ATK

Quando un importante cambio di direzione progettuale ha reso superfluo il lavoro precedente, ATK ha raccolto la sfida passando da un processo classico a quello digitale.

“When NASA came to us and said they wanted to change direction, it was an eye-opener to discover that we had made a significant investment that suddenly had little to no value. Despite the fact that the SLS boosters were based on the Ares design, the differences were large enough that they would have required starting from scratch by constructing a new prototype, new spreadsheet, and new drawings. Very little from the previous project was reusable. We were also conscious that our previous methods were very labor-intensive, so when we discovered that our next project would be equal in magnitude yet would have to be done with less manpower, we realized we needed to improve our process – and do it quickly. We decided to develop a digital approach that was less labor-intensive and would enable us to more easily adapt to change,” afferma Nathan Holyoak, ingegnere dei processi PLM per ATK.

ATK ha scritto una serie di requisiti per un sistema elettrico CAD (ECAD) che sarebbe sia logico che funzionale. “It had to communicate with our MCAD system so we could quickly determine whether a cable would fit or not and how long it needed to be without mocking it up in a lab. We also insisted that the ECAD system be integrated with the MCAD system and that the results be controlled so that only authorized users could make changes and the change history would be recorded. We selected E3.series because it met all our requirements,” spiega Nathan Holyoak, ATK.

ATK ha lavorato con esperti di Zuken e Siemens PLM per far sì che i due pacchetti software lavorassero insieme utilizzando Zuken E3.3D Routing Bridge, che comunica utilizzando PLXML. I bibliotecari e gli esaminatori di NX hanno creato oltre 3.000 parti nuove o modificate per garantire la sincronizzazione delle librerie. Gli output di E3.series di Zuken e NX di Siemens sono rilasciati e controllati da Siemens Teamcenter, che gestisce anche i dati tecnici rilasciati.

Ogni inserimento di un componente nel progetto E3.series ha fornito un’intelligenza che ha automatizzato molte delle attività che in passato dovevano essere eseguite manualmente. E3.series ha garantito la coerenza dell’intero progetto, tenendo traccia del disegno logico e assicurando che il disegno fisico fosse coerente. Il software ha verificato la coerenza dei connettori, assicurando, ad esempio, che i connettori fossero accoppiati tra loro e che ci fossero abbastanza pin per gestire ogni filo in un gruppo. Siemens NX ha calcolato le lunghezze dei fili e ha trasmesso le informazioni alla E3 series, che a sua volta ha calcolato la caduta di tensione nei cavi. Invece di produrre manualmente i disegni come richiesto in passato, gli ingegneri sono stati in grado di generare viste alternative dei cablaggi per la documentazione della base o dei cavi, come richiesto con pochissimo sforzo.

“In the past we had a lot of people working hard. Today we have a much smaller number of people working smart, with an automated interface, and the results are impressive. The electrical engineers enter requirements and the software makes sure they have been met. If there is a problem, E3.series greatly reduces the checking time by enabling the engineer to simply click on a signal to trace its route through the design. With a virtual logical and physical model, the teams of engineers save time by not having to travel to get to the prototype lab. Instead they can just view the design on their computer screen. With the automatic checks performed by the software, people have a much higher level of confidence that everything is right, so we are saving a huge amount of time that was previously spent checking and double-checking. We talked to our suppliers and asked them how much they would charge us to produce the formboards themselves if we provided them with the electronic documentation. We have to include some extra information in the drawings, such as braid overlaps, but compared to the original cost, the savings were substantial.” – Nathan Holyoak, ATK.