It's high time to consider CAE

Modern industry is unthinkable without new technologies, high-quality equipment and skilled personnel. It is the integration of the three elements that enable development innovation, in-design, manufacturing and maintenance. An increasingly global market fuels optimism that any machinery deficiency is rapidly being eliminated. The third element that has evolved as more essential in the competitive struggle for market share is the high-tech PLM technologies and competencies (technical background) of the engineers who use these technologies. PLM is a strategic approach to innovations based on process automation and introduction of a single source of product data for its entire lifecycle梖rom conceptualization to development to manufacturing, use and retirement. Among the PLM technologies, the most advanced are CAE technologies. This stands for Computer-Aided Engineering, or computer-aided engineering analysis. In this article, we will discuss the CAE market and the available computational systems, its capabilities, suitability and accessibility. We will also consider where and how CAE engineers are trained. Improved technology CAE facilitates significant cost reduction for physical testing and prototyping, as well as cuts time-to-market. This is because computer-aided virtual experiments are fast and so as the technology is implemented in the tiresome iterative process of physical testing that is no longer needed. Also, there is no need to change the design later in the process based from the testing results. At the same time, one can play with the model's characteristics and features to express one's talent by optimizing the design. In addition, CAE technologies can capture, store and share engineering knowledge and expertise and to transfer methods and technologies across industries and domains. To obtain the highest return, it is advised to implement CAE analysis at the early stages of development starting from structural and conceptual design and continues to final design verifications of the completed product. Wide-range system apps Siemens PLM Software, a developer and supplier of CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM systems, provides multiple solutions for different kinds of engineering analysis like SMBs, huge companies, corporate and personal uses, role-driven environment (design engineer or engineering analysis expert) and one workstation use, the utilizayion within a unified design and analysis environment, and multi-CAD and multi-CAE applications. The CAE portfolio from Siemens PLM Software includes two leading finite element model systems: NX Advanced Simulation and Femap. Both systems access the NX Nastran solver that efficiently and quickly solves various problems up to the most complex nonstationary nonlinear processes defined by nonlinear differential equations systems with partial derivatives. NX Nastran solver is a kernel that performs numerical solution of such equation systems. The history of Nastran goes back to the 60s. The system was initially developed by NASA, USA to design and analyze the Saturn V launch vehicle. Nastran stands for NASA Structural Analysis. Presently NX Nastran is in use at over 300 enterprises. Among them are world-famous giant car makers including Daimler, Isuzu Motors, Caterpillar, Suzuki, Nissan, airspace companies: Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney (Rocketdyne), as well as Canon, GE Energy and Rolls Royce Marine. A distinctive feature of NX Advanced Simulation works within an integrated development environment and full implementation of the simulation-based and driven design technology. It means that the product as designed and as built is completely verified by calculations; its specifications and engineering features are the most suitable. NX Advanced Simulation is a full-scale NX module that preprocesses a geometric model, creates a finite element (FE) model, prepares data to be transferMujer