ModelCenter

Improve competitiveness and reduce product development costs.

Enhance workflow automation. Integrate high fidelity CAE software. Accelerate multi-run trade studies. Wrap any command line based simulation intuitively.

ModelCenter® by Phoenix Integration is a graphical environment for process integration and design automation that supports your entire product development team. It allows you to lower cost and reduce product development time. With PHX ModelCenter, you can quickly create an engineering process and then explore the design space to find the best design. PHX ModelCenter is adaptable, and works well with groups whose design processes change frequently.

Enhanced Capabilities

Design processes can involve diverse sets of in-house and commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) modeling and simulation tools that were not designed to communicate with each other—this makes them particularly difficult to automate. With the new Process Modeling Features in PHX ModelCenter you can graphically combine engineering analyses together with logic, looping, and branching constructs to create hierarchical and reusable flowchart-like engineering processes. Once created, these processes can be automated, and used to perform trade studies, answer “what-if” questions, reduce errors, and standardize and share common repeatable processes across the organization.

PHX ModelCenter’s CAE Solver Plug-In Suite allows users to quickly wrap high fidelity CAE software, perform detailed design optimization and validation, and conduct multiple trade studies efficiently and effectively. The integration of CAE solvers into PHX ModelCenter is performed using an intuitive visual environment and does not involve any tedious programming.

The powerful suite of design trade-off study tools offered in PHX ModelCenter perform parametric studies, Design of Experiments (DOE), Response Surface Modeling (RSM), gradient and non-gradient based optimization, and design results visualization. The recently enhanced RSM Toolkit allows you to replace long running analyses with quick running approximate models (Response Surface Models), thus enabling faster multi-run trade studies such as optimization and Monte Carlo analysis.

Better Designs

PHX ModelCenter gives you powerful tools to inspect designs and find weaknesses. Correcting these weaknesses early in the design process can save corporations millions. Trade studies within PHX ModelCenter help you and your team find optimal solutions with lower weight, higher performance, and more robustness in the design.

Reduces Errors

Manual data translation and linking is costly and error-prone. Automating this step in the design process helps reduce mistakes.

Saves Time

PHX ModelCenter eliminates the manual transfer of data between applications, thereby reducing design cycle time. With that "extra" time, you can evaluate more design alternatives which results in a better final product.

Cohesive Team Environment

Your team of engineers can use PHX ModelCenter to coordinate data and share design applications over a network of computers. Design data that used to be sent via fax, email, or ftp can now be linked automatically through PHX ModelCenter.

Easy to Deploy

PHX ModelCenter integrates seamlessly with existing applications used by your entire team.

CenterLink

Workgroup Trade Studies

PHX CenterLink® is power for your process: accelerating design simulations and running integrated processes faster through a unique grid computing server. Users collaborate by sharing the results in a web-based interface. PHX CenterLink is easy to install and simple to use, allowing you to be productive quickly.

PHX CenterLink harnesses networks of computers to take advantage of idle computing time in your organization. If you have an existing cluster, HPC server, or access to grid resources, PHX CenterLink plugs in directly. If you do not have a cluster, PHX CenterLink will help you create one automatically.

System engineers, designers, and analysts who are running large, complex models will immediately realize a performance improvement once connected to PHX CenterLink. PHX CenterLink works seamlessly with existing Phoenix Integration software products so users do not have to learn a new user interface. Select the PHX CenterLink option and you will be connected directly to the server. It is that easy.

PHX CenterLink allows users to collaborate by sharing results in a web-based project format. Users can log in and view trade-study results and the status of complex engineering jobs that take a long time to complete.

Users can download the results of their engineering simulations into a web browser or directly into the PHX ModelCenter environment.

As an example, PHX CenterLink was used at one customer site with a grid of over 100 computers. The users were able to submit thousands of different studies and get the results back in a matter of minutes instead of waiting for days. The result? A powerful process and a design that exceeded expectations.

Whether your industry is aerospace, automotive, electronics, or beyond, PHX CenterLink is power for the process.

BENEFITS

Powerful: Accelerates Existing Phoenix Software

• Boosts the performance of PHX ModelCenter by harnessing the grid computing resources in your organization
• Speed optimization, probabilistic methods and other trades by orders of magnitude. Find better designs in minutes instead of days

Collaborate With All Team Members

• Create a process in PHX ModelCenter and upload to PHX CenterLink so anyone can run on any hardware platform from anywhere
• Customizable user accounts allows you to add groups and share only the results you want others to see
• Download data and models to PHX ModelCenter, ModelRunner, html, or view on the web

Use the Web for Your Process

• Fire-and-Forget feature allows you to submit runs from large models then disconnect from PHX ModelCenter
• Monitor and control model runs in progress from any location via the web
• The system will email you when work is completed, freeing you to think about the next problem

Easy to Use

• Straightforward installation and connection
• Simple connection from PHX ModelCenter allows you to log in and start submitting jobs
• Intuitive web-based interface: no training for end users

Low Cost & No Hardware To Purchase

• Serve all users with one central server at one low price
• Access UNLIMITED computing nodes. Connect to 10 computers or 10,000 for the same price
• Complete software solution that uses your existing network of hardware
• Easily view, select, and assign local computers to work on your problem

Phoenix software integrates with a wide varity of applications, including:

Build Your Own Plug-Ins

In addition to Phoenix's available plug-ins, Phoenix offers its Plug-In Toolkit and QuickWrap tool enabling you to build customized plug-ins for application integration.

Phoenix's Plug-In Toolkit

Directly incorporate your in-house trade study algorithms, data post-processing algorithms, and custom re-configurable analysis components directly into ModelCenter with a custom GUI. This customization capability allows you to select the most appropriate trade study algorithm for your problem on a case-by-case basis.

A Plug-In can be written in any Component Object Model (COM) capable language, or it can also be written as a Java component. This language independent approach allows users to choose their level of integration. A simple trade study algorithm implemented in a scripting language such as Visual Basic can be implemented in a matter of minutes. A complex, full-featured trade study algorithm can be implemented using programming languages such as C++ or Java, using frameworks such as MFC or Swing to implement a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that can be as sophisticated as the user desires