Why You Should Consider CAE Tools with Linux Support

Recently, we had a request from an engi­neer­ing company that uses a standard para­met­ric CAD software to design their product. They gave us a call because they wanted to run auto­mated shape opti­miza­tion along with some sim­u­la­tion tools, but they had issues with automat­ing their geometry gen­er­a­tion. The next day we had a web­meet­ing, and the fol­low­ing major problems were identified:

1. Regen­er­a­tion of the geometry is not 100% robust, i.e. for some para­me­ter com­bi­na­tions the geometry model simply failed to generate geometry
2. No pos­si­bil­ity to run the CAD tool on the cluster system because Linux is not supported

The first item is already a pain since trying to fix this can really take a lot of time, or is not possible at all. Moreover, if the geometry tool is not robust during regen­er­a­tion of design can­di­dates, this possibly misses optimal product shapes. 

Linux-Based Clusters

The second item — having no Linux version of a CAD tool — can be an absolute show-stopper in the context of exploit­ing hardware resources. All the efforts you have spent into your sophis­ti­cated geometry model are simply useless at this stage if Linux is your target platform. You have no pos­si­bil­ity to run com­pre­hen­sive design studies on the avail­able hardware resources of your company.

If you run large design studies with sim­u­la­tion, you probably do this on Linux clusters. It’s no secret that all the super com­put­ers run on Linux, too — and there is a reason for that.

Linux Support Right from the Beginning

That’s the reason why many years ago we decided to support Windows and Linux plat­forms with our CAD tool CAESES®. Having the main purpose of gen­er­at­ing geometry in auto­mated opti­miza­tion chains, it has always been crucial that our cus­tomers can install and run CAESES on Linux-based cluster systems.

Things often start with the fact that there is an increas­ing pressure from the market: Engi­neers and managers are noticing that the impor­tant com­peti­tors are nowadays often running huge opti­miza­tions on their clusters, where they generate and analyze hundreds or even thou­sands of design can­di­dates to find optimal products.

When it comes to opti­miza­tion processes on clusters, some fore­front com­pa­nies use pro­pri­etary i.e. self-devel­oped tools that are 100% geared to their appli­ca­tion and which have been devel­oped over the course of many years. Alter­na­tively, there are com­mer­cial tools such as CAESES® that are highly spe­cial­ized to the engi­neer­ing sector, always having in mind only one purpose: Full automa­tion for dras­ti­cally scaling up the outcome in the shortest time.

Typical opti­miza­tion workflow on Linux clusters using CAESES in batch mode as CAD engine[/caption] As a typical use case, some of our CAESES® cus­tomers set up their variable geometry model on a local Windows machine. Once the model is ready, they copy the complete project setup to their Linux cluster and run the opti­miza­tion, say overnight or on the weekend. The process is con­trolled by either a 3rd party opti­miza­tion package, or by the inbuilt strate­gies of CAESES®. Without a Linux version, they would be limited to their local machines. So if you are thinking about workflow automa­tion and sim­u­la­tion-driven shape opti­miza­tion, make sure that all your CAE tools support Linux :-)