatial Corp310 Interlocken Pkwy.Ste. 200Broomfield, Colorado80021USA