PDM suitability study for CAE data management

In the last decade, the major CAE software vendor understood how the increasing use of simulation needs systematic methods to manage the data generated in the process. Without reinventing the wheel these companies reused the concept and architecture typical of Product Data Management system (PDM) and tailor made the data model to support CAE application. Moreover, many companies desire to leverage their existing PDM systems as the primary repositories of CAE data. We first analyze the adequacy between the classical capabilities offered by the commercial PDM systems compared to the needs of simulation data and process management, expressed in the literature and by our industrial partners. Then, we defined a suitable data model (structure and associated metadata) in order to organize and store CAE data in traditional PDM. Finally we formalized the PDM business logic that will support that data model and the internal working procedure of the company. These models are the inputs for a pilot implementation done with a commercial PDM, PTC Windchill. At the moment the use of PDM is not part of the CAE analyst mindset. For this reason we develop a simple client that could help the analyst to organize his/her data according to the predefined data model, forcing him/her to provide the necessary metadata that describe the task that he/she is performing and finally translate all these information into a Windchill compliant XML, that can be easily uploaded to the PDM. Keyword: CAE data management, PDM, SDM, Simulation processes