As part of the ongoing quest to create a ‘rich’ virtual product
development environment – we can expect to begin seeing more
and more information to be connected with the virtual product
model. One of the areas that promises to gain momentum in the
near term is in the area of materials. Only by more closely
integrating materials data with CAE tools can we hope to more
accurately predict the behavior and performance of a part or
a system under a variety of conditions.
Looking at Matereality and its efforts in this area, I have
to admit that I am very impressed with the direction that
they’re going. As the company itself explains, “users of Matereality®
might work in the automotive, biomedical, consumer goods,
appliances, defense industries. A typical client enterprise
is heavily vested in virtual product development technologies
(VPD), with global collaborative efforts, using many materials.
A single user of diverse materials who needs access to data
on material behavior on a constant basis could also greatly
benefit from Matereality.”
Certainly for the community of manufacturers and suppliers
served by CAx/PLM providers like IBM/Dassault, UGS, and PTC
(as well as those migrating in this direction, such as SAP),
this ‘next generation’ virtual product development environment
only promises to become even more critical in the years ahead.
It therefore only makes good sense for these organizations
to be paying close attention to what companies like Matereality
are up to. Not only because Matereality is making available
a rich database of materials data, but because it is also
making it easier to access and use that data with its recently
introduced Material Data Mining Robot (MIRO), a search tool
designed to mine data collections for relevant data – data,
for example, that would be suitable for a specific CAE simulation
or a material specification.
It's all part of the company's CAE-friendly strategy. In
recent months, Matereality has announced partnerships with
both ABAQUS and ANSYS. And my expectation is that they don't
intend to stop there.
