SDC Verifier integrates Simcenter Femap OEM in its all-in-one structural design solution
SDC Verifier is a cross-functional organization dedicated to simplifying engineers’ lives. Founded in 1998, they develop software that automates structural engineering and FEA simulation tasks, performs standards-based verification and provide services to the engineering industry. The company comprises software developers and structural engineers, located in the Netherlands, Ukraine and Poland.
SDC Verifier’s software products come with an ever-growing library of engineering standards for structural verification in various industries, providing a wide range of rules, regulations and safety codes that can be used right out of the box to check a structure. They are used within the offshore and maritime, oil and gas, heavy machinery, civil engineering, civil aerospace and defense industries.
SDC Verifier has been developing structural verifications since its founding, initially as extensions for various existing CAE applications, including Siemens Simcenter Femap and Siemens Simcenter 3D.
In 2023, the company launched its standalone, all-in-one solution for structural design, FEA analysis and verification according to standards, also called SDC Verifier. This comprehensive software is built atop Siemens Simcenter Femap OEM component.
All-in-one solution for structural design, FEA simulation and standards verification
The main business drivers for developing the SDC Verifier all-in-one solution were:
- bringing advanced FEA analysis and verification capabilities to an audience which is doing structural design but doesn’t necessarily have experience with precise, high-level simulation.
- enabling engineers who are tired of juggling multiple software, spreadsheets, and other approaches to perform structural design, analysis, and verification within a single, convenient solution.
Exact simulation of structural designs is an essential tool to unambiguously determine their effectiveness. It provides invaluable input for planning material consumption and costs reduction and allows rigorous verification of the structure against industry standards.
There was therefore great market potential to tap into for tools that could provide exact simulation and verification capabilities and that could be easily integrated within existing structural engineering workflows.
Transitioning from spreadsheets, simple design tools and hand-held calculators to integrated FEA analysis and verification involves a very steep learning curve, time and development effort. SDC Verifier wanted to provide a reliable, easy to learn solution to enable “real simulation” while preserving its customers resources.
The SDC Verifier standalone solution aimed also at granting users the flexibility of importing CAD and FEA models from different sources. The whole structural design, simulation and verification process can be carried out in a single platform.
Challenges
When SDC Verifier started developing their standalone solution, they could leverage their extensive expertise in automation of engineering and verification tasks. But building a structural design software solution that combines design, simulation and verification is a complex, time and resource consuming process and reducing time-to-market was critical to their business strategy.
As the platform was growing, they realized that to bring the product to market faster, while guaranteeing the same quality and reliability of their extension products, they had to rely on best-in-class components.
Simcenter Femap is the go-to solution for finite element modelling and post processing on top of Nastran.
It is straight to the point, it doesn’t require extensive simulation expertise. It is easy to use also for newcomers.
Oleg Ishchuk, COO, SDC Verifier
Enabling advanced simulation capabilities with Simcenter Femap OEM
Having worked with Simcenter Femap since 2010, they chose to use the Simcenter Femap OEM component to enable robust simulation and visualization capabilities in their standalone product.
The choice to go for an available solution for simulation, result analysis and visualization allowed SDC Verifier to focus resources on their unique streamlined engineering workflow, with complete confidence in the robustness and performance of the FEA features provided by Simcenter Femap OEM. They didn’t want to go to market with a solution that was just “good enough” – they wanted to confirm the trust of their customers, with a well-designed, ready-to-market product, equipped with a seamless synergy between Simcenter Femap OEM and SDC Verifier own developments and features.
Partnering with Siemens allowed to virtually expand their development team and rely on the best-in-class support of the Simcenter Femap OEM team to reach their objectives in minimal time.
Simcenter Femap OEM has provided simulation and visualization features, from graphical interfaces to plot coloring, that would have required significant more time and development resources – 6 months more in development time or 3 more developers – if done in-house.
With Simcenter Femap OEM, SDC Verifier were able to choose the right set of functionalities for the specific requirements of structural engineers and package them in the most user-friendly way possible for their customers.
For SDC Verifier, Simcenter Femap is the go-to solution for finite element modelling and post processing on top of Nastran.
It is straight to the point, it doesn’t require extensive simulation expertise. It is easy to use also for newcomers.
Results
Users of SDC Verifier can now sketch and create geometry, mesh and obtain accurate simulation results following a simple tutorial video. Typically, with a two-day training users can master every functionality of the software. The typical time for software evaluation is around two weeks, which is a testament to the high quality of the results provided by Simcenter Femap OEM and SDC Verifier.
Siemens flexible and collaborative approach to licensing Simcenter Femap OEM has enabled SDC Verifier to offer their customers three different packages, targeting specific user requirements at varying price points. The beams package supports line elements (beams/bars) for structural analysis. The beams and plates package facilitates the verification of beams and plates by automating key structural checks and integrating them into a unified workflow. The all-elements package provides users numerous features ensuring seamless verification workflow reducing time and effort.
Simcenter Femap OEM has provided simulation and visualization features, from graphical interfaces to plot coloring, that would have required significant more time and development resources – 6 months more in development time or 3 more developers – if done in-house.
Oleg Ishchuk, COO, SDC Verifier
When approaching FEA simulation, a minimum of two months of consistent training are required for a user to become proficient within its specific use case. With the Simcenter Femap OEM enabled functionality in SDC Verifier, the learning curve is shrunk down to two weeks.
SDC Verifier managed to deliver their standalone solution remarkably fast – they had a MVP within half a year from the moment they licensed Simcenter Femap OEM, while managing to allocate resources also to their other development and consultancy projects. They estimate that it would have taken even less, 4 months, if they had the whole development team focused on the one project.
Having reduced development time so significantly, they were able to thoroughly test, improve and validate the product before bringing it to the market. Overall, SDC Verifier standalone was released a year after licensing Simcenter Femap OEM.
Partnering with Siemens allowed to virtually expand our development team and rely on the best-in-class support of the Simcenter Femap OEM team to reach our objectives in minimal time.
Oleg Ishchuk, COO, SDC Verifier
Evan Knuttila, VP of Global Sales, PLM Components, at Siemens Digital Industries Software, confirms the successful partnership with SDC Verifier:
We are delighted that SDC Verifier have chosen to join the PLM Components customer community by licensing Simcenter Femap OEM, providing them a powerful and customizable simulation platform to bring a standalone offering to market and help fuel their future success.
Evan Knuttila, VP of Global Sales, PLM Components, Siemens Digital Industries Software
SDC Verifier is now serving over 200 companies across its product line. The standalone version of SDC Verifier, launched in 2023, has experienced exponential growth in user adoption, aligning with the company’s strategic plan. This growth is not only reflected in the acquisition of new customers but also in the increased internal adoption within existing customer organizations.
With the all-in-one solution, enterprises can perform design, integration, import of geometry and meshing in one place, rather than using different software to complete each of these stages.
This means that different functions within the same company and different locations can use the same software. This wouldn’t have been possible without Simcenter Femap OEM embedded in the product. For example, their other product – SDC extension to Simcenter Femap – it is usually used in the later stages of the project.
Simcenter Femap OEM is a software development kit that allows to edit and evaluate finite element models of complex products/systems using advanced CAE pre- and postprocessors to model components, assemblies or systems. To know more, visit https://plm.sw.siemens.com/en-US/plm-components/simcenter-femap-oem-software/.
To know more about SDC Verifier, visit https://sdcverifier.com/.
