Market Changes
As simulation becomes pervasive — offering the ability to model the whole product and its environment — and as technology eliminates guesswork from the design process, two profound concepts will emerge:
- Greater creativity and innovation, especially as product makers spend less time and money on prototypes and product iterations, including those designed to remedy original design flaws. Fixing a problem — troubleshooting a design — is relatively easy when an engineer can pinpoint the cause of the difficulty and see what is wrong. But seeing the problem is often at the core. In the first phase of pervasive simulation, designers will struggle less with (then eliminate) the problem of the unknown. The next evolution will be characterized by designers having freedom to pursue daring and breakthrough ideas, knowing that the chances of success are higher, the risk of failure lower, and the total cost of the ideation cycle vastly reduced. Furthermore, those resources can be converted to profit or channeled into other endeavors.
- Transition of simulation from an instrument of design to a product feature. This concept requires some imagination, but so did the idea of putting a microchip on every single product to track inventory, location, price and security status (RFID). Simulation can propagate into the end product, enabling new controls for provider and user. Physicians, for example, diagnose and treat patients based on what they see and hear in the patient’s body. Even with advanced imaging systems, they make educated guesses about the cause and effect of treatment. Imagine if, instead, doctors performed real-time what-if scenarios based on a mathematical model of what’s going on inside the body? And that the 3-D color renderings of these equations display how the patient will respond? For other everyday scenarios, product developers who use engineering simulation will be able to see imperfections in everything from buildings to automobiles. Office feel a little drafty? Wasting energy? Integrated simulation will identify abnormal airflow and allow an immediate correction, exactly where it is needed.
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