Enventive is a pre-CAD design optimization system that incorporates variation analysis into the design process to help engineers generate robust product designs from the start. It combines geometric modeling with variation analysis, optimization, and GD&T simulation. Using Enventive allows companies to reduce costs from issues like ECNs, tooling changes, and warranty costs by designing robust products without late-stage issues.

1. An innovative technology that enables
a new approach to the mechanical design process
Robust design from the preliminary stage
Pre-CAD optimization of complex systems
based on GD&T, process characteristics &
complex mechanical aspects.
Generation of tolerance stacks
with optimization - Simplified
Enventive Engineering

2. Is it possible to achieve a robust design the first time, every time ?
A strategic challenge industrial organizations need to address is how to improve their ability to
efficiently generate robust product designs.
(A robust design is a design that will assemble without issues, that will operate as expected on
all its key functional requirements and that will continue to operate whatever are the manufacturing
variations, or the internal and external impacts (wear, thermal expansion, harsh conditions...)).
In the main, solving this challenge comes down to answering two questions:
- How should we organize our product development process ?
- What tools and methodologies should we apply ?
Unfortunately, the traditional answers to those two questions don’t take sources of variation into
account when making decisions at the design definition stage.
Tolerance analysis occurs late in product development, just prior to production release,
or in the manufacturing stage, necessitating troubleshooting of low production yields, field failures,
ECNs, tooling rework and warranty problems. Tolerance analysis becomes a bottleneck, and this
workflow recycles endlessly, causing significant losses on each project.
Voice of Customer/
Enventive's pre-CAD Product Requirements
design optimisation
system
Product Launch
Conceptual Design and Manufacturing
Tolerance
Anlysis
By taking variation into account early in the design cycle,
Enventive solves the time-pressure crunch Failures
inherent in a traditional design workflow.
ECN &Tooling
Changes
Detailed Design and
Prototype Testing Validation
Tolerance
Anlysis
Traditional
Handoff to Manufacturing
Tolerance
Failures
Analysis
ECN &Tooling
Changes
Enventive offers a fundamentally new approach: a pre-CAD design optimization system that
incorporates variation analysis into the design optimization process.
Enventive combines geometric, mathematic, kinematic, physical modeling with automated variation
analysis, optimization capabilities, and GD&T simulation to help engineers and designers incorporate
robust design principles into their product designs.

3. How to measure the added value of Enventive ?
Due to Enventive's ease of use, and to the power of predictive modelling that Enventive allows,
users are able to launch their products without ECNs, tooling changes, warranty costs.
For that reason, Enventive is recommended as a strategic R&D & product development investment.
Our goal is for our customers to realize a return on investment (ROI) within the first year,
based on cost savings from using Enventive. This goal is achieved by the vast majority of
Enventive Engineering customers.
Enventive users can expect the following types of returns on investment:
Better customer satisfaction and confidence, due to robust design methods being applied early
in product development .
Cost avoidance due to fewer tooling changes, ECNs, and scrap.
More innovative designs can be developed with the same number of design and development
human resources.
Better capacity to manage changes over the lifetime of the product.
Better capacity to manage production deviations.
More exhaustive costs savings by enlarging tolerances on low impact contributors.
Reduction in prototyping efforts. (Enventive acts as a virtual mock-up that includes variation).
How does Enventive actually work ?
Enventive's math-based core allows customers
to easily evaluate critical preliminary design
decisions that are otherwise very difficult to analyze.
Enventive integrates:
- An innovative variational geometry modeller.
- A simultaneous equation solver.
- An interface with Microsoft Excel.
The automated linking and solving between geometry,
variables, equations, and Excel spreadsheets allows
easily to define robust nominals and tolerances.
System level functional optimization can be carried
out easily. Complex contacts,
forces, frictions, deformation, wear, thermal
effects, hydraulic pressure, or any physical aspects
that can be modeled using equations and curves.
Simple stacks including dimensions and GD&T can
also be built very easily, avoiding complicated
manual calculations or usage of time-consuming
CAD-based methods.

4. What is sensitivity analysis? How can it help in preliminary design?
Enventive has a mathematical engine that develops equations to map the relationship between a key
functional requirement (Y) and its key design parameters (X) such as dimensions, forces, or types of
other variables. Enventive computes the first partial differential of the mathematical equation to
determine sensitivity values, which represents the ratio between design parameters (X) and the key
functional requirement (Y). (For example, if X has a sensitivity of 1.2, it means that if X varies by
1.0mm, then Y will change by 1.2mm.) Sensitivities are of strategic importance when designing for
robustness. Due to the ease and speed with which preliminary design scenarios can be evaluated,
Enventive allows users to understand the key parameters, predict performance of the functional
requirement, and minimize sensitivities from the preliminary stage, so they can make well-informed
decisions about tooling and product design.
What level of complexity can Enventive handle?
Can it be used for 3D problems?
Enventive can optimise any design that can be
modeled using sketches in planes, equations and
curves. Our customers have used Enventive to
model an entire washing machine, gearboxes,
automotive latching systems, including
cable losses and the latch's movement in
different 3D planes. Typical Enventive models
include: discontinuous complex contacts, cables,
chains or belts, forces, frictions, wear, thermal
expansion, deformations, profile tolerances, etc.
What are the benefits of Enventive's integration with Excel?
Users can change nominals, tolerances, and Cp
values in the Excel spreadsheet, and the
Enventive model will update automatically.
Using the functionality of Excel's "Solver" add-in,
it is possible to optimize any design parameter
so that a design output will reach a given target
(+/- n sigmas, worst case, mean, sensitivity).
Enventive automatically generates a complete
list of contributors for tolerance stack-ups. This
makes it easy to identify if tolerances may be
expanded for low-impact parameters in order to minimize manufacturing costs.
Alan Smith - Enventive Engineering
Enventive is a solution implementation rather
mobile: +44 (0)7791 024092
than simply a software implementation. On-site
email: alan.smith@enventive.com
training and on-line web support are tailored so
that Enventive users have an easy-to-use and
European support email:
effective solution for their own designs.
support-europe@enventive.com