In most design engineering organisations, the typical process
starts off with a series of ideas and concepts, maybe a brainstorming
session, before each member of the team goes their separate ways
and designs code, draws up plans or drafts spreadsheets for individual
components or raw materials in separate documents. The results
will be communicated and brought together, but the original work,
and the thinking behind it, can easily be lost or forgotten.
If the basic work is done on paper, how much of it is likely to
be preserved? It's probable that the results are recorded and filed
away, or preserved in notebooks - but the steps taken to arrive
at these results may well have been done on a calculator, on scraps
of paper that have long gone to the local landfill site, or even
(yes, they're still around) using a slide rule.
Spreadsheets have their own problems. Once an error has crept
in, it's very difficult to track down; and if you've ever tried
to work out someone else's spreadsheet, you'll know how un-intuitive
those nested arguments and long chains of cell references can be.
(I dealt with this subject in more detail in the November 2003
issue of DPA; you can find that article in the new Dr Know Archive
at www.dpaonthenet.net)
If (as is too often the case) individual engineers use a variety
of tools, it soon becomes impossible to document or retrieve a
complete history of the project. Spreadsheets, custom programs
and other files may be scattered around personal hard disks, network
drives and removable storage media. They're often hard to identify
or to relate to the final project (how many of us are organised
enough to use consistent file names?). And of course, like everyone
else, engineers move on. Locating and understanding work done by
a member of your design team who is no longer with your organisation
can be a nightmare.
In today's litigation-happy society, it's essential to be able
to validate and verify designs at every stage. "It's always
worked before" is no excuse. Good design calculations may
be used over many years, and engineers will need to review, understand
and verify them, and adapt them to new parameters and new needs,
preferably without having to re-invent the wheel. That's why you
need a foolproof system for storing and retrieving them.
All credit to Mathsoft, then, for recognising and addressing this
issue in the Enterprise version of Mathcad (http://mathcad.adeptscience.co.uk).
For many years they've been promoting the benefits of using Mathcad
as the centrepiece of engineering design workflows, and with Mathcad
Enterprise, they're staking a claim to manage your whole engineering
calculation process.
A key feature of Mathcad Enterprise is its ability to capture
engineering and research knowledge and store it in a central repository
(such as Microsoft's SharePoint Team Services) where it remains
available at any time. Because Mathcad is by its nature self-documenting,
this means you retain a complete record of the design process -
not just the results, but the calculations and the assumptions
behind them. Mathcad is compatible with most other popular engineering
software (spreadsheets, ODBC databases, AutoCAD, SmartSketch, MATLAB,
VisSim etc) so its Enterprise version ensures that all relevant
information is stored centrally and easily retrieved at any time.
Organisations invest significant sums in design. Good design is
what gives them a competitive advantage, so there's some very valuable
intellectual property there. I'm willing to bet that your financial
systems are managed centrally so that everything can be traced.
Surely your design calculations deserve no less.
Dr Know's recommended download is the Calculation Management white paper - download yours today.