Advatech Pacific Simulation Data Management with PLM from Aras and Microsoft SharePoint

1. SIMULATION DATA MANAGEMENT
AND REQUIREMENTS TRACKING
FOR NASA MISSION DESIGN
USING ARAS AND SHAREPOINT
Tyler Bischel
Dr. Peter J. Rohl
Advatech Pacific
560 E Hospitality Ln, S. 400
San Bernardino, CA 92480
Phase II SBIR

2. Contents
• Advatech Pacific Overview
• NASA SBIR Project Goals
• NASA Ames Mission Design Center
• The “Simulation Bill of Material”
• Requirements Management
• Integration with SharePoint
• Desktop Clients
• Analysis Tool Integration
• Summary
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3. Advatech Pacific Company Information
 Engineering Research & Development Company
Founded in 1995
 Primary Business Focus
 Aerospace Vehicle Physics Based Modeling and Simulation
 Integrated System and Cost Analysis Tool Development
 Communications Systems Interoperability
 Engineering Design, Analysis and PLM/PDM Services
 Annual Revenues over $10M (Small Business)
 Approx. 50 Full Time Engineers / Scientists
 Locations
 San Bernardino, CA (HQ)
 Palmdale, CA
 Dayton, OH
 Tempe, AZ
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4. Aerospace, Defense, and Commercial
 Modeling and Simulation
 Strategic Missiles and Rockets
 Spacecraft
 Satellites
 Expendable & Re-useable
Launch Vehicles
 Re-entry Vehicles
 Space Shuttle Payload  Communications Hardware
 Integrated Design with Cost Analysis  Satellite Tactical Comm.
 Hypersonics  Disparate Network Integration
 Range Safety Analysis  Military & Civilian applications
 Gas Turbine Engines
 Aircraft & Systems  Analysis
 Design  Design
 Drafting  Performance
 Airframe structural analysis
 Applications
 Engineering support for composites
 Manufacturing support
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5. NASA SBIR Project Goals
• Develop a seamless environment for satellite mission design
• Introduce PLM approach to NASA mission design
• Develop a structured approach to simulation data management
• Facilitate reuse of engineering analysis models
• Integrate requirements and engineering analysis
• Integrate fragmented engineering analysis tools
• Leverage existing tools as much as possible
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6. Customer: NASA Ames Mission
Design Center (MDC)
• Focused on small satellites
• Performs three types of mission design studies:
• Center directives
• Announcements of opportunity
• Research proposals
• Studies range from “back-of-the-envelope” studies of a few
days to fairly detailed mission designs of six to eight weeks
duration
• Customers are both internal (NASA/government) and external
• In all cases, the final “product” is a mission proposal in the form
of a report with supporting analysis data
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7. The Problems Faced by the MDC
• Simulation models and data scattered all over individual
engineers’ desktops and shared network drives
• No revision control of simulation models and data
• No tracking of relationships between simulation models
• No mechanism to flag simulation models that are out-of-date
because the assumptions/models they depend on have changed
• No reusability of engineering analyses
• No relationships between requirements and engineering
analyses to support the requirements
• Engineers spend a lot of time moving data from one analysis
tool to another
• Commercial solutions for simulation data management are out
of reach for the MDC from a cost standpoint
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8. Advatech Pacific’s Solution
• Development of a “Virtual Satellite Integration Environment”
consisting of:
• A simulation data management solution,
based on Aras and Microsoft SharePoint,
integrated with the conceptual mission design tool (ATLAS),
implementing a “Simulation Bill Of Material”
• A mechanism to link analysis models to requirements
• A “Linked Model Environment” integrating engineering
analysis models and tools
• Automation and optimization
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9. Challenges Faced by Advatech
1. Cultural
• “Mission Design is different”
• “PLM is for manufacturing companies”
• “Every mission is unique”
• “Standardized processes limit the engineers’ creativity”
2. Resources
• The MDC operates on a shoe-string budget. The budget to
purchase software licenses is very limited. A lot of licenses are
shared with other NASA organizations.
• Always operating in crisis mode. The next mission design is
always due yesterday. We are trying to do an engine upgrade
while the car is in the middle of a race.
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10. Virtual Satellite Integration Environment
SharePoint Remote Simulation Traceability and
Collaboration Revision Management
Science Traceability Matrix
Aras Innovator
Simulation Bill of Material
Mission
Linked Model Requirements Design Product
Environment
Atlas
SolidWorks
SolidWorks
STK
STK Thermal
Desktop
Thermal User
Desktop Automated Change
CAD Interchange Notifications 10

11. The “Simulation Bill of Material”
• Extending the notion of the classical BOM to management of
simulation data and their relationships
• Tracks the relationship between versions of analysis models
• Supports release process for simulation data
• Notifies users automatically when their analysis models may be
out of date
• Links analysis data to requirements
• The classical BOM is represented as a tree structure, whereas
simulation data form a graph structure
• Root of the SBOM is a “Project”
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12. SBOM Structure in Aras
• Custom item types
defined in Aras
to support satellite
mission design
• Items are containers
for simulation data/
documents
• Derived from out-of-
the-box Aras items,
support their
lifecycle (versioning,
release status,
workflows, etc.)
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13. Aras Innovator SBOM Item Types
• A number of custom Aras item
types have been generated,
supporting the specific types of
data in the SBOM
• Their behavior and metadata is
specifically targeted to suit their
functions
• Accessible through the Aras
user interface
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14. Item Type “Project”
• The Project item type is at the root level of a mission design
project
• It has associated with it a customer proposal, requirements, the
actual mission design and the end product
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15. Item Type “Proposal”
• Every mission design project is the result of a proposal
• The “proposal” item type captures all proposal-related
information, including the proposal documents
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16. Item Type “Requirements Document”
• Ultimately, mission design and analysis is driven by requirements
• Since MDC lacked a requirements management system, we
decided to develop this functionality inside Aras
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17. Item Type “Design”
• Top level collector item for a mission design
• Contains all simulation and analysis models/data/results
• Exposes top-level metadata for the mission
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18. Analysis Component
• Captures metadata and behavior relevant for a particular
simulation code
• Derived all from the same root class (Simulation Data)
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19. Item Type “Product”
• The final product resulting from a mission design study, which
can be a white paper, a PowerPoint document, a full proposal or a
concept study
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20. Simplified Class Diagram
Implements three levels of abstraction
MDC-specific
services
Wrapper Interface to
Aras Environment
Presentation Layer
for UI
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21. Revision Control of Dependent Models
1. Dep. node gets revised. New rev points to original master node.
Dep. Sim Dep. Sim Dep. Sim Dep. Sim
R1 R2 R1 R2
MasterSim MasterSim
R1 R1
2. Master node gets revised. Owner of dependent node is notified.
New rev of dependent node points to new rev of master node.
Dep. Sim Dep. Sim Dep. Sim
R1 R1 R2
MasterSim MasterSim MasterSim MasterSim
R1 R2 R1 R2
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22. Access to the SBOM
Three primary mechanisms for the user to interact with the SBOM:
• From the desktop: Desktop Clients
• Through SharePoint: SharePoint Client
• Directly through Aras Web Client
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23. Exposure through SharePoint
• Project level information
• Requirements data
• Final product
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24. SBOM View as SharePoint Webpart
• SharePoint web parts are
standard objects a
SharePoint developer can
use to implement custom
functionality
• Users are familiar with tree-
type structures
• We use a SharePoint Tree
webpart to expose the
project dependency
structure in SharePoint
• The root is the satellite
mission project
• All data related to a project is
contained in the tree
structure
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25. SharePoint View of Requirements
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26. SharePoint Data Upload
• User fills fields with metadata
and uses a file browser to upload
files
• Dependencies identified
manually by the user
Simulation Data Packages.
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27. Desktop Clients for the SBOM
• “Drop Box” interface for easy upload/download of analysis data
• “Science Traceability Matrix” for requirements capturing
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28. File Browser Interface
Ease of Use:
• Engineers were used to storing their models on shared drives
• Wanted a mechanism to store and retrieve data as easy as
accessing a shared drive
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29. Science Traceability Matrix
• The “Science Traceability Matrix” is NASA’s way of capturing and
categorizing mission requirements
• Typically done in Excel spreadsheets
• We developed a “live” application that links individual
requirements to analysis models
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30. Analysis Tool Integration
• Analysis tool integration implements the concept of a “Linked
Model Environment” developed earlier at companies like GE
• Central to analysis tool integration is the geometric representation
of the artifact (CAD model). Many downstream applications are
consumers of geometry.
• “Tagging” geometric entities with information needed by
downstream applications facilitates tool integration
• Both tight coupling and loose coupling solutions were developed
• Tight coupling leverages the respective tools’ APIs and is code
specific
• Loose coupling leverages third-party integration tools, e.g. Comet
(Comet Solutions), iSIGHT/FIPER (Dassault) or ModelCenter
(Phoenix Integration)
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31. Tight Coupling: SolidWorks-STK
• SolidWorks (SW) is the primary CAD tool in use at the MDC
• Satellite Toolkit (STK) is used for orbit and mission simulation
• STK needs geometric information that is resident in SW
(solar panels, their articulation, a tessellated representation of the
outer shell of the satellite, mass properties, material properties,
etc.)
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32. Solidworks to STK
• Tight coupling approach works with the tools’ API
• Here, we developed an “STK exporter” inside SolidWorks
• Standard SolidWorks look and feel, user does not have to learn a
new tool
• Requires software development and maintenance
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33. Solidworks to STK (ct’d)
1. CAD designer downselects in the assembly tree the components
to be exported to STK
2. CAD designer defines the solar panel group(s) for STK
3. CAD designer defines articulations of the solar panel group(s)
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34. Solidworks to STK (ct’d)
4. CAD designer saves STK model file
5. Satellite analyst reads model file into STK
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35. Loose Coupling Using Comet
• The Comet integration framework by Comet Solutions builds on
the so-called “Abstract Engineering Model”
• It creates a layer of abstraction between the CAD model and the
downstream engineering analysis or meshing tool
• This layer of abstraction, or AEM, builds on the notion of entity
tagging
• One instance of geometry is easily replaceable by another
instance carrying similar tags, even if the geometry itself is
significantly different
• Comet had been successfully applied to a number of satellite
design applications
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36. Satellite Thermal Analysis
• Satellite thermal analysis required complete rebuilding of the
geometry inside the thermal analysis tool (Thermal Desktop)
• Using the Comet framework, we developed a seamless process
that guarantees data consistency across the tools
• The thermal mesh is generated by Comet’s own meshing tool
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37. Detailed Geometry
• The detailed geometry contains too much detail not needed for
thermal analysis
• This geometry is associatively simplified to the appropriate level
of detail
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38. Preparing the CAD Model
• Small features not necessary for thermal analysis
suppressed/hidden
• Geometry tagged with Comet tagging engine
• The tags are used by the thermal analysis model generation
process to apply thermal loads and boundary conditions
Geometry for thermal analysis 38

39. Thermal Analysis Mesh
• Thermal analysis mesh linked to geometry via the AEM
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40. Modeling of Thermal Contacts
• Thermal contacts are automatically applied based on the tags
stored in the AEM
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41. Thermal Results
• Thermal analysis results can be displayed in Comet’s post-
processing tool or directly through the native postprocessor of
Thermal Desktop
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42. Summary
• A simulation data management solution based on Aras
Innovator was developed for NASA
• The concept of a “Simulation Bill of Material” was introduced,
linking all engineering analysis models and data to the mission
design project
• Engineering analyses and their driving requirements were
linked
• Automated user notification was implemented to alert users
when their models are possibly out of date
• Ease of use was a key design driver as engineers don’t like the
overhead oftentimes associated with a PLM solution
• Both tight and loose coupling solutions for engineering
analysis models were successfully implemented
Contact Information:
Dr. Peter Rohl email: Peter.Rohl@AdvatechPacific.com
Engineering Mgr, PI Phone: 909-307-6218 x580
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43. Acknowledgment
This work was sponsored by NASA through
SBIR Phase II Contract #NNX09CA16C.
Contact Information:
Dr. Peter Rohl email: Peter.Rohl@AdvatechPacific.com
Engineering Mgr, PI Phone: 909-307-6218 x580
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