Digital Twin Core Overview and Installation
One of the newest Aras Innovator applications is Digital Twin Core (DTC). DTC allows for tracking of parts in the field, and it will serve as the basis of our push to realize a fully Digital Thread. How it works The DTC application adds one very important new ItemType: the Physical Part. Physical parts are created from a released engineering part and have additional properties related to its life in the field. In addition to that, they contain a link back to the released engineering part they were created from. This allows for visibility into what exactly is in the field. This is made even stronger by the ability to string Physical Parts together and create a Physical Part Bill of Materials (BOM). Utilizing the BOM allows you to keep track of part replacements and adjustments made to your field units. Additionally, a Physical Part’s work history is saved, allowing you to see exactly where the part has been utilized in the past and the work done to it. Installation As DTC is one of our newer applications, it will only work with Aras Innovator version 12 service pack 7 or greater. To install DTC, you’ll need Aras Update, which can be installed here. Once installed, follow these steps: Open Aras Update and download DTC 12.0 R1 from the list of applications Once you’ve downloaded the package, click install to begin the process. When prompted, chose detailed logging On the final screen, provide the necessary instance information like the screenshot below. If your installation fails, it could be for a few reasons. One of the most common is accidentally pointing to the wrong code tree folder. Another common issue when installing DTC is not having a compatible version of PE installed. Double check to make sure you have the necessary components installed prior to running the DTC installer. If you are still having issues or have any questions, you can post a question to our forums! Once the installation is complete you can open Aras Innovator to see the new application. There should be a new entry in the TOC called Assets which has one ItemType inside: Physical Parts. Now that it’s installed, you can create a physical parts from any engineering part which is marked as serialized. Conclusion There are some very exciting updates coming down the line for this application, but they all start here. Let us know if your company is utilizing DTC! If you have any issues with your installation you can reach out on the forums or leave a comment under this blog!
Technical Documentation Overview and Installation
Aras Technical Documentation, or Tech Docs for short, is Aras Innovator’s state of the art authoring tool to manage, create, and maintain documentation and its contents from images, text, tables, and lists. The Tech Doc framework consists of an intuitive editor allowing users to author product documentation such as catalogs and manuals. In addition to the generic document elements such as tables and graphics users can embed PLM content directly into the document, mainly other documents and templates compounded to the parent document all with edits tracked in real time. Utilizing component tracking we can even check the version and update our lists accordingly. Overview: Lets take a look at some of the functionality within Aras Innovator’s Technical Documentation. We can use the example of a demo Makerbot Part to understand the structure of the Tech Docs framework. The whole documentation is a structured document, on the left-hand side we can view an interactive tree containing all the elements and their order incrementally: On the right hand side we have all the content, users can select any of the elements contained within the tree on the left and view them highlighted on the right side, this includes whole document references, tables, graphics etc: Right clicking on PLM elements such as other technical documents referenced within the parent document will bring you directly to that item in the database and allow any necessary changes on the selected item. Within this item we can make edits that will coincide with the edits on our main document keeping the database in sync. In this same demo example, there is an Extruder component with a component list contained within a table. If we right click in the structure tree on the left, on the component list element we will see there is a version tracking option. Simply clicking on the Restore Version Tracking then Update to Latest, will update our Extruder Part to the latest version available. Installation: Setting up Technical Documentation version 12 R1 is pretty simple! You will first need to download the latest Aras Update release. Once that downloads, go ahead and open the application. In the Online section there will be a list of applications we can download and install. For this blog I am going to download Tech Docs 12 R1. Once the package is downloaded locally hit install and you'll be prompted for some information on your instance. After filling in the correct information, press install and within a few minutes you should receive a successful result message. You can then log into your instance of Aras Innovator and utilize the new functionality. In order to verify the application is installed all you need to do is open up the TOC and there should be a new section called Technical Documentation. Should look like this: Conclusion: Thanks for tuning in this week with our Technical Documentation overview and installation post. Leave a comment below on how your organization utilizes technical documentation and how Aras fulfills your organization's needs. Make sure to stay tuned for future applications as well as we cover the full suite of products within Aras Innovator!Simulation Management Overview and Installation
The Simulation Management (SM) application in Aras Innovator lets users centrally manage simulation inputs and results, providing better visibility and access to simulation data across the enterprise. The item within Aras Innovator that allows users to manage these input and output artifacts is known as a Simulation Study. These Simulation Study items are comprised of individual tasks and various steps taken in external simulation applications. Together the Study ItemTypes complete the digital validation step of a products design. Aras Innovator’s SM application ensures simulation data, results, and variables are synced across teams and not just limited locally to an individual engineers computer. Instead of limiting the use of simulation to one point in a product’s lifecycle, we can allow the use of this data across more stages. For a recap of Simulation Management click here to see the application in action. Overview: Let’s take a look at an example Simulation Study ItemType within the Simulation Management application in our demo database. Simulation Studies consist of individual tasks that manage artifacts; these are both input and output files. Input files can be items such as CAD files, various mesh files, and simulation instructions while output files are the results of the simulation. Here is what our Simulation Study example looks like: In the next screenshot we have the same Simulation Study Itemtype however this view consists of the boxes representing tasks organized in a visual fashion. This view also displays the relationships to one another well and follows the branching sequence available in the Simulation Management application: We can open a Task such as our SIM-00005 to show the Output Artifact. This artifact also contains a viewable of some temperature simulation results. Going to the form in this Item and then to the Design Representations tab we will see some related attachments. These attachments are CAD Documents that have links to Items in the database such as the CAD Document MP2506. Installation: Lets take a look at setting up Simulation Management 12 R1 within our Aras Innovator instances! You will first need to download the latest Aras Update release. Once that downloads, go ahead and open the application: 1. In the Online section there will be a list of applications we can download and install. Scroll down to Aras Simulation Management and click on it. 2. Assuming you do not have SM downloaded locally, hit the download option and let that run. 3. Once the package is downloaded locally hit install and you'll be prompted for some information on your instance. 4. After filling in the correct information, press install and within a few minutes you should receive a successful result message. You can then log into your instance of Aras Innovator and utilize the new functionality. In order to verify the application is installed all you need to do is open up the TOC and there should be a new section called Simulation Management. Should look like this: Conclusion: I hope you have enjoyed this week's application overview. Let us know how your organization leverages Aras Innovator's Simulation Management application for your simulation data and please comment below with any questions or thoughts!
Quality Management System Overview and Installation
Even the most well designed products fail. Being able to document this failure and plan ways to address it in the future is one of the impost important elements of the design process. The Quality Management System (QMS) application introduces a ...Manufacturing Process Planning Overview and Installation
Expanding on our series, we will be continuing with an in depth look at the installation process and overview of the Manufacturing Process Planning application, or MPP, offered within Aras Innovator. Our MPP application enables creation, management, and use of Manufacturing Bill of Materials (MBOM) and Process Plans ensuring your shop floors are in sync with engineering changes. Engineers can transform Engineering Bill of Materials (EBOM) to MBOM while simultaneously building out the Bill of Process (BOP). Aras Innovator has a very fluid process between applications. Our MPP application is a great example of this; changes are not only intuitive to make within any of the three change processes, but also are updated in real time between each one. Overview: Process Planning within Aras Innovator allows one to build a logical and versionable set of work instructions. Using a simple document editor utilizing the Technical Documentation Framework Aras ensures that every step in your resulting process plan is meticulously curated. When looking at the standard process plan form there are two relationships given, related part and location. Here we can specify the part produced by this plan and the location in case they differ between shops. In the left hand pane we can see our operations, and their contents. Operations can include steps or consumed items, such as parts, documents, skills, and tools: The MBOM view gives us a detailed version of the MBOM based off of consumed parts within the process plan. There is also a live reconciliation, showing us how our current MBOM differs from our EBOM. Changes made in the process plan or on the part itself are reflected here. The EBOM also has similar reconciliation statuses, but in addition indicates whether a specified part is not being used: Within each of these applications any changes made will remain in sync as we transform the EBOM into an MBOM with a process plan and work instructions. Installing the Latest Version: Installation of MPP is quite easy, in order to move on we’ll need to download Aras Update here. Once the download has completed, go ahead and open the application, we should see a list of applications we can download and install. For this blog I am going to download MPP 12R1, the latest released version of Manufacturing Process Planning. Once you’ve downloaded the package locally, press install and you’ll be prompted for some information. For our default installation of Aras Innovator, here is what your screen should look like: Once you’ve filled in the correct information, press install and within a few minutes you should receive a successful result message. You can then log into your instance of Aras Innovator and utilize the new functionality. In order to verify the application is installed all you need to do is open up the TOC and there should be a new section called Process which will contain the Process Plan ItemType. Should look like this: Conclusion: Hope you found the latest installation of our series to be useful. We will continue covering the rest of our applications in the future posts, so stay tuned! Comment below if your company uses MPP for their manufacturing needs.Component Engineering Overview and Installation
The next installment of our Application Overview series is Component Engineering (CE) within Aras Innovator. CE ensures users have full management and tracking of Manufacturer Parts, including the ease of selection and swapping of components. CE within Aras Innovator simplifies electronic component selection by allowing Engineers and Procurement Specialists instant access to current technical data statuses on hundreds of millions of parts. This includes components down to the board-level from leading manufacturers around the world. Using IHS marketplace, CE allows the responsible engineer/specialist to ensure purchased components meet specifications, identify comparable alternate parts, and ensure obsoleted parts are replaced in timely manner without disruption. All specifications from the millions of parts indexed by IHS can be easily accessed within Innovator and even point users to in depth specifications with any of the Manufacturer Parts websites. Please also note that in order to use CE an extra feature license is required! Overview: Within Aras Innovator, IHS can easily be accessed by going to the TOC > Sourcing > Cloud Manufacturer Parts. Here we will see the following: This allows us to search any parts that are contained within the IHS database either through the use of filters to narrow results or by part number/keywords. Run a search with Optoelectronics - other optoelectronics and rohm compliant - yes then run a search. Here we can compare part variants (by selecting the ) and even add parts to your Aras Innovator instance: Close the compare dialog and double click any of the parts in the search list. This will open up the Aras Innovator Part Form and will show an Add button. After selecting add part Aras Innovator will open the part and add it to your database. Now lets go back to the TOC > Sourcing > Manufacturer Parts and search for MCL-N6WT-B-NW-P (this part is an example from Aras Innovator 12 SP11 Demo Environment). Open this part, we can see a property on the form for data sheets. Clicking the link brings us directly to the sheet for viewing purposes: Installation: In order to setup Component Engineering for your Aras Innovator instance you will need to activate the feature license, in order to do this log into your Aras Innovator instance and click the User Menu icon. Then within the dropdown select Activate Feature, a popup dialog will appear allowing you to input your license. Next we will need to download the latest Aras Update release. Once that download has complete you, go ahead and open the application, you will see a list of applications we can download and install. For this blog I am going to download CE 12R3, the latest release of Component Engineering. Once the package is downloaded locally hit install and you’ll be prompted for some information on your Instance. After filling in the correct information, press install and within a few minutes you should receive a successful result message. You can then log into your instance of Aras Innovator and utilize the new functionality. In order to verify the application is installed all you need to do is open up the TOC and there should be a new section called Sourcing which will contain the Manufacturer Part ItemType. Should look like this: Conclusion: Thanks for following along in the latest installment of our Application Overview blog series. Comment below if your organization finds this content useful and stay tuned to learn more about the rest of our Application lineup!Requirements Engineering Overview and Installation
Requirements Engineering is one of the newer applications added to Aras Innovator. It enables cross-disciplinary collaboration while drafting and iterating on your product requirements. It utilizes the Aras Technical Documentation Framework (TDF) to generate single requirements, which can then be brought together into structured Requirements Documents.
