CAD to SIM: CAD Model Conversion for Dymola-based Mechatronic Simulation

Virtual product development allows us to recognize and evaluate the characteristics of a new product on the basis of simulation at an early stage without having to build a physical prototype. Currently the most, widely spread CAE systems do not have multi-domain simulation support, nor do offer direct interfaces to external dynamic simulation applications. These systems disallow the complex simulation of the designed virtual product. Conversely, dynamic simulation of a detailed virtual prototype is required to maintain good correlation between the behaviour of the real product and its virtual counterpart. In this paper a largely automated workflow will be presented, how a convenient conversion can be achieved to Modelica models from the output of a CAD system considering Dymola-based multi-domain simulation.