Traditional design approaches don’t make the most of new manufacturing methods, like additive manufacturing, which are removing design constraints and opening up new possibilities. The optimal shape of a part is often organic and counterintuitive, so designing it requires a different approach.
Topology optimization lets you specify where supports and loads are located on a volume of material and lets the software find the best shape.
Kick off the year by learning about one of the most exciting advancements in modern design and manufacturing. Join experts from PADT and nTopology for an interactive roundtable discussion on the ins and outs of topological optimization.
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Additive Manufacturing has profoundly impacted all aspects of manufacturing. With the ability to increase speed-to-market, lower production costs, and customize specialty parts, it continues to fuel innovation. Manufacturing jigs, fixtures, and other tooling accounts for more than 20% of all end-use parts produced with 3D printing today. Yet, without tools that make the design of custom jigs and fixtures simpler, many users are kept from reaching the full benefits of Additive Manufacturing on the factory floor.
One tool that is helping engineers bypass this roadblock is the latest collaborative effort from Stratasys and nTopology, the FDM Fixture Generator.
This innovative software tool allows you to automate the design of 3D printed jigs & fixtures. Generate custom designs and streamline operations on your factory floor without spending time in CAD. Ready to print with a few clicks.
Join nTopology and PADT to learn more about FDM Fixture Generator and how it stands to disrupt the manufacturing environment.
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Simulation is becoming an integral part of our customers’ product development processes, and new horizons await. By combining different physics into a multidisciplinary approach, phenomena can be investigated more holistically and optimized to a greater degree. Additionally, simulation processes can be standardized and shared across teams, allowing simulation novices to gain more direct access to simulation.
Time-consuming manual searches for the best and most robust design configuration can now be accelerated by adding state-of-the-art algorithms for design exploration, optimization, robustness and reliability analysis. Through the power of interactive visualization and artificial intelligence technologies, engineers and designers can gain a better understanding of their design and make the right decisions in less time.
The process integration and design optimization solution that enables all the above is Ansys optiSLang.
Join PADT’s Mechanical Application Engineer and Systems Expert Josh Stout for an exploration of this interconnected tool and what new capabilities are available in it’s 2020 R2 release.
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In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by PADT’s Senior Staff Technologist Jim Peters for a discussion on the new capabilities available within Ansys Motion 2020 R2. With an integration into Mechanical, users can take advantage of multi-use models resulting in substantial time savings.
If you would like to learn more about this update, you can view Jim’s webinar on the topic here:
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/15747/455203
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!
PADT & Ansys are excited to announce Level Up with Ansys Mechanical, a free virtual technical conference on Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 10 a.m. EST.
For the past 50 years, Ansys Mechanical continues to be the go-to finite element analysis platform for structural analysis, and they’re just getting warmed up. Join visionary Ansys product development, product management and engineering leaders as they provide expert insights on Mechanical’s technology advances and preview the platform’s future.
From those engineers looking to boot up their simulation experience to those seeking to step up their simulation skills, and even those operating in “beast mode”, who execute large and complex workflows, this action-packed event showcases how Mechanical radically transforms product design.
Highlights include:
Learn the latest with scripting and automation to save valuable time
Discover how to lightweight product designs with structural optimization methods
Understand how to couple multiple physics to assess performance in the real world
And so much more
Catch the thought-provoking plenary presentation, engage with Ansys’ brightest during the live Q&A, and interact with fellow engineers during live polls.
When customers evaluate products, the overall look and details can make all the difference. Ansys physics-based imaging, photonics and illumination software streamlines the design process, so you can better understand how your product will look and operate under real-world lighting and usage conditions.
Whether you are designing a TV screen, street lighting network, smart headlight, head-up display or interior mood lighting in an automobile, Ansys optical simulation software helps you make your design more efficient and appealing. Optical sensors are the eyes of any intelligent system, and Ansys physics-based simulations can help you assess raw signals from camera and lidar systems in their operating environments.
Ansys 2020 R2 empowers Ansys SPEOS users to go further than ever before with enhancements that improve the handling of complex sensors, project preview and computation.
Enhancements include:
• Highly accurate camera models drastically improve camera simulation experience
• Faster simulation times when using light sources and provides nearly real-time review
• 4X faster simulation setup thanks to optimized GUI
Join PADT’s Application Engineer Robert McCathren for a first hand look at the capabilities of optical simulation, followed by what’s available for SPEOS in the Ansys 2020 R2 update.
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The Ansys Discovery suite of tools allows engineers to improve their 3D design capabilities, by increasing productivity, improving product quality, and spurring innovation. Explore ideas, iterate and innovate with unprecedented speed early in your design process with Ansys 3D design software.
Delve deeper into design details, refine concepts and perform multiple physics simulations to better account for real-world behaviors.
Join PADT’s Application Engineer Robert McCathren for a look at 3D product design and updates for Ansys Discovery AIM, Live, and SpaceClaim in 2020 R2.
In the Ansys 2020 R2, users can explore large design spaces and answer critical design questions early in the product design process without waiting days or weeks for traditional simulation results.
Additionally, these tools have been upgraded to support concept modeling and model prep for importing modified CAD geometry, auto-skinning topology optimization results from Ansys Mechanical for automated geometry reconstruction, and so much more.
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).
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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!
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.
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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!
In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by PADT’s Pam Waterman and Robert McCathren for a discussion on how Ansys Granta can be used to help optimize hardware selection for additive manufacturing. The Senvol Database details 1,000 AM machines and more than 850 compatible materials. Using this tool within Granta Selector, you can search and compare materials based on properties, type, or compatible machines.
If you would like to learn more about the Ansys tool and it’s applications for additive, check out our webinar on the topic here: https://bit.ly/2SAZN8G
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!
There are hundreds of industrial AM machines and materials. New products come to market weekly, and picking the best option for a manufacturing or research project is a tough call. A wrong direction can be costly. This is where Ansys Granta and the Senvol Database come in handy.
The Senvol Database details 1,000 AM machines and more than 850 compatible materials. Using this tool within Granta Selector, you can search and compare materials based on properties, type, or compatible machines. Identify and compare machines based on supported processes, manufacturer, required part size, cost, or compatible materials (and their properties). Quickly focus on the most likely routes to achieve project goals, save time and get new ideas as you research AM options.
JoinPADT’s Application Engineer Robert McCathren for an overview of Ganta Material Selector, along with its importance and applications for those working with or interested in additive manufacturing.
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).
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In this episode your host and Co-Founder of PADT, Eric Miller is joined by PADT’s Senior Simulation Support & Application Engineer Sina Ghods for a look at what is new with Ansys Cloud and how the tool provides access to higher fidelity models, faster turnaround, and multiple supported solvers, anywhere and anytime.
If you would like to learn more about the Ansys tool offering access to simulation on the go, check out our webinar on the topic here: https://bit.ly/3al5PjH
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!
In this article I will cover a Voltage Drop (DC IR) simulation in SIwave, applying realistic power delivery setup on a simple 4-layer PCB design. The main goal for this project is to understand what data we receive by running DC IR simulation, how to verify it, and what is the best way of using it.
And before I open my tools and start diving deep into this topic, I would like to thank Zachary Donathan for asking the right questions and having deep meaningful technical discussions with me on some related subjects. He may not have known, but he was helping me to shape up this article in my head!
Design Setup
There are many different power nets present on the board
under test, however I will be focusing on two widely spread nets +1.2V and
+3.3V. Both nets are being supplied through Voltage Regulator Module (VRM),
which will be assigned as a Voltage Source in our analysis. After careful
assessment of the board design, I identified the most critical components for
the power delivery to include in the analysis as Current Sources (also known as
‘sinks’). Two DRAM small outline integrated circuit (SOIC) components D1 and D2
are supplied with +1.2V. While power net +3.3V provides voltage to two quad
flat package (QFP) microcontrollers U20 and U21, mini PCIE connector, and hex
Schmitt-Trigger inverter U1.
Fig. 1. Power Delivery Network setting for a DC IR analysis
Figure 1 shows the ‘floor plan’ of the DC IR analysis
setup with 1.2V voltage path highlighted in yellow and 3.3V path highlighted in
light blue.
Before we assign any Voltage and Current sources, we need to
define pin groups for all nets +1.2V, +3.3V and GND for all PDN component
mentioned above. Having pin groups will significantly simplify the reviewing
process of the results. Also, it is generally a good practice to start the DC
IR analysis from the ‘big picture’ to understand if certain component gets
enough power from the VRM. If a given IC reports an acceptable level of voltage
being delivered with a good margin, then we don’t need to dig deeper; we can
instead focus on those which may not have good enough margins.
Once we have created all necessary pin groups, we can assign
voltage and current sources. There are several ways of doing that (using wizard
or manual), for this project we will use ‘Generate Circuit Element on
Components’ feature to manually define all sources. Knowing all the components
and having pin groups already created makes the assignment very
straight-forward. All current sources draw different amount of current, as indicated
in our setting, however all current sources have the same Parasitic Resistance
(very large value) and all voltage source also have the same Parasitic
Resistance (very small value). This is shown on Figure 2 and Figure 3.
Note: The type of the current source ‘Constant Voltage’ or
‘Distributed Current’ matters only if you are assigning a current source to a
component with multiple pins on the same net, and since in this project we are
working with pins groups, this setting doesn’t make difference in final results.
Fig. 2. Voltage and Current sources assigned
Fig. 3. Parasitic Resistance assignments for all voltage and current sources
For each power net we have created a voltage source on VRM and multiple current sources on ICs and the connector. All sources have a negative node on a GND net, so we have a good common return path. And in addition, we have assigned a negative node of both voltage sources (one for +1.2V and one for +3.3V) as our reference points for our analysis. So reported voltage values will be referenced to that that node as absolute 0V.
At this point, the DC IR setup is complete and ready for
simulation.
Results overview and validation
When the DC IR simulation is finished, there is large amount
of data being generated, therefore there are different ways of viewing results,
all options are presented on Figure 4. In this article I will be
primarily focusing on ‘Power Tree’ and ‘Element Data’. As an additional source
if validation we may review the currents and voltages overlaying the design to
help us to visualize the current flow and power distribution. Most of the time
this helps to understand if our assumption of pin grouping is accurate.
Fig. 4. Options to view different aspects of DC IR simulated data
Power Tree
First let’s look at the Power Tree, presented on Figure 5. Two different power nets were simulated, +1.2V and +3.3V, each of which has specified Current Sources where the power gets delivered. Therefore, when we analyze DC IR results in the Power tree format, we see two ‘trees’, one for each power net. Since we don’t have any pins, which would get both 1.2V and 3.3V at the same time (not very physical example), we don’t have ‘common branches’ on these two ‘trees’.
Now, let’s dissect all the information present in this power tree (taking in consideration only one ‘branch’ for simplicity, although the logic is applicable for all ‘branches’):
We were treating both power nets +1.2V and +3.3V as separate voltage loops, so we have assigned negative nodes of each Voltage Source as a reference point. Therefore, we see the ‘GND’ symbol ((1) and (2)) for each voltage source. Now all voltage calculations will be referenced to that node as 0V for its specific tree.
Then we see the path from Voltage Source to Current Source, the value ΔV shows the Voltage Drop in that path (3). Ultimately, this is the main value power engineers usually are interested in during this type of analysis. If we subtract ΔV from Vout we will get the ‘Actual Voltage’ delivered to the specific current source positive pin (1.2V – 0.22246V = 0.977V). That value reported in the box for the Current Source (4). Technically, the same voltage drop value is reported in the column ‘IR Drop’, but in this column we get more details – we see what the percentage of the Vout is being dropped. Engineers usually specify the margin value of the acceptable voltage drop as a percentage of Vout, and in our experiment we have specified 15%, as reported in column ‘Specification’. And we see that 18.5% is greater than 15%, therefore we get ‘Fail_I_&_V’ results (6) for that Current Source.
Regarding the current – we have manually specified the current value for each Current Source. Current values in Figure 2 are the same as in Figure 5. Also, we can specify the margin for the current to report pass or fail. In our example we assigned 108A as a current at the Current Source (5), while 100A is our current limit (4). Therefore, we also got failed results for the current as well.
As mentioned earlier, we assigned current values for each Current Source, but we didn’t set any current values for the Voltage Source. This is because the tool calculates how much current needs to be assigned for the Voltage Source, based on the value at the Current Sources. In our case we have 3 Current Sources 108A, 63A, 63A (5). The sum of these three values is 234A, which is reported as a current at the Voltage Source (7). Later we will see that this value is being used to calculate output power at the Voltage Source.
Fig. 5. DC IR simulated data viewed as a ‘Power Tree’
Element Data
This option shows us results in the tabular representation. It lists many important calculated data points for specific objects, such as bondwire, current sources, all vias associated with the power distribution network, voltage probes, voltage sources.
Let’s continue reviewing the same power net +1.2V and the power distribution to CPU1 component as we have done for Power Tree (Figure 5). The same way we will be going over the details in point-by-point approach:
First and foremost, when we look at the information for Current Sources, we see a ‘Voltage’ value, which may be confusing. The value reported in this table is 0.7247V (8), which is different from the reported value of 0.977V in Power Tree on Figure 5 (4). The reason for the difference is that reported voltage value were calculated at different locations. As mentioned earlier, the reported voltage in the Power Tree is the voltage at the positive pin of the Current Source. The voltage reported in Element Data is the voltage at the negative pin of the Current Source, which doesn’t include the voltage drop across the ground plane of the return path.
To verify the reported voltage values, we can place Voltage Probes (under circuit elements). Once we do that, we will need to rerun the simulation in order to get the results for the probes:
Two terminals of the ‘VPROBE_1’ attached at the positive pin of Voltage Source and at the positive pin of the Current Source. This probe should show us the voltage difference between VRM and IC, which also the same as reported Voltage Drop ΔV. And as we can see ‘VPROBE_1’ = 222.4637mV (13), when ΔV = 222.464mV (3). Correlated perfectly!
Two terminals of the ‘VPROBE_GND’ attached to the negative pin of the Current Source and negative pin of the Voltage Source. The voltage shown by this probe is the voltage drop across the ground plane.
If we have 1.2V at the positive pin of VRM, then voltage drops 222.464mV across the power plane, so the positive pin of IC gets supplied with 0.977V. Then the voltage at the Current Source 0.724827V (8) being drawn, leaving us with (1.2V – 0.222464V – 0.724827V) = 0.252709V at the negative pin of the Current Source. On the return path the voltage drops again across the ground plane 252.4749mV (14) delivering back at the negative pin of VRM (0.252709V – 0.252475V) = 234uV. This is the internal voltage drop in the Voltage Source, as calculated as output current at VRM 234A (7) multiplied by Parasitic Resistance 1E-6Ohm (Figure 3) at VRM. This is Series R Voltage (11)
Parallel R Current of the Current source is calculated as Voltage 724.82mV (8) divided by Parasitic Resistance of the Current Source (Figure 3) 5E+7 Ohm = 1.44965E-8 (9)
Current of the Voltage Source report in the Element Data 234A (10) is the same value as reported in the Power Tree (sum of all currents of Current Sources for the +1.2V power net) = 234A (7). Knowing this value of the current we can multiple it by Parasitic Resistance of the Voltage Source (Figure 3) 1E-6 Ohm = (234A * 1E-6Ohm) = 234E-6V, which is equal to reported Series R Voltage (11). And considering that the 234A is the output current of the Voltage Source, we can multiple it by output voltage Vout = 1.2V to get a Power Output = (234A * 1.2V) = 280.85W (12)
Fig. 6. DC IR simulated data viewed in the table format as ‘Element Data’
In addition to all provided above calculations and explanations, the video below in Figure 7 highlights all the key points of this article.
Fig. 7. Difference between reporting Voltage values in Power Tree and Element Data
Conclusion
By carefully reviewing the Power Tree and Element Data reporting options, we can determine many important decisions about the power delivery network quality, such as how much voltage gets delivered to the Current Source; how much voltage drop is on the power net and on the ground net, etc. More valuable information can be extracted from other DC IR results options, such as ‘Loop Resistance’, ‘Path Resistance’, ‘RL table’, ‘Spice Netlist’, full ‘Report’. However, all these features deserve a separate topic.
As always, if you would like to receive more information related to this topic or have any questions please reach out to us at info@padtinc.com.
Engineering simulation has long been constrained by fixed computing resources available on a desktop or cluster. Today, however, cloud computing can deliver the on-demand, high performance computing (HPC) capacity required for faster high-fidelity results offering greater performance insight, all from the comfort of your home.
Ansys Cloud delivers the speed, power and compute capacity of cloud computing directly to your desktop — when and where you need it. You can run larger, more complex and more accurate simulations to gain more insight into your product — or you can evaluate more design variations to find the optimal design without long hardware/software procurement and deployment delays.
Join PADT’s Senior Application & Simulation Support Engineer Sina Ghods for a look at how Ansys is working to drive adoption by providing users a ready to use cloud service that provides:
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