How to Design Better Products in Less Time with Ansys optiSLang and the Cloud

Everyone knows that companies must innovate to stay ahead by optimizing their time to market and introducing new products before their competitors. Traditional product development based on computer-aided engineering (CAE) or computer-aided design (CAD) is a manual process of trial and error. This process not only takes a long time, but it requires domain expertise. It can only be accelerated by hiring more experts. Thus, the limited availability of highly specialized engineers tends to be a bottleneck to bringing competitive products to market in less time.

Figure 1 : Ansys optiSLang running on Ansys Cloud in a browser-interactive session

Ansys optiSLang is our solution to the challenges posed by CAE-based robust design optimization (RDO). Its algorithms efficiently and automatically search for the most robust design configuration, eliminating the slow, manual process that used to define RDO. With Ansys optiSLang as your process integration and design optimization (PIDO) solution, you will be able to make the right product design and development decisions sooner.

You can use Ansys optiSLang to accelerate searches for the best and most robust design configuration by automating the search process with interactive visualization and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) technologies. State-of-the-art algorithms for design exploration, optimization, robustness and reliability analysis let you make better decisions with less effort using design optimization software.

Ansys optiSLang’s workflow automation capabilities for orchestrating CAx tools enables you to setup a design study and run the hundreds of variations automatically. Additionally, Ansys optiSLang’s algorithms drive the design study in right direction. Its postprocessing and AI/ML algorithm help you understand designs and make decisions in less time.

However, limited computing resources pose a challenge. Performing such design studies on a desktop computer or in smaller networks gives access to a few dozen or a few hundred cores at best. Running Ansys optiSLang in Ansys Cloud increases simulation throughput and allows you to do more simulations in less time, which improves the cost-performance ratio. Using Ansys Cloud also allows you to remove hardware barriers and IT complexity, enabling you to access the full power of Ansys software on demand.

How to Use Ansys optiSLang and Ansys Cloud

Ansys Cloud supports Ansys Mechanical, Ansys Fluent, Ansys CFX, Ansys Speos, Ansys HFSS and Ansys LS-DYNA solvers. Ansys optiSLang  can be used on Ansys Cloud in two different ways, depending on your computing situation.

1. Run Ansys optiSLang in Ansys Cloud directly in your browser (see figure 1, above). You can access Ansys Cloud directly from your web browser from anywhere, on any portable device.

2. Submit Ansys optiSLang CAE jobs to the Cloud via the Command Line Interface (CLI) within Ansys optiSLang by following the workflow below.

What are the Benefits of Ansys optiSLang on the Cloud?

If you are using the classical approach described below — running a test, waiting for results, analyzing and rerunning simulations — it takes a lot of time because you need to wait for the first job to finish before running the second job. The result is a massive loss of time and money and because it’s human-dependent. If a simulation ends during a non-working period, the hardware will sleep instead of running. The cost can be calculated as the number of your engineers plus the number of iterations needed to access the final result plus the postprocessing time.

If you use Ansys optiSLang + 4 parallel solve runs on a local workstation, as illustrated below, you are able to send and optimize your simulations in parallel, so you only need one engineer to plan the number of iterations and optiSLang will make sure to run the different variations for you. The only limit you will face in this scenario is the hardware limitation of your workstation that won’t allow you to run much more than four designs in parallel, for example, due to the number of cores in your workstation.

When Ansys optiSLang is used with Ansys Cloud, you can access almost unlimited compute resources, so you will be able to run all your scenarios in parallel without any need to wait. You will be able to achieve your optimized design faster than ever and optimize your cost-performance ratio via the hardware running a short period of time. You can also scale up larger projects without the stress of the hardware limitations and IT constraints.

With Ansys Cloud+optiSLang, you can reach next level of CAE-based development. It’s a cost-effective approach and resource-efficient solution that helps engineers and designers develop better products in less time.

Try it for yourself. Register today for a free trial of Ansys Cloud.