2016 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards Gold Winner – MSC Software
Company: MSC Software, Newport Beach, California, USA
Category: Award for Innovation in Business-to-Business Products & Services
Entry Title: MSC Apex (Engineering Simulation Software)
What is the product?
MSC Apex (Next-Generation Engineering Simulation Software)
MSC Apex is MSC Software Corporation’s new simulation platform for future Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) solutions. The software is intended for mechanical engineers in manufacturing industries. Its intuitive engineering simulation platform reinvents the process to realize 5x to 50x throughput increase, increased certainty of products and decreased physical testing cost.
What does MSC Apex do?
MSC Apex transforms the way engineers perform simulation by reducing critical Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) modeling and process time from days to hours. It enables engineers to design and validate products faster. Engineers can rapidly prepare analysis models and incrementally solve parts and assemblies for faster run times and results visualization. MSC Apex allows engineers to share simulation models with supply chain without compromising Intellectual Property (IP). Users can engage in rapid trade studies in geometry, structural layout and material systems. MSC Apex is easy to use and to learn, providing an immersive user interface that is fun: a game-like experience that is referred to by engineers as ‘addictive’. Please refer to the attached Learning Article which describes the basis for the learning aids and user tutorials inside of the Apex user environment.
How does MSC Apex operate?
MSC Apex provides a modeling, model validation and solving capability in which engineers create three dimensional system and part physics models that predict the behaviors of candidate designs (ex. simulating the survivability of the 787 wing under peak load) including the effects of the environment in which the system operates (ex. entry, descent and landing simulation for the Curiosity Mars Mission). Learning is provided in a unique built in video and voice environment where engineers can be productive in hours rather than the typical weeks and months with conventional applications.
How is MSC Apex progressing?
MSC Apex was first introduced to market in 2014. The fifth version of MSC Apex will be delivered in January, 2016. Customers love the ease of use and the dramatic reduction in time it takes to go from Computer Aided Design (CAD) to results. This is the result of the care taken to abstract previously hundreds of low level tools to an engineering level of parts and assemblies (engineering abstraction). By the end of 2016, Apex will be the only system in the world that incorporates linear statics, dynamics and non-linear mechanics in one generative workflow.
What’s game changing about MSC Apex?
All major mechanical simulation applications used by the global engineering community were developed commencing 30-40 years ago. These users include companies such as Boeing, BMW, Airbus, Toyota, etc. The engineering methods of these companies are implemented today on tooling that is more appropriate for their methods of 30-40 years ago.
Over 400 man years and $60M was spent to re-think the process, finding many opportunities to deliver dramatic productivity improvements to engineers and analysts allowing them to meet the tremendous challenges that they face today. In “Innovator’s Dilemma” fashion, our team rearranged the way in which the components of geometry modeling, solving, and post processing relate to each other, moving away from a serial process to an interactively connected process through a unique “generative framework” based on a new “parts and assembly” paradigm. MSC Apex is the world’s first computational parts (CP) based system which enables rapid trade studies, multi-user simulations and the ability to exchange IP protected behavioral parts through the supply chain.
What else is unique about MSC Apex?
25 patents filed and 4 awarded. Awards include NASA Tech Briefs - Product of the Year, Design News Golden Mousetrap Award, R&D 100, and INNOVATIONSPREIS-IT – Best of 2015. Today, Apex has ~400 users and 200+ individual customers. Customer testimonials attached plus a market survey that provides insights behind the development of Apex.
Supporting Materials:
Case Study: The Loads Group MSC
Simulation Survey Results-Market Significance