INFO: One-Stop-Shop 

High-tech software for engineers is expensive. In many cases, however, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do not make use of it on a regular basis. In the EU project CAxMan, researchers are developing special Cloud enabled design and simulation solutions addressing additive manufacturing and targeting the needs of SMEs.

An engineer’s most important tool is a computer. Be it a bridge, a car or a lawn mower, nowadays, every product is designed on a computer. Its suitability for purpose is often tested in computer simulations even prior to the first prototype. At least in theory, this is actually the case for subtractive manufacturing. For additive manufacturing, dedicated tools for Computer Aided Technologies (CAx) are fragmented, and in many important aspects, rudimentary.

It is the mission of the thirteen CAxMan partner institutions (covering seven EU countries) to improve this situation. The idea is to develop new design and simulation technologies addressing the specificities of additive manufacturing and to make them available as Cloud Services exploiting the infrastructure of the fp7 Integrating Project CloudFlow, www.eu-cloudflow.eu. This will facilitate simple access to these new possibilities for small and large enterprises alike. Expensive special software is no longer installed on the engineers’ computers but will function via the internet on the CloudFlow platform. On this open platform, products may be designed and simulated in a coherent and connected way. The available servers provide high performance computing (HPC) solutions, capable of solving very complex problems. 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

A new design and product chain for Additive Manufacturing will combine well-established software technologies with novel developments. It thus has to be flexible both with respect to which software components to combine, which data representations to support and which access to computational performance is available. CAxMan will build on the Cloud infrastructure from the CloudFlow Project (www.eu-cloudflow.eu) , augmenting and adapting the Workflow Manager, supporting interoperability by Product Data Management, as well as allowing HPC-resources to be accessed when needed.

 

FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY


Ownership

Contact Point

Dr. Tor Dokken

SINTEF ICT

Forskningsveien 1

P.O.Box 124 Blindern

0314 Oslo Norway


Tel: +47 93058710
E-Mail: Tor.Dokken@sintef.no