CyDesign Studio uses 3D model to re-couple requirements management with product design

Now available in preview mode, the cloud-based platform lets engineers assess design options and continuously test against initial requirements.

CyDesign Labs has unveiled a preview edition of its new cloud-based tool for model-based requirements management and early design optimization. The founders claim CyDesign Studio will allow engineers to quickly assess design options and continuously test against requirements during the early design phase. The larger goal is to develop a comprehensive cloud-based platform to optimize and streamline activities around requirements management, model libraries, simulation, verification and certification during the conceptual design phase of complex cyber-electromechanical systems.

CyDesign4gfxSpeak — CyDesign Studio displays results from a simulation run of a design built from established component models. The screen allows the user to play back simulation results and observe how the design performed against key requirements. (Source: CyDesign Labs).

CyDesign Studio is based on the company’s physics-based modeling and simulation engine CyModelica. The product offers specific methods for reducing repeated cycles of design-build-test by incorporating dynamic feedback. Being cloud-based, CyDesign Studio can execute virtually unlimited simulations to determine model validity. The company says the product “hides the complexity of the underlying physics while maintaining mathematical rigor.”

CyDesign Studio runs in a browser, offering a zero-install, pay-as-you-go usage model.

Specific features include:

Requirements management fully integrated with system modeling
Thorough exploration of the design trade space
Early verification and certification
Integration paths to FEA, CAD, CAE and other technologies
No software installation or configuration
Usage-based pricing and a 100% web environment

Our take

The bigger the product, the more complex the original requirements and the more opportunities exist for these requirements to become misplaced priorities during design. Engineers sometimes refer to this as decoupling. By placing requirements management in a model-based application, the founders believe they are bringing a new solution to market that will lower design costs by streamlining the ability to stick to the original plan.

If you created one resume from the background of the four CyDesign founders (Serdar Uckun, William Schaefer, John Scott, and Tom Stegmann), you’d have a strong set of experiences in such environments and product lines as NASA Ames, Lawrence Livermore Labs, renewable energy, and aerospace. The recent acquisition of simulation start-up Delta Theta added more power to their product line.

Although the company is being closed-lipped, CyDesign Studio is clearly in phase one of a plan to create a new model-based, software-as-a-service design suite. There are plenty of activities that take place outside the CAD program waiting for a new model-based approach.