Preface
Product development, not limited to electromechanical machines, originates from determining the geometry of the product for the required specifications. In most cases, current trends for the geometry design use CAD. CAD is an indispensible tool to support the process for improving the geometry of a design and finding the easiest geometry to manufacture that has good performance. The object of using CAE is to evaluate whether the geometry design fulfills the requirements and whether or not there is a better design based on the feedback obtained from the analysis for the design. Therefore, the tools related to product development are expected to be highly compatible with CAD. Analysis tools are also expected to run analysis directly using the CAD data (geometrical information) .
CAD link features are necessary for a more efficient development process because the more advanced the links between CAD and CAE the more advanced concurrent development becomes shrinking the loop of development and increasing the speed of the design process. This report focuses on the features to link JMAG and CAD, but the Geometry Editor built into JMAG can also be used as CAD for anyone that has not presently using a CAD system to run analyses using the CAD link features.
Fig. 1. Process to achieve a CAD-JMAG link
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Improving Compatibility with CAD for JMAG
JMAG is based on the concept of being "OPEN" and features are continually developed to improve the compatibility with CAD. First let's look at the basic feature for importing data created using CAD. The process of reworking a new geometrical model for an analysis decreases the efficiency of development and inhibits the use of CAE. A CAD data converter is available in JMAG to import geometrical data exported from a wide range of CAD systems. As a standard feature, 3D geometry can be imported as SAT data and 2D geometry can be imported as DXF data. Furthermore, the proprietary converter available for JMAG supports CATIAv5, CATIAv4, Pro/ENGINEER, and IGES-3D.
The CAD link features achieve a concurrent process that links JMAG and CAD in addition to simply importing the geometrical data. More information is provided later, but this allows the geometrical information to be shared between CAD and JMAG. Changes to the geometry in the CAD data can be sequentially reflected in the input data for CAE because the material properties and condition settings managed in CAE for the geometrical information (solids, faces, and edges) managed in CAD are maintained when a link is established. The converter required to share the geometrical information in CAD with CAE was developed to realize this feature.
Using an actual user case as an example, a magnetic field analysis of the magnetic circuit geometry for the layout design created in CAD was run to evaluate the magnetic saturation as well as unnecessary magnetic pathways. These results were then reflected in the geometry design in CAD, and then the cycle was repeated by evaluating the new geometry using another magnetic filed analysis.
Presently, the CAD systems that JMAG supports are CATIAv5, Pro/ENGINEER, NX, and SolidWorks.
Fig. 2. Data configuration of the CAD-JMAG link
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