Theory Vs Practice
What’s mechatronics?
For sure two doctors have three opinions, but at the end of the day, mechatronics is a process for the development of products that are the result of collaboration between more than one discipline. That means relevant data has to be shared between the specialized design groups .
For example, a mechatronic product could be a product with electrical, electronic, mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic modules and often in our modern world, – software modules. This is more and more the case for many industrial products, machines, vehicles, ships, airplanes or construction machines, etc.
Many people are talking about mechatronics – but do you really practice it? In your company, in your department, in your product development process?
Barriers to adopting a mechatronics approach
The historically grown department structure within many companies, where specific design systems are in place and have been optimized over time, are very supportive of the development tasks for these single departments (e.g., mechanical design). For different development tasks, typically there are different systems in place, but these do not fully take into account effective data sharing between departments.
If a company wants to benefit from mechatronics, development teams (departments) have to move together and their goals changed to reflect this – away from a department goal, and toward a joint product goal. This can result in a change of the development process, a modification of the department structure and the harmonization of development systems. There is no denying, there are several hurdles to pass in order to implement a mechatronic approach.
Fluid Wiring in E3.WireWorks
Top 6 advantages of adopting a mechatronics approach:
Capping your design in SolidWorks
If these hurdles are conquered the advantages are huge – saving time, money and frustration:
- Parallel development of electric, hydraulic and harnesses
- Concurrent physical checks in the 3D digital mockup
- Reduction of manual
(re-)work by using standard interfaces - Reduction of prototypes
- Reduction of design errors and detecting errors sooner
- Reducing design re-work
Communication between electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic and mechanical design departments doesn’t have to be difficult and time consuming.
Webinar: March 16th, 12PM EDT
In our Webinar “Bridging the Gap between SolidWorks and your Electrical and Fluid Designs”, we’ll show you how E3.WireWorks and SolidWorks together can help you maximize your design space, cut down on iterations, and produce more accurate designs in less time.
If you’re an electrical designer constrained by mechanical design requirements, a fluid engineer working closely with the electrical and mechanical teams or an MCAD engineer who interfaces with ECAD and fluid departments, this is a must attend webinar.
Learn more about what you will learn including:
- Improving collaboration
- Reducing design cycle time
- Maximizing efficiency
- Using EPDM to manage entire projects
Interested? The free webinar takes place today on March 16th, at 12PM EDT.
- Sign up for the free webinar today! – Event now passed.
- Webinar now available to view onDemand from Zuken.com
{ 1 trackback }