Archive for March, 2008

Mahindra Group – Faster to market with vehicles that delight

Last Updated on Wednesday, 8 December 2010 09:02 Written by DCD Admin Wednesday, 5 March 2008 08:50

The Mahindra Group??s Automotive Sector is India??s fourth-largest automaker and the country??s secondlargest independent OEM.The company is in the business of manufacturing and marketing utility vehicles and light commercial vehicles, including three-wheelers. It has been the market leader in utility vehicles in India since its inception and currently accounts for about half of India??s utility vehicle market.A strong product portfolio and a philosophy of customer satisfaction have driven solid growth in domestic sales (23 percent CAGR) over the past four years.The company employs 11,600 people.
Mahindra??s automotive business views innovation and customer delight as the keys to continued growth.The company is continually working to bring new models to market sooner and to create more product variants. It is also working to eliminate non-value-added activities and to improve its ability to operate at multiple sites in multiple countries in the development of its vehicles.
Broadly implemented PLM
Since 1998, Mahindra??s Automotive Sector has been using product lifecycle management (PLM) technology from Siemens PLM Software to address these challenges and to ensure a product development environment in which innovation thrives. Specifically, Mahindra is using the Teamcenter to enable: lifecycle data support, platform and variant management,multi-site data notification and synchronization, change management and support for concurrent development, project execution and monitoring, internal value chain support and support for business partners.
This solution was chosen based on the breadth of Teamcenter functionality.The installation, which was done in phases, required minimal customization and was performed by an internal PLM support team using the implementation methodology and assistance from Siemens PLM Software. Teamcenter has now been deployed at eight locations, with 600 people taking advantage of its collaboration functionality, 30 people using its project management functionality and 150 using it for engineeringrelated activities.
Today, Mahindra has a seamless, integrated environment for new platform development. Using Teamcenter, Mahindra has achieve
d multisite and multi-CAD interoperability with complete project security and concurrent design across multiple locations. CAD, product, project and process data are managed in a single information vault. CAD data is available to each site on a real-time basis, and the company is now able to do packaging studies and clearance analyses across different CAD systems.The use of the JT??? format and Teamcenter??s visualization capability is helping meet the company-wide strategic initiative of eliminating 2D drawings.
Mahindra??s automotive sector credits many documented improvements to the use of Teamcenter. On an individual level, the company has seen an increase in productivity per employee. It attributes this productivity gain to effective document management and to the automation of routine tasks, which releases skilled personnel to perform their primary business functions. Non-value added activities such as CAD data conversion to IGES or STEP, have been completely eliminated.
In the design arena, both engineering change time and the time needed to resolve project concerns have dropped by 50 percent due to improved collaboration.Analysis preparation time has shrunk by 40 percent, and the creation of digital mock-ups goes twice as fast as previously due to the real-time, multi-CAD data integration and release management that is now handled by Teamcenter.The time needed to create bills of material for both prototypes and variants has dropped by 50 percent.
??For the organization as a whole, what Teamcenter means is a huge reduction in the time needed to bring a new vehicle from concept to launch,?? says Prakash Deshkar, senior manager, PLM, Mahindra & Mahindra. On the present program,Teamcenter is reducing that timeframe by 25 percent. For future projects, the company predicts a reduction of as much as 40 percent.
Learn More
Posted under Design, Software Platforms, Technology  |  No Comments

Autodesk Expands Sustainable Design Product Portfolio

Last Updated on Wednesday, 8 December 2010 08:40 Written by DCD Admin Monday, 3 March 2008 08:38

Acquisitions of Analysis Technologies from Green Building Studio and Carmel Software Will Help Architects and Engineers Leverage Power of Building Information Modeling to Design More Efficient Buildings

Autodesk is expanding its portfolio of software solutions to support sustainable design in the architecture, engineering & construction (AEC) markets with the acquisition of technology assets of two energy analysis software companies. Autodesk announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of Green Building Studio, an innovative provider of web-based building energy analysis that enables architects and engineers to easily perform whole building energy analysis early in the design process. Autodesk also announced that it has acquired substantially all the assets of Carmel Software Corporation, a developer of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) mechanical engineering software that enables engineers and architects to analyze their mechanical designs and help ensure sustainability goals are achieved. Terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed.

“Autodesk is committed to providing technology that makes sustainable design easier and more efficient,” said Jay Bhatt, senior vice president, Autodesk AEC Solutions. “We look forward to adding the Green Building Studio and Carmel technologies to the Autodesk portfolio and helping our customers more easily leverage the coordinated, reliable data created in the Revit platform for building information modeling (BIM) to help predict performance and design buildings with reduced environmental impact.”

Green Building Studio Inc. developed the Green Building XML (gbXML) schema and launched the Green Building Studio web service in 2004. The web service offers whole building energy, carbon, and other analysis tools for architects and designers using CAD and BIM software from Autodesk and other industry providers. Green Building Studio provides the ability to quickly and efficiently analyze building design proposals, providing building performance information to support sustainable design. Autodesk currently plans to continue support for the Green Building Studio web service and gbXML as an open standard, and to strengthen the web service’s integration with its BIM software.

“We have partnered with Autodesk for many years, and commend their ongoing support for sustainability,” said John Kennedy, CEO, Green Building Studio. “Green Building Studio looks forward to becoming part of Autodesk. We are eager to contribute our industry expertise in green buildings to drive mainstream adoption of sustainability and accelerate the AEC industry’s transition to carbon neutral buildings.”

Carmel Software has been developing and selling HVAC mechanical engineering software since 1995. Carmel’s flagship product delivers thermal load calculations that give engineers information to appropriately size a building’s HVAC systems. In addition, Carmel’s software portfolio includes programs for duct sizing, refrigeration, pipe sizing, estimating, and life-cycle cost analysis. These applications are connected with the Revit platform for BIM via gbXML. Autodesk plans to continue support for the Carmel products and to leverage the capabilities of Carmel Software’s products with its BIM software

Stephen Roth, P.E., President of Carmel Software Corporation said, “We are excited to join Autodesk and help mechanical, electrical and plumbing customers use Carmel technology to analyze their HVAC designs to help create better performing buildings.”

To read more about how Autodesk and its customers are addressing sustainable design, please visithttp://www.autodesk.com/green.

Learn More
Posted under Software Platforms, Technology  |  No Comments

NVIDIA Redefines Notebook Workstation Market

Last Updated on Wednesday, 8 December 2010 08:49 Written by DCD Admin Saturday, 1 March 2008 08:47

New Quadro??? FX 3600M Graphics Bring Advanced Visualization to Professionals on the Go with Improved Graphics, CUDA Technology, and GPU Computing
NVIDIA Corporation the world leader in visual computing technologies, today introduced the NVIDIA Quadro??? FX 3600M professional GPU for notebook and laptop workstations. This new graphics solution defines a new level of graphics performance and advanced visual computing for designers, engineers, and scientists who demand the functionality of a desktop workstation on a notebook platform.
??Design professionals, who rely on the high-performance and advanced features of NVIDIA Quadro graphics in a desktop workstation, can also experience this same level of performance in a notebook workstation,?? said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions, NVIDIA. ??With the new NVIDIA Quadro FX 3600M GPU, the notebook becomes a powerful workstation, allowing professionals to work anywhere, anytime without sacrificing graphics quality or performance.??
??The HP Compaq 8710w mobile workstation, with the new NVIDIA Quadro FX 3600M GPU, is our most powerful mobile workstation to date,?? said Dan Forlenza, vice president, Business Notebooks, HP. ??The implementation of high-performance features such as CUDA and Shader Model 4.0 technology on the mobile GPU, gives professionals the workstation-caliber processing and graphics performance they need to go wherever their work takes them.??
These new platforms deliver a uniform feature set, which include Shader Model 4.0, CUDA??? technology and GPU computing for visualization. Professionals working with large datasets, models, and images in markets such as computer-aided design (CAD), digital content creation (DCC), imaging, computing, and the sciences, are now unchained from their desktop workstations with notebook solutions that feature the latest Quadro professional graphics architecture.
Engineered to deliver high performance and visualization of extensive datasets with extremely high image quality in an ISV-certified, notebook platform, the Quadro FX 3600M is available as a fully qualified MXM v2.1A type-III form factor mobile workstation graphics board with:
  • 512 MB G-DDR3 memory
  • 256-bit memory interface
  • 51.2 GBps graphic memory bandwidth
  • OpenGL 2.1, Shader Model 4.0, and DirectX 10
  • PowerMizer??? adaptive power management tools
The complete line of NVIDIA Quadro FX notebook solutions are widely available through leading OEMs such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Fujitsu Japan, and FSC as well as workstation system integrators. For more information about the entire series of NVIDIA professional Quadro solutions, please visit http://www.nvidia.com/quadro.
Learn More
Posted under Design, Technology  |  No Comments

Categories

Archive

CAD Software Direct