Optimal Design Challenges

摘要

Engineer and author Henry Petroski once wrote: "Successful design is not the achievement of perfection but the minimization and accommodation of imperfection." I like that. It rings true with a practicality missing in "the relentless pursuit of perfection" mantras you hear in commercials. A successful design is the optimal design for a given set of constraints and requirements. Among those constraints are often time and money. In fact, when asked to rank challenges to their day-to-day workflow, the nearly 900 DE readers who responded to our 2015 Reader Profile survey chose "short development deadlines" and "inadequate budgets" at their second- and third-most "extremely important" challenges. That's why bringing more technology to bear sooner in the design cycle is so critical. Simulation, optimization and real-time rendering - all accelerated by increasingly powerful computing - pays dividends in time and cost savings when they're performed early and often. Likewise, 3D printing for prototyping and - under increasingly expanding circumstances - end use parts, removes time and cost from product development, testing and manufacturing.