ANSYS DesignXplorer

Introduction
DX Drives (puts the SPIN into) Simulation Product Development. Simulation Driven Product Development (SDPD) is about getting to simulation earlier in the design process, but it is also about getting more understanding and design insight out of that simulation so you can really innovate. Workbench aligns with the vision by combining the best of ANSYS technology in a schematic view, hooked up to the parameter set bar.

So you could run a single run thru that schematic and solve for a single point solution. But that wouldn't provide any direction for improvement. You wouldn't gain any real understanding about the design space around that design point. If your design fails, which parameters are to blame? How can you make it work? If your design passes, how could you further improve it? How sensitive is the design to the inputs? Is there an optimal design? You could adjust the parameters and try a what if study, but that is the equivalent of playing darts and wouldn't really provide good design understanding. The user needs a more scientific method to efficiently sample the model and response surface technology to interpolate between those points. This is where DesignXplorer (DX) comes in.

DX is everything under the parameter set bar. It includes tools for building a DOE or a response surface, tools for calculating correlations or sensitivities, Tools for Optimization based on direct solves (at 14.5) or response surfaces. DX is low cost & easy to use. It improves the ROI of simulation for the engineer. DX both drives and fulfills Workbench. Its post processing tools help the engineer to explore the design and understand the parameters. This understanding leads to innovation, which leads to ROI. Most engineers can appreciate the value of understanding. A larger percentage of the ANSYS user base uses DX for optimization than any other tool.

Technical definitions
Design Point: A single run through the schematic. parameters, submitted to Workbench and solved. A design point is a single set of input

DOE: Design of Experiments: A scientific method for efficiently choosing which parameters are adjusted in each design point in order to gain the most understanding with the fewest solves. DX supports a variety of different DOE types. See the help for detailed info. Response Surface: A method to interpolate between the results with a "Reduced Order Model". A response surface makes it relatively easy to visualize and interrogate the design

space. Again DX supports a variety of different Response Surface methods, but they all attempt to "fit" a surface through the result cloud so that rapid predictions can be made on the response surface without requiring additional "real" solves. The current DX Optimization operates on the response surface rather than requiring full simulation solves. Optimization: Automatically searches the design space for optimal candidates, given the user defined goals, priorities and limits Response surface based optimization samples the response surface. This is very rapid, but is sensitive to the response surface "goodness of fit". Direct Optimization methods available at 14.5 are more accurate because they are based on real solves, but they may be more time consuming. Adaptive methods that combine the best of both approaches are available at 14.5. Robust Design: Robust design is taking the variation of inputs into account and seeking a design with a probabilistic goal. In the real world, thickness, resistance, flow rate and all inputs have a variation Robust design factors in that variation and produces results which also have a variation. Now, the methods/algorithms/goals can vary For RDO, the ideal result, the goal, is a design with minimum standard deviation of the results. In other words, the flattest part on the response or the narrowest result histogram For Six Sigma Optimization, the user is seeking an optimal design within a safe domain. For these plots, the bulk of the distribution must be between the upper and lower specification limits