Digital Prototyping
In response to competitive pressures, many manufacturers have decreased their reliance on physical prototypes by using a viable alternative—Digital Prototyping. Digital Prototyping enables you to design, visualise, and simulate a complete product. Giving you the understanding typically associated with time-consuming and expensive physical testing, simulation is a critical part of a Digital Prototyping workflow.
Therefore, Autodesk have launched a family brand, Autodesk® Simulation, to further build awareness of Autodesk products in the simulation market. The portfolio includes a range of scalable simulation solutions.
Robust and practical simulation tools are built right into Autodesk® Product Design Suite software, and for those who need to do and know more, there's Autodesk® Simulation and Autodesk® Moldflow® software.
So what is Digital Prototyping?
The basic concept of Digital Prototyping is to test a virtual, yet complete product before it’s built.
Digital Prototyping lets you create, optimise and validate an accurate 3D simulation of your product designs. Using a single digital model throughout the design, engineering and manufacturing phases has a big impact on your business.
- Build fewer physical prototypes
- Get to market ahead of the competition
- Develop innovative products
- Minimise the risk of failure
- Improve communication and collaboration
- Reduce design and production costs
How is Digital Prototyping different from 3D design?
3D design is all about looking at the form and fit of product components – and automating the creation of drawings from your model.
Digital prototyping starts with defining form and fitting parts together, but it quickly moves beyond this into assessing:
- the way things move;
- whether or not they fail;
- how components interact with pneumatic and electric subsystems.
Test new concepts
Digital Prototyping lets you explore ideas and test design concepts before anything is built.
Reduce design time
Using digital prototypes helps you get products to market faster with fewer physical prototypes.
Cut production costs
With a digital prototype all your design decisions are based on accurate simulations and analysis, rather than intuition, so you can be sure a solution will work when it goes into production.
Not just for the big guns
You don’t have to build cars, planes or large industrial machinery to use Digital Prototyping to get to market faster with more innovative designs. Autodesk’s flexible solutions can be scaled to suit any business – and any budget.
Proven success
AutoCAD Inventor has enabled Westfield Sportscars to cut the number of physical prototypes to just one or two.
"We use Inventor to build a digital prototype to check for design clashes, and then for more complex analyses such as emissions testing."
With Digital Prototyping, DEW Engineering and Development Ltd has reduced prototype development time by 50% and improved design visualisation for everyone from customers to employees on the shop floor.
"We’re driving down costs and getting products out quicker than ever."