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Standardizing Engineering Calculations in a Product Development System

ThE ImPorTanCE of EffECTIvE DoCumEnTaTIon BEhInD SuCCESSfully EngInEErED ProDuCTS

Executive Summary

Successful product development companies effectively capture and protect their intellectual property (IP). IP includes the intangible assets that go into the development of a product and/or service. They are valuable in proving ownership and as well as providing leverage for future products. however, the analyses that support and validate those products and services are often stored on personal hard-drives, thumb-drives, and lab notebooks. This spread of data storage makes it challenging for companies to successfully manage the development of their IP. With increasing design complexity, it is crucial to document and capture key analyses used to determine which, how, and why design decisions were made.

Intro

It is rare for a product to be developed entirely from scratch, without relying on any existing IP. Many successful products result from the redesign of earlier products. Yet during conver-sations about product development processes, customers often remark, “We find ourselves re-engineering our own products, products that we designed and built.” In these situations, engi-neers might as well start from scratch. Mission critical IP, which was created and then lost, now must be recreated.

Reuse of analyses saves time and money. When engineers re-design, re-create, or re-engineer IP, they abandon the benefits of reuse. This is the most apparent when a company develops a new product that is a variant of an older model. Re-deriving calculations is unproductive. Merely saving the calculations, whether it be a lab notebook or digital docu-ments, is not enough to solve this problem. New engineers and teams tasked with the re-design must navigate through mazes of data and calculations. This often leads them to give up and start from scratch.

Being able to leverage prior work requires implementation of standards and processes that everyone follows. Mathcad®, the engineering calculation software from PTC, can be used to optimize product design. More importantly, it captures this information and provides a way to formalize the aforemen-tioned standards and processes. Combining computation with supporting text and graphics in one platform makes Mathcad worksheets easily readable and comprehensible. This read-ability, coupled with a powerful math engine for data analyses, makes Mathcad an automatic documentation tool that allows engineers to communicate with both internal and external stakeholders.

When companies leverage Mathcad’s analysis and documen-tation capabilities with a data management systems (such as Windchill®, PTC’s Product Management Lifecycle software), the result is an organized way to manage their calculations. With this infrastructure in place, a group, department, and corporation can put a process around it and begin to standardize their engineering calculations. This white paper outlines PTC’s vision for best practices to standardize engineering calculations in a product development system and highlights Mathcad’s role as the critical communication tool to document the valuable IP behind every successfully engineered product.

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Engineers may repeat analyses and other work previously done by others, or even need to recreate their own work, as a result of several reasons:

• Files are not stored in a centrally available location, so access is limited

• Files are available, but are not easily readable because of the lack of notation, prior knowledge of specific programming languages, etc.

• Engineers implement their own calculations, which cannot be followed by others

• Engineers implement their own layouts and formats which make their work hard to leverage

The following model outlines the different maturity levels in standardizing engineering calculations within a group, department, and/or company. This model is loosely modeled after the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) process improvement approach.

Level 1 Initial• Use whatever tools

are available

• Sporadic Mathcad use

Level 2 Managed• Use Mathcad for most

calculations

• Worksheets stored on central server

Level 3 Defined• Use Mathcad templates

• Adopt best practices

• Employees trained in tool

Level 4 Optimized• Centrally stored/

managed content

• Established process/workflow for calculations

- Documentation required

- Reference sheets

• Employees trained in process

The following four use cases represent the different levels in the standardization maturity model

level 1– Initial Implementation of mathcad universal Calculations for Telecommunications

Allen works for a telecommunications company. He is a member of the base station team and specializes in testing power amplifiers. His company has just announced the roll-out of new base stations which feature a new communications protocol used by cellular phone carriers.

Historically, Allen and his team used an assortment of tools to test the amplifiers. These tools are usually dictated by the design team, as they are involved in the early phases of the development cycle. By the time the test team gets involved, a lot of analyses have already been performed, so the test engineers are encouraged to leverage existing work, and use the same software tools as the design team.

Essentially, the design team selects their tools based on famil-iarity and availability. The tools that were used in the last proj-ect will probably be re-purposed for new projects. And if a tool isn’t available anymore, then the team will use whatever tools Information Technology (IT) has licensed and are currently un-der maintenance. However, familiarity and/or availability, al-beit convenient, may not always determine the best tool.

In the previous base station design project, the design team at the telecommunications company used a combination of PACAD, Agilent EEsof, and MathWorks™ MATLAB® and Simulink®. After that project ended, IT terminated the renewal of those licenses. Now, as the design team evaluates the best software tools for the next project, Allen decides to proceed in his analyses with Excel. He reasons that everyone has Excel on their computers, so it’s a natural common denominator of software tools.

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With Excel, Allen quickly runs into some basic limitations. First, he needs to run some basic signal processing routines –FFTs, coherence, filtering. All of these require many steps in Excel. Furthermore, it is difficult to track the flow of information in Excel and visualize how various parameter changes propagate through the analyses. In the meantime, the design team finalizes on a few specialized tools for their design tool, and chooses Mathcad as the front-end tool to aggregate their results. Allen decides that he, too, will adopt Mathcad for his calculations.

Mathcad provides many of the basic math functions that Allen typically uses, plus more advanced signal processing functions that are relevant to characterize power amplifier performance. And while the design team uses specialized software packages for various aspects of their design, it is easy to pull those results into Mathcad for top-level calculations. With Mathcad, Allen can proceed with his test calculations and integrate the work from the design team, whether it originated as Mathcad work-sheets or outputs from other software.

Allen’s biggest hurdle now is to get everyone on his team to use Mathcad since it is very inefficient to maintain two sets of tools to perform the same calculations.

Evaluation

Allen’s example is characteristic of a Level 1, or initial im-plementation, in the standardization maturity model. Each engineer uses whatever tools are available. Allen uses Mathcad because he has it on his PC and because he has used it before, but his colleagues do not consistently use the same tools.

Because each engineer uses whatever tools are available to them, at one point Allen is forced to choose a common denominator – Excel. In this case, Excel does not offer the functionalities that Allen needs. While he can perform some of these tasks in Excel, it requires a lot more effort to build up his own functions, keep track of units, and verify his equations.

Adopting of software for specific calculations can be benefi-cial when developing in-depth analysis of specific applications. The problem is the large overhead of which includes cost of maintenance costs and, more importantly, time to train and ramp-up. Sharing work and results across different software can be a tedious process. Furthermore, as engineers migrate from one project to another, the use of these specialty soft-ware programs can fluctuate wildly, which presents a problem for IT which needs to maintain the latest versions of multiple software programs.

To move to the next level in the maturity model, Allen and his team need to:

• Use Mathcad on a consistent basis across projects

• If using different software from the design team, use Mathcad to import models that can be compared with collected data for verification

• Store worksheets centrally on server, so they can be accessed by entire team

Top: With Excel, it’s hard to follow the steps that Allen took to perform his analysis, in this case a FFT.Bottom: With Mathcad, each step is detailed with intuitive math notations.

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level 2 –managed Implementation of mathcad Collaboration in architecture, Engineering and Construction

Carla is a civil engineer at a construction management agen-cy. She designs and oversees the construction of locks used in water transport. In her latest project, she was asked to look over the designs of a proposed lock as an independent re-viewer. This lock will be different because it is in a region that is susceptible to both cold weather and earthquakes. Carla must include resiliency to seismic forces and influences of ice and wind in her analyses.

At Carla’s company, the engineering department keeps all of their files – requirements, calculations, data files, etc. – on a shared network drive. This makes it easy for Carla to look up existing work that she can leverage. She already has some Mathcad worksheets she created for a prior project in which seismic forces were considered. As she peruses the shared drive, she comes across the work done by a group based out of a different branch. Their calculations were done in Excel, and in the International System (SI) of Units. Carla’s current project requires that she work with English units.

The calculations done by her counterparts from a different branch are exactly relevant for her current project as they include both ice and wind loading effects. Carla quickly re-alizes, however, that reading through Excel spreadsheets can be a difficult process – equations are difficult to follow, need to shuffle between separate files for ice and wind effects. Within each spreadsheet, the order of steps performed is not obvious, and trying to determine which variables affect which formulas is equally confusing. Furthermore, units are tracked in a manual fashion, and ensuring that all the conversions to English units are completed is a daunting task.

Carla knows that she needs to convert the Excel spreadsheets over to Mathcad to work more effectively. She creates a Mathcad worksheet for the effects of ice loading, and another for wind loading. She can compile her results by adding the ice and wind worksheets as reference files into her results worksheet. Mathcad’s natural math notation allows Carla and her colleagues to review the analyses easily. Equations and data taken from building codes and standards ensure that the designs are in regulatory compliance.

With units intelligence, Carla doesn’t need to worry about converting each individual variable with units from SI to English. She inputs the Excel formulas into Mathcad as equa-tions, and Mathcad keeps track of all the conversions and warns her if there are issues.

With the ice and wind calculations transferred into Mathcad, Carla can now combine that with the worksheets she had done with seismic forces. The result is now a generalized worksheet that allows her to adjust any of the parameters – minimum allowable temperature, maximum vibration, maximum wind gusts, and so on. She posts her work back on the company shared drive, where it will be searchable and available for oth-er engineers who work on any projects that involve lock design.

Variables are clearly defined and easily changed for automatic updatesthroughout the worksheet. The annotation references which standards are being used so readers know where the parameters are taken from. Units are tracked and easily converted within the calculations.

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Evaluation

Carla’s group and their usage of Mathcad exemplify a Level 2, or managed implementation, in the standardization maturity model. They realize the value of Mathcad to perform analyses and produce worksheets that can be easily understood at high system levels across multiple teams. These worksheets are also stored for easy access and reuse.

Carla’s company has taken the right steps to store all their engineering work on a centralized server. This makes it easy for employees to collaborate on projects and re-use existing work. The difficulty that Carla faced was that the files available span many different formats. Even though her group has standardized on Mathcad as the default calculation tool, others in the company have not.

The need for easy-to-understand analysis and units handling is one of the many benefits of Mathcad. Mathcad allows engineers to represent their calculations in an intuitive way much as they would in a notebook, which makes it easy to trace through the calculations and follow the flow of informa-tion. Being able to add references to a Mathcad worksheet means that large complex calculations can easily be broken down into reference worksheets and then incorporated into a master document. Finally, unit conversion and intelligence gives engineers one less thing to worry about as they hop from one system to another.

To move to the next level in the maturity model, Carla and her company need to:

• Standardize on Mathcad, not just for Carla’s group, but for the whole company

• Begin to set up Mathcad templates

level 3 –Defined Implementation of mathcad Improved Processes in aerospace and Defense

Evan is a systems engineer on the integration team at an aerospace and defense company, and currently works on a radar program. Evan constantly collaborates with the system architecture team on requirements, with the software team (algorithms for radar mission, signal processing, and control center), and with the hardware team (receiver/exciter design). This means that while he participates in system specification reviews and understands the radar’s operability at a high level, he also needs to dive into the software and hardware details at times, in order to resolve conflicts and limitations in individual groups.

Evan regularly uses Mathcad for calculations – both for quick checks and involved computations with large data sets and complex algorithms. To Evan, Mathcad is a convenient tool that allows him to work at the detailed level for analyses, and at the same time, share the results in a presentable way at the system level. Not only is Mathcad available to him and his department, the engineering division also offers training for new users as well as regular in-depth sessions in specific areas, such as statistics, image processing, symbolic math evaluation.

Most recently, while reviewing an interface control document, which specifies the communication between two sub-systems, Evan noticed an inconsistency between the resolution of a measurement provided and what is called for in the requirements document. He quickly produced a Mathcad worksheet to show the changes that need to be made to address this issue.

To guarantee this worksheet has the same look and feel as others on the project, multiple templates are used to provide this consistency. Evan first applies the “bug reports” template to his Mathcad worksheet. This template sets up the header and footer with fields relevant to bugs-author, ID number, stage, and the document against which the bug is being re-ported. Next, Evan applies a “calculation” template, which is similar to a reference file, but also used to standardize pa-rameters and equations. When he applies these two templates to his worksheet, Evan can be sure that he uses the proper parameters for the radar project in a worksheet that conforms to the project standard.

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With the templates implemented, Evan uploads the worksheet to the company’s bug reporting system. He references the interface control document, the requirements document, and the changes that need to be made to correct the problem. The bug reporting system manages Evan’s worksheet on a server, as well as subsequent changes. Once stored on the server, colleagues can easily review Evan’s work, even if they do not have Mathcad installed on their local machines.

Since the members on the bug review committee did not have Mathcad installed, they requested that Evan upload a PDF version instead. Attaching a PDF file to the bug report allows his colleagues without Mathcad to see his work. During the review, the specification was deemed faulty. The PDF was red-lined to show updated values. Evan took the corrections, implemented them in Mathcad, and re-posted the PDFs in the system. He also posted the updated Mathcad worksheet into his group’s repository, which stores all files pertinent to analyses and calculations.

The worksheets are stored and maintained on a network repository which allows group members to quickly pull up documents when they need to track changes in bug reports or specifications. Assuming that IT maintains this repository, these files can also be used in future radar programs with engineers who were not involved in the project initially.

Evaluation

The use of Mathcad in Evan’s program and department exemplifies a Level 3, or defined implementation, in the standardization maturity model. They realize the value of Mathcad to perform analyses and produce worksheets that can be easily understood at high system levels across multiple teams as well as portable reports to append to specifications and corresponding bug reports. These worksheets are also stored for easy access and also reuse.

Evan’s department commits to Mathcad for general calcu-lations. They install Mathcad on all engineering computers, provide the licenses, and train their engineers in Mathcad. The radar program has made further efforts to provide templates to use Mathcad in their work-flows. This provides convenience for engineers to share their work with team-mates, and also ensures uniformity and consistency across related calculations.

Storing Mathcad worksheets on a central server enables some conveniences. First, engineers can easily search for and lever-age previous work. Second, with the right implementation, engineers can also keep track of different versions of a design so that they can easily review the history of changes. Third, using a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform allows all employees to easily follow specified processes and work-flows. In Evan’s example, the submission of the bug report with an attached Mathcad worksheet starts off a chain of events – review the bug, delegate the right resource to make the appropriate changes, and verify that the bug is fixed.

To move to the next level in the maturity model, Evan and his company need to:

• Store and manage all data and Mathcad worksheets centrally

• Establish processes and workflow for calculations

• Train engineers on the process, not only the tools

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level 4 –optimized Implementation of mathcad achieve Enhanced Design in the Industrial Sector

Terry leads a group of engineers to design and build test facilities for energy-related products. In addition, her team often has to work with two groups that are located in other states. Terry’s customers come to her when they need a facil-ity to test their products. Because constructing these facilities are so expensive, Terry and her team need to capture the requirements and design a facility that’s specific enough to meet those requirements, but at the same time general enough to accommodate similar products.

Terry’s latest support request is to build a test facility to test a new design for a wind turbine. She recalls that another team within the company built a facility to test wind turbines a few years ago. She brings up that project in their PLM server to compare requirements. She opens the Mathcad worksheet that was used to verify requirements in the old project. She plugs in new numbers for the new requirements and deter-mines that the facility can be modified to test the new design.

Just as Mathcad integrates with Windchill, it can integrate with computer aided design (CAD) software. The results from Mathcad can directly feed and drive geometries in Creo® Parametric, the PTC CAD software that Terry’s group uses. Uti-lizing this integration, as requirements change, the Mathcad calculations can be updated and the new values will update the CAD models. This means the CAD team does not need to wait for the analysts and designers to finalize the geometries. The CAD team can now build up their parts and assemblies in parallel with the analysis and design team adjusting final numbers for the optimal dimensions. With Windchill, Creo, and mathcad all integrated, Terry can change requirements in Windchill and have all the calculations update in Mathcad to meet those requirements, and in turn regenerate a new CAD model with the dimensions output from Mathcad.

Terry creates a new project for the new turbine design test facility and copies over relevant files from the old project. She updates the templates that will be used for calculations in the new design. Similar to the previous case study, these templates contain references to equations and information that Terry’s group and her collaborators use.

Terry can now utilize all the basic equations defined in the template, as well as additional analyses she implemented in her prior work. When she is done, she uses Windchill as the PLM system to store her files. Her teammates and colleagues can now review her work, give her suggestions, and or even update the Mathcad worksheets. Furthermore, the latest revi-sion of a standard that has just been published makes some changes to building codes that need to be met. The team in charge of updating standards upload the newest revision into Windchill. When Terry opens up her worksheet, these changes automatically propagate throughout the worksheet. Terry can easily see if her designs are still valid and meet the codes or if she will need to make any design modifications.

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Evaluation

Terry’s organization has achieved Level 4 maturity, or opti-mized implantation, in the standardization model. She uses Mathcad for their calculations, plus, there is a well-defined process in place. This means that Terry and her colleagues know exactly where to go whenever they start a new project.

With Windchill as their PLM software, Terry can quickly gather information she needs, whether it be previously done work, specifications, or standards. Windchill also allows the whole group to collaborate on worksheets in such a way that ev-eryone can work simultaneously on related tasks. Because Mathcad is the software tool of choice, all engineers are trained in Mathcad and know how to leverage it for analyses. They also use Mathcad as a way to document their work and drive the process that is in place.

Different geographic locations and coordination with col-leagues is no longer an issue. Terry can link to a sheet as a colleague works on it. As new details are filled in and/or com-puted, the changes are refreshed in all dependent calculations. Terry and her team benefit from all the advantages of Mathcad, which optimizes her design and engineering process.

Summary

Companies strive to design the best products in the least amount of time. Success ultimately comes down to bringing products to market quickly while improving product quality. Engineering calculations made during product design make up a company’s intellectual property. Capturing this IP is important for reuse and therefore critical in pushing out better products faster.

Mathcad gives engineers a way to perform their calculations, visualize data with charts and graphs, and annotate results all in one comprehensive platform. Furthermore, Mathcad also enables companies to set standards and processes so en-gineers and their teams can efficiently capture and store their IP. Reusing and leveraging prior calculations and results help improve design and streamline process.

Check out our Best Practices in Product Development series of white papers:

Design Studies and Tradeoff Analysis white paper

Requirements Flow-down white paper

Mathcad is the Industry Standard Software for Engineering Calculations.

To learn more visit us at PTC.com/mathcad/

© 2012, Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC). All rights reserved. Information described

herein is furnished for informational use only and is subject to change without notice. The

only warranties for PTC products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements

accompanying such products and services and nothing herein should be construed as

constituting an additional warranty. References to customer successes are based upon a

single user experience and such customer’s testimonial. Analyst or other forward-looking

statements about PTC products and services or the markets in which PTC participates are

those of the analysts themselves and PTC makes no representations as to the basis or

accuracy thereof. PTC, the PTC Logo, Windchill, Creo, Mathcad and all PTC product names

and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC and/or its subsidiaries in the

United States and in other countries. All other product or company names are property

of their respective owners. The timing of any product release, including any features or

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