The PADT Blog

 

Published on:	September 21st, 2020
With:	Eric Miller, Matt Sutton & Josh Stout
Description:	In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by PADT’s Senior Analyst & Lead Software Developer Matt Sutton, and Systems Application & Support Engineer Josh Stout for a discussion on the advantages of using Ansys Twin Builder to create simulation-based virtual replicas of physical assets for testing, as well as what’s new and improved for this tool in the 2020 R2 release. If you would like to learn more about this update, you can view Matt’s webinar on the topic here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15747/437059 If you have any questions, comments, or would like to suggest a topic for the next episode, shoot us an email at podcast@padtinc.com we would love to hear from you!
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Published on:	September 8th, 2020
With:	Eric Miller & Doug Oatis
Description:	In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by PADT’s Lead Mechanical Engineer Doug Oatis for a discussion on what you can expect from the latest advancements in topology optimization and simulation for additive manufacturing, available in Ansys 2020 R2. This update spans a variety of areas, including optimizing setup, modifying STL files, parameter free morphing, and much more. If you would like to learn more about this update, you can view Doug’s webinar on the topic here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15747/433058 If you have any questions, comments, or would like to suggest a topic for the next episode, shoot us an email at podcast@padtinc.com we would love to hear from you!
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Published on:	August 24th, 2020
With:	Eric Miller & Josh Stout
Description:	In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by PADT’s Application & Support Systems Engineer, Josh Stout for a discussion on the unique capabilities of Ansys Sherlock, and what’s new for the tool in 2020 R2. If you would like to learn more about this update, you can view Josh’s webinar on the topic here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15747/428230 If you have any questions, comments, or would like to suggest a topic for the next episode, shoot us an email at podcast@padtinc.com we would love to hear from you!
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In this article, I would like to introduce some new features added to the Ansys Electronics Solution 2020R2 release called SPISim. Since this is a new tool, I’ll focus on describing its capabilities as well as some possible applications.

What is SPISim?

Signal, Power Integrity and Simulation (SPISim) focuses on system-level and on-chip SI/PI modeling, simulation, and analysis. The tool presents a variety of different features, which are split on separate modules shown below.

Let us look at each module individually and highlight the key functionality.

There are 2 main Modules VPro and MPro. All the other features (sub-modules) are split between these main two.

VPro Core

This is a versatile GUI for viewing waveforms. It supports a wide variety of formats including .tr0, .ac0, .ibis, .csv, .mat, .raw, .snp, .citi, and more. Besides simple viewing capabilities, VPro can also be used for waveform analysis:

• Overshoot and Undershoot (for Peaks and Valleys)
• Threshold Crossings
• Min/Max Peak-2-Peak
• Root-Mean-Square Value 
• FFT, iFFT
• Correlation
• Pulse to PDA

Using the information about waveforms, this tool can also plot an eye diagram, perform simple correlations, and run measurements. The viewer also supports framework scripting on JavaScript, Ruby, TCL, etc.

DPro Unit (VPro Module)

DPro (short for DDR Pro) provides comprehensive DDR related post-processing analysis. Key functionalities of this tool:

• Batch mode of processing one or more waveform files
• Support of multiple receiver processing
• Built-in and customizable derating table and derating processing
• Built-in 100+ measurement functions for typical DDR signal analysis
• Results cross-probing and show problematic location automatically

The feature is organized in a wizard-like style. The user simply needs to fill out information in 6 tabs and click the ‘Run’ button. Overall, it is very intuitive to use, but like any new features, there is a learning curve for a new user.

TPro Unit (VPro Module)

It provides comprehensive transmission line related modeling, analysis, post-processing, and viewing capabilities. Here are several main functionalities offered by this add-on:

• Comprehensive stackup planner to model t-lines’ performance in different stackup configurations
• Advanced t-line modeling viewer for rapid analysis such as impedance, crosstalk, or propagation delay analysis
• A table viewer for RLCG frequency content
• What-if analysis for quick impedance/crosstalk calculation, and data processing, such as trimming and merging of frequency points
• Batch mode processing and measurements for one or more t-line model files, result is a plain .csv file ready for further modeling or analysis

This feature helps the user to run pre-layout ‘what-if’ analysis. Both ‘transmission line analyzer’ and ‘layer stackup planner’ give the user a flexible way of understanding potential design constrains and guidelines.

SPro Unit (VPro Module)

This module is similar to TPro in a sense of the capabilities. However, it is directed to view and analyze S-parameters instead of tabular transmission line data. Also, in contrast to TPro, this feature has a separate tab ‘S-Param’ with all the features listed there.

Here are major capabilities of SPro:

• Advanced s-parameter viewer for speedy analysis such TDR/TDR or PDA analysis
• Table viewer for frequency content; export s-parameter data to matlab .mat format and more
• 20+ advanced analysis functions such as mixed-mode conversion, cascading and renormalization
• Batch mode processing and measurements for one or more s-parameter files
• Support customizable s-parameter reporting generation for lab automation and beyond

Besides the conceptual similarities with the TPro, S-parameter’s waveform viewer based on VPro waveform viewer. Therefore, all operations available in VPro can also be found in S-parameter viewer.

Signal Generator Unit

This tool allows the user to generate a signal and use it in a future analysis. The generator offers wide variety of signal patterns (such as PRBS, Pulse, Sine, Square, Sawtooth etc) in combination with the PAM4 and NRZ modulation schemes. The user needs only to specify parameters for the signal and then create it.

This simple, but very powerful feature helps to save time for the engineer. 

MPro Core

By definition, MPro is a modeling unit, which helps the user to work with the data. However, modeling can mean different things. The main advantage of MPro is providing the user with the simple environment for data manipulation. Here are all main functionalities of this core module:

• Table data processing: combine, extract, summarize statistically, etc
• Plan sampling with design of experiments, full factorial, Monte Carlo, etc
• Simulate or collect data using customizable scripts, supporting multi-CPU/multi-thread
• Visualize data in statistical, 2D or 3D plots
• Model data using response surface modeling, neural network (feed forward and radial basis), etc
• Optimization using linear, nonlinear, or genetic algorithm methods

BPro IBIS and AMI Unit (MPro Module)

BPro is one unit, however in this description I have purposefully separated it into two – BPro IBIS and BPro AMI, because the functionality of BPro is very broad. It is easier to focus on a one thing at a time.

Generally, BPro brings comprehensive IBIS related modeling, analysis, post-processing, and viewing capabilities to user. In more detail:

• Has an inspector to view IBIS model’s textual content and visualize various waveform/current table easily. Tool also allows manual editing of model data with a simple mouse click and drag
• Built-in advanced IBIS model generation flow from either scratch or existing simulation data. Tool will guide user from modeling setup, spice decks generations, simulation, modeling, syntax checking with golden parser, validation to final figure of merits (FOM) reporting
• Support batch mode generations of performance reports for one or more model files. Results are in .csv file format and can be used for further analysis
• IBIS model generation from Spec. or data sheet without performing any simulation. Generated model will also have two sets of waveforms under different loading conditions

Under ‘IBIS’ menu tab, the user will find separate sets of commands for both IBIS and AMI, as well as commands for IBIS-AMI in general.

Summary

This new addition to Ansys Electronics Solution brings a very wide variety of features to engineers. All Waveform Viewer, Signal Generator, IBIS-AMI modeling, DDR analysis, Data optimization, and Transmission line planner are united under one tool – SPISim. We can launch this tool either from within Ansys 3D Layout or SIwave, and, in 2020R2, is accessible through the Electronics Enterprise license.

Here is an overview of the SPISIm functionality:

Besides developing the help documentation and video demos, SPISim engineer team provides users with the detailed information about the tool in their blog – http://www.spisim.com/blogs/blog-articles-index/  and helps to fill out the technical ‘gaps’ by sharing the reference material – http://www.spisim.com/products/ami-spisims-ibis-ami/academic-serdes-ami-reference/

If you would like more information related to this topic or have any questions, please reach out to us at info@padtinc.com.

On September 7, 2020 Microsoft released a Windows update KB4571756, which may cause the Ansys electronic products to fail with the Error:

3221227010 at ‘reg_ansysedt.exe’ and ‘reg_siwave.exe’ registration.

This is the error message, users would see if they right-mouse-click and run the following file as administrator:

C:\Program Files\AnsysEM\AnsysEM20.2\Win64\config\ConfigureThisMachine.exe

To resolve this issue, here are the steps we recommend users take:

1. Revert the updates.
   1. If the issue is not resolved or something your IT won’t let you do, continue to the next steps.
      
2. Set an environment variable that turns off the driver that is causing the error. 
   1. Use windows search and type “system environment” and click on “Edit the system environment variables”
   2. This opens the “System Properties” tool
   3. Go to the “Advanced” tab
   4. Click on “Environment Variables…” at the bottom
   5. In the System Variables window click on “New…”
   6. Create the following variable:
      
      Variable Name: ANSYS_EM_DONOT_PRELOAD_3DDRIVER_DLL
      Variable Value: 1
      
   7. Click OK 3 times to exit out of the tool and save your changes. 
      
3. If the issue is still not resolved, there is one more step:
   1. Go to C:\Program Files\AnsysEM\AnsysEM20.2\Win64\config\
   2. Right-Mouse-Click on “ConfigureThisMachine.exe” and run as Admin. 

If these steps helped to resolve the issue, you will see the following info message when ‘ConfigureThisMachine.exe’ is run:

If this does not work, please contact your Ansys support provider. 

Demand for 3D Printing Equipment and Services in Texas’ Key Technology Industries Including Aerospace, Electronics, and Medical Has Drastically Increased

As a Platinum Channel Partner with Stratasys, PADT is excited to announce that we are now able to offer these services in Texas. We have been working with this technology in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah for more than 15 years, and are eager to finally bring our expertise to customer in the great state of Texas. 
 

This expansion is reflective of PADT’s consistent growth and the increased demand for additive manufacturing systems across many of Texas’ largest technology industries. Today, the aerospace industry is using thousands of 3D printed parts on aircraft and even spacecraft.

With PADT’s knowledge and expertise, we are well-positioned to be a valuable partner to the growing tech community in Texas. 

Please find our official press release below, or here as a PDF or in HTML.

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Stratasys Platinum Channel Partner PADT Expands 3D Printing System Sales Into Texas to Meet the Growing Demand for Prototyping and End-Use Products

Demand for 3D Printing Equipment and Services in Texas’ Key Technology Industries Including Aerospace, Electronics,
and Medical Has Drastically Increased

TEMPE, Ariz., August 12, 2020 ─ PADT, a globally recognized provider of numerical simulation, product development, and 3D printing products and services, today announced its Stratasys sales territory is expanding to include Texas. PADT is a Stratasys Platinum Channel Partner that has sold additive manufacturing systems as a certified reseller in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah for more than 15 years. In 2018, PADT also expanded its presence to Austin, Texas as a reseller of Ansys simulation software.

“Additive manufacturing technology that was once exclusive to low-volume prototyping has evolved rapidly for both prototyping and end-use product development alongside innovation in Stratasys’ 3D production systems and printing materials,” said Ward Rand, co-founder and principal, PADT. “We’ve made deep investments in Texas and have many years of experience working with organizations in the state’s technology industry. We’re now eager to bring our outstanding support and expertise in 3D printing to Texas and build on our success with Stratasys and Ansys across the Southwest.”

The expansion is reflective of PADT’s consistent growth and the increased demand for additive manufacturing systems across many of Texas’ largest technology industries. Today, the aerospace industry is using thousands of 3D printed parts on aircraft and even spacecraft. In the medical industry, 3D printing is being used to prototype biological structures to improve surgery and enhance our knowledge of the human body. Stratasys has been a driving force behind this innovation and relies on industry experts like PADT to help organizations integrate the technology into their engineering and manufacturing processes.

“PADT has been an outstanding partner to Stratasys for nearly 20 years,” said Brent Noonan, Vice president of Channel Sales – Americas. “They were one of the first engineering firms in the country to embrace 3D printing for complex product design and development. As a result, they’ve built an impressive team with a wealth of knowledge and expertise as it relates to 3D printing use and integration across industry sectors. PADT is well-positioned to be a valuable partner to Texas’ growing technology community.”

For more information on PADT and its 3D printing offering, please visit www.padtinc.com.

About PADT

PADT is an engineering product and services company that focuses on helping customers who develop physical products by providing Numerical Simulation, Product Development, and 3D Printing solutions. PADT’s worldwide reputation for technical excellence and experienced staff is based on its proven record of building long-term win-win partnerships with vendors and customers. Since its establishment in 1994, companies have relied on PADT because “We Make Innovation Work.” With over 90 employees, PADT services customers from its headquarters at the Arizona State University Research Park in Tempe, Arizona, and from offices in Torrance, California, Littleton, Colorado, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Austin, Texas, and Murray, Utah, as well as through staff members located around the country. More information on PADT can be found at www.PADTINC.com.

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Published on:	August 10th, 2020
With:	Eric Miller & Sina Ghods
Description:	In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by Senior Application Engineer, Sina Ghods for a discussion on what’s new and their favorite features in the 2020 R2 update for Ansys Fluent. Known for delivering the most accurate solutions in the industry without compromise, Ansys continues to provide cutting-edge advancements with each new release. In 2020 R2 users can learn about updates from pre-processing to new physics models and workflow improvements. If you would like to learn more about this update, you can view Sina’s webinar on the topic here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15747/427082 If you have any questions, comments, or would like to suggest a topic for the next episode, shoot us an email at podcast@padtinc.com we would love to hear from you!
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Ansys Sherlock automated design analysis software is the only Reliability Physics/Physics of Failure (PoF)-based electronics design analysis software that provides fast and accurate life predictions for electronic hardware at the component, board and system levels in early design stages. A unique, powerful capability of Sherlock is its revolutionary ability to rapidly convert electronic CAD (ECAD) files into CFD and FEA models with accurate geometries and material properties.

Through its powerful parsing engine and embedded libraries containing over 500,000 parts, Sherlock reduces pre-processing time from days to minutes and automates workflows through its integration with Ansys Icepak, Ansys Mechanical and Ansys Workbench.

With its extensive parts/materials libraries, Sherlock automatically identifies your files and imports your parts list, then builds an FEA model of your circuit board in minutes. It also produces a holistic analysis that is critical to developing reliable electronics products. It enables designers to simulate each environment, failure mechanism and assembly that a product might encounter over its lifespan.

Join PADT’s Systems Application & Support Engineer Josh Stout for an introduction to this powerful tool along with a look at what new features and updates have been added in the Ansys 2020 R2 version.

Register Here

If this is your first time registering for one of our Bright Talk webinars, simply click the link and fill out the attached form. We promise that the information you provide will only be shared with those promoting the event (PADT).

You will only have to do this once! For all future webinars, you can simply click the link, add the reminder to your calendar and you’re good to go!

While many examples exist of impressive texturing done on 3D printed Stratasys PolyJet printed parts (some wild examples are here), I have to admit it took me a while to learn that true texturing can also be added to Stratasys Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) parts. This blog post will walk you through adding texture to all faces or some faces of a solid model, ready for FDM printing. You, too, may be surprised by the results.

I know that complex texturing is possible in a graphics sense with such software packages as Rhino, PhotoShop, Blender and more, but I’m going to show you what you can achieve simply by working with SolidWorks, from Rev. 2019 onwards, as an easy starting point. From there, you can follow the same basic steps but import your own texture files.

SolidWorks Texture Options

First off, let’s clarify some terms. Texture mapping has existed for years and strictly speaking creates a 2D “texture” or pattern. If I were to wrap that imagery around a 3D CAD model and print it on, say, a PolyJet multi-color 3D printer, I’d get a 3D part with a flat or perhaps curved surface decorated with a multi-color “picture” such as a map or a photo of leather. It could conform, but it’s still basically a decal.

A 3D texture instead is more properly referred to as Bump Mapping (not to be confused with …..too late….bit mapping). Bump mapping interprets the color/contrast information of a 2D image such that it renders light and shadow to give the illusion of a 3D part, while remaining in 2D. Taking this concept one step further, 3D CAD software such as SolidWorks can apply rules that convert white, black and grey shades into physical displacements, producing a kind of tessellated topology mapping. This new information can be saved as an STL file and generate a 3D printed part that has physical, tactile variations in material height across its surface. (For a detailed explanation and examples of texture versus bump-mapping, see the GrabCAD Tutorial “Adding Texture to 3D Models.”)

For FDM parts, you’ll get physical changes on the outer surface of the part that appear as your choice of say, a checkerboard, an arrangement of stars, a pebbly look or a series of waves. In the CAD software, you have a number of options for editing that bump map to produce bigger or smaller, higher or lower, finer or coarser variations of the original pattern, prior to saving the model file as an STL file.

Stepping through SolidWorks 3D Texturing

The key to making this option work in SolidWorks 3D CAD software (I’m using SolidWorks 2020), is in the Appearances tab. Here are the steps I’ve taken, highlighting the variety of choices you can make. My example is the Post-It Note holder I described in my PADT blog post about advanced infill options in GrabCAD Print.

1. Open Post-It note CAD file, select Solid Bodies (left menu) and select Appearances (in the right toolbar).

2. Expand Appearances and go all the way down to Miscellaneous, then click to open the 3D Textures folder.

3. Scroll down to choose one of the more than 50 (currently) available patterns. Here, I’ve chosen a 5-pointed star pattern.

4. I dragged and dropped that pattern onto the part body. A window opens up with several choices: the default is to apply the pattern to all faces:

However, you can mouse over within that pop-window to select only a single face, like this:

5. When you’ve applied the pattern to either all faces or just one or two, you’ll see a new entry in the left window, Appearances, with the subheading: 5-pointed Star. Right-click on those words, and choose Edit Appearance:

Then the Appearances window expands as follows, opening by default to the Color/Image tab:

In this pane, if desired, you could even Browse to switch to a different pattern you have imported in a separate file.

6. Click on Mapping, and you’ll see a number of “thumb wheel” sliders for resizing the pattern either via the wheel, clicking the up/down arrows, or just entering a value.

Mapping: this moves the pattern – you can see it march left or right, up or down. I used it to center the stars so there aren’t any half-stars cut off at the edge.

Size/Orientation: You can also try “Fit width to selection” or “Fit height to selection,” or experiment with height and width yourself, and even tilt the pattern at an angle. (If you don’t like the results, click on Reset Scale.) Here, I’ve worked with it to have two rows of five stars.

7. Remember I said that you can also make the pattern higher or lower, like a change in elevation, so that it stands out a little or a lot. To make those choices, go to the Solid Bodies line in the Feature Manager tree, expand it, and click on the part name (mine is Champfer2).

In the fly-out window that appears, click on the third icon in the top row, “3D Texture.” This opens up an expanded window where you can refine the number of triangular facets that make up the shape of the selected texture pattern. In case you are working with more than one face and/or different patterns on each face, you would check the box under Texture Settings for each face when you want to edit it.

Here is where you can flip the pattern to extend outwards, or be recessed inwards, or, if you brought in a black/white 2D pattern in the first place, you can use this to convert it to a true 3D texture.

I’ll show you some variations of offset distance, refinement and element size, with exaggerated results, so you can see some of the possible effects:

In this first example, the only change I made from the default was to increase the Texture Offset Distance from 0.010 to 0.200. The stars are extending out quite visibly.

Next, I changed Texture Refinement from 0% to 66.7%, and now you can see the stars more distinctly, with better defined edges:

Finally, I am going to change the Element size from 0.128 to 0.180in. It made the star edges only slightly sharper, though at the expense of increasing the number of facets from about 24,000 to 26,000; for large parts and highly detailed texturing, the increased file size could slow down slicing time.

8. To make sure these textured areas print, you have to do one more special step: Convert to Mesh Body. Do this in the Feature Manager by right-clicking on the body, and selecting the second icon in the top row, “Convert to Mesh Body.” You can adjust some of these parameters, too, but I accepted the defaults.

9. Lastly, Save the file in STL format, as usual.

At my company, PADT, my favorite FDM printer is our F370, so I’m going to set this up in GrabCAD Print software, to print there in ABS, at 0.005in layers:

You can definitely see the stars popping out on the front face; too bad you can also see two weird spikes part-way up, that are small bits of a partial row of stars. That means I should have split the face before I applied the texture, so that the upper portion was left plain. Well, next time.

Here’s the finished part, with its little spikes:

And here’s another example I did when I was first trying out a checkerboard pattern; I applied the texture to all faces, so it came out a bit interesting with the checkerboard on the top and bottom, too. Again, next time, I would be more selective to split up the model.

NOTE: It’s clear that texturing works much better on vertical faces than horizontal, due to the nature of the FDM layering process – just be sure to orient your parts to allow for this.

For More Information on Texturing

SolidWorks offers a number of tutorials on the texturing set-up process, such as http://help.solidworks.com/2019/english/solidworks/sldworks/c_3d_textures.htm, and Shuvom Ghose at GrabCAD gives even more details about what to expect with this process in his post https://grabcad.com/tutorials/how-to-3d-texture-your-parts-for-fdm-printing-using-solidworks-2019

There will also be a general Stratasys webinar on The Benefits of 3D Printing Physical Textures on July 29 at 9am PT.

Commercial aircraft companies are already adding a pebble texture to flight-approved cosmetic FDM parts, such as covers for brackets and switches that keep them from being bumped. If you try this out, let us know what texture you chose and send us a photo of your part.

PADT Inc. is a globally recognized provider of Numerical Simulation, Product Development and 3D Printing products and services, and is an authorized reseller of Stratasys products. For more information on Stratasys printers and materials, contact us at info@padtinc.com.

 

Published on:	July 27th, 2020
With:	Eric Miller & Joe Woodward
Description:	In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by Joe Woodward, Senior Mechanical Engineer & Lead Trainer at PADT for a discussion on what is new in the 2020 R2 release of Ansys Mechanical, along with a look at their favorite features. If you would like to learn more about this topic, you can view PADT’s webinar covering the release here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15747/422824 If you have any questions, comments, or would like to suggest a topic for the next episode, shoot us an email at podcast@padtinc.com we would love to hear from you!
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