Abstract
Keywords - PLM, relational design, structurability, configuration, positional variability
Abstract - The vast majority of our interaction with the outside world is based on sight. This observation was the starting point for what Dassault Systemes calls 3D PLM. PLM, or Product Lifecycle Management, is an approach to managing engineering information in such a way that the various product development activities all work with respect to a shared, up-to-date set of data. Dassault Systemes (DS) designs and develops a suite of software applications that help companies achieve the PLM vision.
After a brief introduction to PLM, this paper describes what we think is special about our approach to PLM, which is precisely the third dimension. With our software, we build a virtual car that can serve as a vector for communication and decision making in an automotive company. Although we believe that the virtual car is the appropriate kernel upon which to consolidate product development activities, companies today have a constellation of software applications that they cannot immediately replace. In the meantime, they will want to integrate them with the virtual car. Because the difficulty of this integration task is often underestimated, I explain why the data structures that form the virtual car what I call 3D BOMs (Bills of Material) are intrinsically more complex than those of planning or logistics BOMs what I call 2D BOMs.
In illustration, I go into some of the mechanics of the 3D BOM and what we call relational design. Relational design is the practice of capturing enough intelligence into the virtual car so that it knows how to update itself when changes are made to styling data or input specifications. Because relational design is based primarily on links among geometrical data objects, I try to explain in everyday terms how some of these links work. Then I share some of the lessons learned concerning the creation and management of these links.
The paper then introduces structurability : the capacity of a set of 3D engineering data to be assimilated into a 2D BOM. Much in the same way designers have learned to take into account manufacturability concerns over the last decade, I believe that they must now also learn to take into account the structurability of their deliverables. In particular, the configuration of 2D and 3D BOMs, while similar, differs in an important way that can easily be overlooked. I propose the terms compositional variability and positional variability to describe that difference.