Tech Briefs
KBE + CAD = speed and effectiveness

Knowledge-based engineering (KBE) is used extensively by Corus Automotive Engineering, but the company says it does not regard it as an alternative to CAD. Corus is the international metals group formed by the merger of British Steel and the Koninklijke Hoogovens of the Netherlands. Although KBE improves the speed and effectiveness of the product development process, reduces the time taken to create new designs, and provides significant savings in every part of the design cycle, Corus regards it as complementary to CAD, not as a replacement for it.

According to the company, KBE will reduce the number of CAD stations needed for a particular task, but there are some design tasks for which KBE is not appropriate. The exterior styling of the vehicle, for example, will probably continue to use "traditional methods," with KBE increasingly being used to automate rules-driven iterative tasks such as vehicle packaging and structure design. In the short to medium term, CAD will probably remain as the detailing mechanism for the product data model, but KBE systems will offer generative and integrated modeling capabilities that are far beyond those of basic CAD.

KBE reduces detail design time and integrates engineering knowledge with specified constraints such as cost, legislation, or manufacturing processes. By automating the routine and time-consuming elements of design, it releases design engineers from mundane tasks, enabling them to concentrate on the real issues, according to Corus. Generative and integrated modeling allow rapid feedback of results with the ability to incorporate late design changes while ensuring design and analysis consistency.

"Some 80% of the typical design process is taken up by repetitive data-generating and data-consistency management tasks," said Prof. Jon King, Corus' Research Director. "If these are automated through KBE, design costs can be substantially reduced, and a better optimized component or assembly can be created."

KBE effectively captures the engineering knowledge behind the design so it can be re-used on other projects. By capturing that engineering knowledge and integrating it with manufacturing best practice, legislation, and other key factors, KBE can improve cost, performance, and quality of the end product—with the added bonus of "huge reductions" in design time and cost.

In general, resource constraints often mean it is not practicable to consider multiple manufacturing options or design variations. But when the process is automated by using KBE, many options can be assessed for feasibility: the results will be directly comparable because they have been subjected to identical analysis procedures, source data, and knowledge base. The speed with which the results can be produced makes assessing the relative cost effectiveness of different options a practical proposition.

Perhaps most important of all, KBE offers the potential to achieve a higher level of confidence in manufacturing feasibility in a much shorter period of time. Corus has focused its KBE developments in this area using the ICAC system, a module of the knowledge-based organization environment from Knowledge Technologies International. As a result, Corus' KBE applications enable early decisions based on engineering best practice, which can be used to move ahead with further analysis or even prototyping. The ability to detect potential manufacturing issues in a short period of time, using relatively "non-expert" resources, will greatly reduce the risk exposure to projects, in terms of both timing and cost far beyond those of typical CAD.

Stuart Birch