A Quick Introduction to the Creo Behavioral Modeling Extension
Let's look at three common scenarios that cause engineers and designers to waste time and develop products that aren't as good as they could be.
Iterating
Most designs start with design requirements — these may specify weight, volume, centre of gravity, clearance, surface quality, motion, and even custom calculations. To find a solution that meets these requirements, you must often perform tedious and time-consuming iterations: modify a model, perform measurements, then repeat, over and over.
Iterating some more
Once you find a solution, the design must be optimised to find the best possible solution. In consumer electronics, how much would a 5 or 10% weight reduction translate to increased customer satisfaction? In aerospace, what effect would that have on vehicle performance? For many products, lower weight means less material and lower material costs. Finding this "best possible design" requires substantial time and effort spent iterating and analysing potential model solutions.
Making tradeoffs
If you have conflicting and competing qualities you're designing toward, how do you perform trade studies? Can you generate high numbers of experiments and select the best results?
Introducing BMX
Why not let your CAD software find the answers for you? The Creo Behavioral Modeling Extension (BMX) solves these three problems: driving your model toward specified requirements, optimising your designs, and performing trade studies.
How does BMX accomplish this? With the following options:
- Datum Analysis Feature performs calculations and measurements on your model and then generates parameters and other datum features — for example, a parameter for the model's mass, with a coordinate system located at the centre of gravity.
- User-Defined Analyses can incorporate construction features to perform a custom calculation over a domain.
- Excel Analysis links your models to Excel spreadsheets, and Prime Analysis links your models to PTC MathCAD worksheets, to drive your model from engineering calculations.
- Feasibility Studies iterate model dimensions you select within specified limits to find a solution that meets the constraints you specify — driving your model to a desired interior volume, locating the centre of gravity for stability, or specifying surface characteristics such as dihedral angle, Gaussian curvature or radius.
- Optimization Studies find the best possible solution for a feasibility study by maximising or minimising a measured parameter, such as mass.
- Multi-Objective Design Studies let you generate experiments for conflicting design constraints, then pare down the results to find solutions that meet the right balance — for example, increasing moment of inertia while reducing mass.
With BMX, you build your design intent directly into your model. In fact, BMX is the ultimate in feature-based parametric modelling, because you create features in your model that ensure changes to geometry update the rest of your model so you meet your design constraints and goals.
