Something for Every Engineer in the Altair Simulation 2022 Release

Altair focuses on three pillars for smarter products, autonomy and construction.

The release of Altair Simulation 2022 is putting much of its focus within the development of smart devices, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and infrastructure. Given the industry’s trend towards smart, autonomous products—and Altair’s recent purchase of S-FRAME—this looks to be a very pragmatic release for the company and the engineering community.

“Lots of good content in this release,” says Brett Chouinard, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Altair, to engineering.com. “We are focusing in three areas. Two of them are related to electronics and the other is on architecture, engineering and construction (AEC).”

Let’s dig deeper into these improvements and what it means for simulation users.

Faster Antenna and Array Simulations for Complex ADAS Scenarios

A prominent feature in this release is improvements to the simulation of antennas and sensors thanks to new toolsets for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). For instance, users will be able to work with realistic 5G envelope beam patterns, hybrid ray-tracing patterns and rotating doppler effects for ray-based solvers.

Simulation 2022 promises faster modeling and characterizations of more complex antennas and arrays within their operating environment. (Image courtesy of Altair.)

Simulation 2022 promises faster modeling and characterizations of more complex antennas and arrays within their operating environment. (Image courtesy of Altair.)

Users will also be able to better simulate larger, more complex full-wave antenna and array characterizations thanks to connectivity features that support improved computational performance. As for ADAS sensors, such as ultrasound, users will be able to assess a larger number of them within one simulation.

The ADAS features will also include more application-specific and post-processing tools for frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FM-CW) radar systems.

As for the benefits these features will bring, Chouinard refers to the idea of an ADAS system operating within the rain, the dark and other environments. If the various sensors on the vehicle cannot work in that environment it could be catastrophic, and different sensors will have different limitations. With the improvements in Simulation 2022, “we’re adding new sensor [simulation] techniques,” he says. “We’re talking about making sure those vehicle sensors work accurately and fast from a simulation point of view.”

S-FRAME’s AEC Community Now Has Access to Altair’s Portfolio

The AEC industry is well-acquainted with the technology behind S-FRAME. Its suite of software, including S-CONCRETE, S-FRAME and S-FOUNDATION, streamline the development cycle of structural engineers by ensuring their designs align to local construction codes.

A double-cantilevered steel and concrete high-rise tower being designed in S-FRAME. (Image courtesy of Altair and SOM.)

A double-cantilevered steel and concrete high-rise tower being designed in S-FRAME. (Image courtesy of Altair and SOM.)

“These tools within the architectural world are a little different from standard simulation tools in that they don’t produce stress and strain directly,” says Chouinard. “They actually convert directly to certification documents that are created by local governments, and have to be signed off by an architectural engineer.”

The challenge here is that if the software does not have codes for the region you’re designing for, then it is not compatible with the project. To address this in the Simulation 2022 release, Altair added more codes for North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. As a result, more people in these regions can use the tool to design compliant structures.

Perhaps the biggest news for the AEC community is that S-FRAME users now have access to the Altair One platform via Altair Units. As a result, they not only retain access to S-FRAME software through a bundled AEC unit, they also have access to every solution on the platform—from SimSolid to Hyperworks.

Another item of note for the AEC community is S-TIMBER, a simulation tool that assesses the effects of seismic events and the compliance of lumber-based structures. Chouinard notes this should prove useful as wooden architecture is becoming a hot topic in the industry.

Electronics Systems Design Gets Improvements in Simulation 2022

Engineers that design smart components and systems will notice the new circuit board and electronics design tools in Simulation 2022. Altair PollEx sees enhancements in the areas of expanded design verification, signal integrity and PCB modeling. Also included are cross probe verifications, such as design for anything (DFx) Excel results, and a direct link to ECAD Pulsonix and Altium Designer.

“Electromagnetic compatibility projects have hundreds of checks,” says Chouinard. “Altair PollEx allows you to do that in an automated sense. Just define the checks you want to do, and it runs through the entire section of a PCB to do all those checks. It’s a combination of a database, simulation and solver tool.”

Run PCB verifications with Altair PollEx and many popular ECAD systems. (Image courtesy of Altair.)

Run PCB verifications with Altair PollEx and many popular ECAD systems. (Image courtesy of Altair.)

Altair Simlab, on the other hand, will include improvements to applications such as drop tests, multiphysics analysis for PCBs and thermal management simulations of the electronics systems. As for Power electronics and motor drivers, Simulation 2022 has new tools such as PSIM, from the acquisition of Powersim, which can simulate and design power supplies, motor drives, control systems and microgrids.

“We are in the process of standardizing all of our modeling and visualization for our electronics tools under SimLab,” says Chouinard. “Like HyperWorks would be that for a full vehicle system, SimLab would be that for electronic systems. We are adding tons of functionality for multiphysics analysis of PCBs. It’s a list longer than we can share in a press release.”

In the past, most PCB analysis was focused on the electronics. However, as they are becoming more complex, engineers are performing more and more multiphysics simulations on these systems. So, adding all these analyses under one roof, SimLab, makes a lot of sense.

Simulation 2022 Has Plenty of Other Improvements

There are a variety of other improvements within Simulation 2022 for the average product development engineer, including:

  • New machine learning libraries
  • No-code user interface creation
  • More advanced simulation and manufacturability workflows
  • Improvements to fluid, thermal, structural and other multiphysics analyses

One area of improvement that has Chouinard excited is Simsolid. He says, “the meshless structural simulation code that operates directly on CAD is adding features at an incredible rate. And that’s getting exciting. It’s probably our fastest growing product for usage and getting better all the time. I believe it will be the future of Simulation as it can do it directly on CAD and is super accurate and fast.”

For a breakdown of all the improvements in Simulation 2022, and to see all of the impacts on the simulation world, click here.

Written by

Shawn Wasserman

For over 10 years, Shawn Wasserman has informed, inspired and engaged the engineering community through online content. As a senior writer at WTWH media, he produces branded content to help engineers streamline their operations via new tools, technologies and software. While a senior editor at Engineering.com, Shawn wrote stories about CAE, simulation, PLM, CAD, IoT, AI and more. During his time as the blog manager at Ansys, Shawn produced content featuring stories, tips, tricks and interesting use cases for CAE technologies. Shawn holds a master’s degree in Bioengineering from the University of Guelph and an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.