Application

Simulating reality

Simulation helps organisations gain better design and styling capabilities and save on prototyping costs, says Abhinav Singh

Reality Centres (RC) or Visualisation Systems are gaining ground in India and are being adopted by Indian enterprises. Businesses are making use of them to improve the design and styling of their products and create simulated environments for research and development (R&D).

Organisations such as ONGC, BHEL, IIT-Kanpur and the National Institute of Design (NID) at Ahmedabad are using RCs. The NID, for example, is leveraging this technology for its Design Vision Centre (DVC). The aim of setting up the DVC was to empower its design professionals to visualise and achieve faster design cycles in real life environments and to make design solutions user friendly. The DVC is a design support facility for education, research and consultancy services with three high-tech labs.

Dr Darlie Koshy, executive director of the National Institute of Design says, “The NID has a high-performance visualisation lab equipped with Silicon Graphic’s (SGI) Onyx 350 visualisation system that has brought in higher performance through advanced visualisation techniques. The system provides a real-time immersive experience to viewers. It covers a large spectrum of visualisation for products and services.” Using this facility, students, researchers and design professionals can undertake comprehensive ‘virtual prototyping’, eliminating physical prototyping costs.

Similarly, IIT, Kanpur is using a 4 CPU SGI Onyx RC system, which is helping it train students in areas of digital prototyping, design review, computer-aided design (CAD) and industrial styling. The students of the aeronautical engineering group are using IIT-K’s RC to study computer fluid dynamics. The RC would also be used in molecular dynamics, which involves complex data analysis, integration and design-related dynamics and for aircraft simulation. These are just some examples of what RCs can do for organisations. Let’s take a closer look at this technology.

Improved product styling and design

RCs are helping organisations craft innovative designs and review said designs at their centre where styling reviews are carried out. Dr Prasad Medury, managing director, Silicon Graphics Systems (India), explains, “Automotive manufacturers use an RC to design a product in totality and make virtual prototypes at the same time. They can also analyse the impact of certain aspects on a product in a visual environment such as crash or impact analysis, finite element analysis (FEA) and the like. All this helps in reducing the number of physical clay models required during product development reducing the overall design cycle time.” RCs also help in engineering reviews where detailed engineering schematics are reviewed from time to time.

Anurag Gupta, regional manager, South, Workstation Business, HP India, says, “Visualisation Systems (RCs) can also help in reducing the time to market of a product through design innovation. Visualisation Systems facilitate better co-ordination between a cross-functional team for superior designs.” To foster innovation it is necessary to bring together creative people from all departments in a cross-functional team to guide the design process. “When people have different backgrounds, their terminologies differ, but visualisation helps them communicate better,” concludes Gupta.

The hunt for black gold

RCs provide vital geo-physical data for oil exploration. With RCs, oil and gas companies have been able to enhance their oil-extraction capacities from oil fields. Dr Medury says, “RCs make it possible to look beneath the earth’s surface at a particular oil field and have a virtual view of it. This visualisation is based upon analogue data about a particular oil field which is transformed into a 3-D immersive environment.” Using an RC, it is possible for oil & gas companies to know how much deeper they should drill to get oil and the angle that will ensure the maximum yield.

Simulation and R&D

RCs can help airlines create a simulated environment for flight training. Gupta says, “Through visualisation systems, a simulated environment resembling a real-time situation can be created. It is possible for pilot trainees to experience an environment similar to the one they would encounter in the cockpit of a real aircraft.” RCs are also being used extensively for R&D. Many drug research companies are executing clinical trials on drugs using RC. There are a number of pharmaceutical companies in India that are into drug research and development and have complex design requirements for drug discovery. An RC can ascertain the impact of a drug on human cells.

Catching up gradually

RCs have primarily been leveraged by large enterprises in India, companies that already have data centres in place. Now vendors such as SGI and HP are set to popularise RCs with small and medium businesses. SGI has reduced the prices of its RC offerings and an entry-level solution starts at Rs 60 lakh. Depending upon the size of operations prices start upwards of Rs 10 crore for oil exploration applications. Many organisations in India are showing an interest in low-end RCs. When their require higher quality and more frames per second (fps), then they will start spending more on higher-end display systems, or superior RC platforms. Gupta says, “The Indian manufacturing industry needs to change its design processes to foster innovation by inserting design team reviews several times in the design flow (and not just at the end of the design shift-over to manufacturing). Visualisation helps improve the quality of these review meetings.”

With India becoming a R&D hub, product companies are not left with much choice but to innovate in order to stay competitive. RCs will play a critical role in this process and automotive companies have taken the lead in adopting these solutions. A good design sells and this will result in greater adoption of RCs in India.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com