Analysing Mechanical Systems in Domestic and Foreign CAD Systems

Abstract

The article considers applications of foreign CAD-systems in creating the challenging projects at domestic enterprises and design bureaus. As stated in the article "... presently, there is no domestic CAD-system that could completely replace such foreign products as NX, CATIA, Credo". Besides, due to international cooperation in creating the challenging projects (for example, the project to create a modern wide-body aircraft, proposed jointly with China), it makes sense to use the worldwide known and popular CAD systems (the aforementioned NX, CATIA, Credo). Therefore, in the foreseeable future, we will still have to use foreign software products. Of course, there always remains a question of the reliability of the results obtained. Actually, this question is always open regardless of what software product is used - domestic or foreign. This question has been haunting both developers and users of CAD systems for the last 30 to 40 years. But with using domestic systems, it is much easier to identify the cause of inaccurate results and correct the mathematical models used, the methods of numerical integration applied, and the solution of systems of nonlinear algebraic systems. Everything is much more complicated if we use a foreign software product. All advertising conversations that there is a tool to make the detected errors available to the developers, remain only conversations in the real world. It is easily understandable to domestic users, and, especially, to domestic developers of similar software products. The existing development rates and competition for potential buyers dictate a rigid framework of deadlines for releasing all new versions of the product and introducing the latest developments into commercial product, etc. As a result, the known errors migrate from version to version, and many users have accepted it long ago. Especially, this concerns the less popular tools rather than the most popular applications (modules) of a CAD system. For example, in CAD systems, the "Modeling" module where geometric models of designed parts and assembly units are created has been repeatedly crosschecked. But most of the errors are hidden in applications related to the design of parts from sheet material and to the pipeline design, as well as in applications related to the analysis of moving mechanisms and to the strength or gas dynamic analysis by the finite element method.The article gives a concrete example of a moving mechanism in the analysis of which an error was detected using the mathematical model of external influence (a source of speed) in the NX 10.0 system of Siemens.