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Mechanical Engineering
BYU CADLab

Facilities

The BYU CADLab is synergistically connected with the PACE Laboratory and the Parametric CAx Methods Laboratory. These labs are created to provide global collaborative CAx leadership, undergraduate/graduate teaching of state-of-the-art CAx tools, and conduct leading research in the integration and automation of computer-aided design, analysis, manufacturing and product lifecycle management methods. This lab serves as a focal point for the advancement and interoperability of CAE, CAD, CAM and PLM. This lab trains the trainers and mentors (Teaching Assistants) for the three large CAEDM labs provided by the Engineering College.

Interdisciplinary Laboratory

Currently the laboratory supports students from Business, Mathematics and Computer Science, Industrial Design, Information Technology, Manufacturing, and Mechanical Engineering. While most of the students are majoring in mechanical engineering, we also support some students from the fields of manufacturing, industrial design, business, IT, and computer science. We attempt to mimic (and advance) concurrent collaborative design, engineering and manufacturing in our small microcosm.

Strong Mentoring Environment

Each year the lab houses 10-15 of the most talented graduate students conducting research in the general areas of CAx and PLM methods development. These graduate students mentor 15-25 selected seniors and underclassmen (and women) who have unique skills, talents and interest in CAx careers. Many of these undergraduates serve as mentors (Teaching Assistants) in our three general purpose CAEDM labs. This allows for a smooth transition and a consistent high usage of CAx tools throughout the ME department and college. This lab generally runs 2 versions of all PACE software; the current recognized PACE version of all tools and the latest version released by the PACE companies.We have a reservoir of students prepare to man the general CAEDM Laboratories.

Unique Network Configuration

All workstations are networked directly to high speed switches provided by the University which gives each student direct access to the Fulton Supercomputing Laboratory. This allows the CAx Lab students access to some fraction of the supercomputer’s 2500+ processor cores for their large Fluent, LS-DYNA or iSIGTH optimization runs. If the student’s learning/research does not warrant this raw computing power then they can remotely login into a HP carpet cluster and run smaller batch jobs. They also have access to hundreds of HP servers running RGS.

Wide Range of Video/Audio/Application Conferencing

For the past five years we have hosted the PACE Vehicle collaboration Teamcenter Community website. We have managed hundreds of users and hosted dozens of applications sharing design reviews. Most recently, via our Tandberg multi-point bridge foreign schools can dial/IP directly into our conference without any long distance charge. Students in the CAx Methods Lab have at their disposal both a HD and a standard definition Tandberg video conferencing unit. Both of these systems can support up to three remote endpoint units being connected into a single call. When a global design review needs to conference more than four endpoints then we have a direct link to the BYU Tandberg Multi-point Bridge which allows up to 40 endpoints to join a single call. Approximately half of the students have web-cams and audio headsets connected to their xw workstations so they can easily communicate with sponsors, faculty or non-BYU participants. Our choice for VoIP is Skype and/or Gizmo; Skype works very well in most countries but occasionally we need to use Gizmo to communicate with far flung students. The lab provides a running balance in 10 Skype accounts and 5 Gizmo accounts so that students are free to call anytime to any place in the world without incurring costs.

Teamcenter Engineering

Our Laboratory is networked to Aachen, UBC, Hongik, SKKU and UIA via Teamcenter Engineering Multi-site Sun servers. With the help of Alan Steeves we have proposed and continue to propose the development and expansion of academic multi-site Teamcenter ring.

Programmatic Reconfiguration of PACE Tools

It is not uncommon to see students in the CAx Methods Lab writing code inside Visual Studio to modify/enhance a particular software application. Since 2002 the CAx Methods Lab has taken an active role in teaching lab members how to customize such tools as: NX, Hypermesh, Fluent, Nastran, iSIGHT, and ADAMS. It is these characteristics of the CAx Methods Laboratory that make it a one-of-a-kind unique laboratory suitable for CADLab research and education.

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Figure 1: Hallway Entrance
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Figure 1: Hallway Entrance
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Figure 2: Graduate Desk Area
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Figure 2: Graduate Desk Area

Visual Description

The CAx Laboratory is located on the first floor southeast corner of the Clyde Engineering Building. The lab is situated in the corner of two converging large hallways, see Figure 1. The room is secured with an entrance camera. Strategically placed around the 1st floor are many other mechanical laboratories including, fluids, materials, corrosions, microscopy, optics, thermal/heat treatment, biomechanics, thermo, etc. To the right of the front door are large windows that display current and past CAx projects. The closed circuit security camera is viewable by both the college IT staff level as well as by university police. The interior of the laboratory is divided into 5 main areas: graduate research desks/carrels, undergraduate engineering carrels, undergraduate industrial design tables, undergraduate manufacturing carrels, and a conference room/resource library; see Figure 3. Depending on the number of students in these groups the precise dividing line ebbs and flows.

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Figure 3: CAx Lab Layout
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Figure 3: CAx Lab Layout

Industrial Design Work Area

This area consists of three desks. Each design station is equipped with an xw4XXX HP workstation, large high resolution CRT, 22” Pen Input Intuos Tablet, and large layout tables; see Figure 4.

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Figure 6: UG Global Engineering Area
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Figure 6: UG Global Engineering Area
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Figure 7: Emerging Markets Area
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Figure 7: Emerging Markets Area

Conference Room/Resource Library

This area consists of a large conference table with xw4XXX training and collaborative workstations surrounding the room. The room is capable of High Definition Video conferencing with up to 40 remote sites in session; see Figures 8 and 9. There is a speaker phone for conference calls and, via a table microphone and speakers, individuals using the room have a direct VoIP link for inexpensive international calls. This area also serves the students as a learning resource or technical library. Hundreds of books, journals, conference proceedings are in the filing cabinets and bookshelves.

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Figure 8: Tandberg Interface
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Figure 8: Tandberg Interface
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Figure 9: Conference Session
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Figure 9: Conference Session

Network and Infrastructure

The on campus laboratory equipment listed below is fully integrated into the College of Eng. Network, Figure 10. That means that each system is connected by way of a 100MB Ethernet to Catalist switches. Each switch is connected by way of 1 or more fiber gigabit uplinks. Each Vlan is connected by way of multiple fail over CISCO routers. Authentication is provided by way of an LDAP or Active Directory cluster. Other infrastructure network services such as DNS are provided by a cluster of systems behind layer 7 switches. File systems are provided by way of a SAMBA cluster which is backed by a NFS cluster. Each users is assigned personal file space mountable on each of the PACE systems. In addition, the users have the ability to create, add hock, group file spaces and share files with other members of the group. The PACE systems are on a private college network. Internet connectivity is provided by a University NAT. Firewall protection is provided by the University firewall services. Authorized remote Internet users may reach the PACE equipment through either a College or University VPN. Available software includes: - Altair Hyperworks 9.0 - ANSYS/Fluent 6.3.26 - Autodesk AliasStudio 2009 - Engineous iSight FD 3.1 - Gambit 2.3.16 - Gamma Technologies GT-Suite 6.2 - Hummingbird Exceed 2006 - MSC MD R2 ADAMS - MSC MD Nastran 2006r1 - MSC MD Patran R2 - NX 4.0 (software development) - NX 5.0 (For PACE F1 Global Vehicle activities) - NX 6.0 (Teaching version) - Teamcenter Community Collaboration 2005 SR1 (PACE) - Teamcenter Unified 8 - Teamcenter Engineering 2005 SR1 (PACE).

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Figure 10: Network
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Figure 10: Network

Laboratory Usage

To help facilitate the Global projects we generally have 6-8 languages in addition to English that are spoken fluently. The video conference/conference room area is open for anyone in the college to schedule and use either on a one time basis or for a regularly schedule class being remotely taught or viewed. CAx classes have been taught between several university combinations: (1) UPRM and BYU; (2) HV and BYU; and (3) UTEP, Toronto and BYU. An advanced materials class has also been taught originating from the CAx Methods Lab and broadcast to Carnegie Mellon. Many short mini CAx classes have been taught in the conference room area of this lab. The previous two summers we have hosted large numbers of US and foreign students who are visited BYU bringing their team’s parts and components to be assembled to the F-1 racecar. This lab has also been responsible for the creation of ~90 tutorials which employed two shifts of temporary lab residents working on the training computes in the conference room area to rapidly create, debug and publish these tutorials.