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The Comet Workspace

The Comet Performance Engineering Workspace

Comet is a collaborative, model-based engineering workspace that captures your current simulation best practices and enhances associated design and engineering software tools (both COTS and in-house). Comet Intelligent Templates enable geometry-independent, multi-physics modeling and simulation process automation for standard as well as complex design analysis activities.

Comet enables individual engineers as well as cross-functional product engineering teams to rapidly develop more innovative and reliable products: starting from early concept design exploration through detailed design validation. The key is linking product simulation activities to key product performance requirements via Comet Intelligent Templates.

Benefits of using the Comet Workspace

  • Capture and reuse engineering IP/best practices with Comet Intelligent Templates
    • Increased effectiveness of limited CAE expert analyst resources
    • Enable non-CAE experts to safely perform standard calculations
  • Enable design innovation via multi-disciplinary concept trade studies
    • Robust multi-fidelity, multi-physics performance simulation
  • Ensure Accuracy & Consistency of Simulation Results
    • All analysis disciplines work off the same “master model” data
    • Reduce manual data translation, analysis model re-work and errors
  • Complete Audit Trail of Project Models, Processes Used & Results vs Requirements
    • Work-in-progress engineering data is captured at each stage of project
  • Collaborate Across the Project Team via the Project Dashboard
    • Systems engineers, CAE analysts, design engineers & even program managers
    • Increase Speed and Effectiveness of Design Trade-off Decisions

What Makes Comet Different

In contrast to other “file-based” process integration and design optimization (PIDO) tools available in the market today that rely on having an existing data file for each tool to be chained together in a “black box” process, a Comet “intelligent process template” actually recreates the complete underlying product design data and product simulation models every time the process is executed within Comet. This means that a Comet process is not limited to merely making relatively small “tweaks” to parameters contained in the baseline files/models. A Comet process template can instead explore a much wider range of changes to the design topology and alternative configurations/variants because the underlying design models are actually regenerated “on the fly” using the new design parameters which can be modified interactively from within the Comet Project Dashboard.

This “hub and spoke” integration model utilizes Comet “adaptors” to regenerate the inputs for the underlying design and simulation tools in a Comet process, run the tools and capture the results back into the Comet “master model” of the product design. Comet also captures and archives all of the native input and output files for each of the external software tools executed within a process for every unique variation of the model captured within the Comet project “stages”. As opposed to the way that templates are typically created in other software tools today via script-based programming for each tool-to-tool connection required to execute a process, creating design simulations processes within Comet is a graphical, drag and drop based interaction model working directly within the Comet user interface. As such, the engineers that “author” a Comet process template do not have to be experts in C++ programming or other advanced scripting languages such as Python.

Also, because the Comet data model is built around a highly extensible XML-based data schema, it is very easy to extend and enhance the scope of the Comet application without requiring C++ programming expertise. The Comet Abstract Engineering Model™ readily allows for extensions beyond what is currently supported by Comet and it’s COTS adaptors such as:

  • new functional component types/abstract component libraries
  • new physics & design domains
  • new simulation and analysis codes
  • new process procedures
  • new environments (loading and boundary conditions)

Importantly, the Comet AEM™ can support an evolving design and analysis process that can easily progress throughout a design project’s lifecycle. It allows analyses where models are at mixed levels of fidelity(0D-3D), as well as evaluations with complex cross-domain effects and interdisciplinary interactions (e.g., structural, thermal, optics, durability, mechanical/3-D MCAD, costing, controls, etc.).