Below, I've posted the response I got after talking to Leigh Hudson from FiberSim.
Essentially, PTC has yet to develop the interface with FiberSim that facilitates getting a solid mass model from FiberSim into Pro/E; that's the missing finctionality that our company needs.
Response posted with permission:
From: Hudson, Leigh
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 2:55 PM
To: Domingo Hermosillo
Subject: RE: FiberSim Questions
Hi Domingo,
- 1. What we are lacking is a representation of the finished composite pieces in a Pro/E assembly. The pieces need to have the correct CG based on the materials used in the layup, i.e. core, plys, potting, potted in components, etc.
- Fibersim allows for the design of composite parts and assemblies. Fibersim allows customers to account for plies, cores and solid inserts – typically solid inserts such as potted-in components are linked to their solid model representation so that Fibersim can include them and their material properties in its automatically calculated weights and CGs.
- 2. We need to have the capability to specify our requirements to the vendor and represent the finished product in a Pro/E mass model. The information submitted for manufacture of a composite piece has a lot of detail that is unwanted in the Pro/E mass model. For instance, the mass model does not need all of the plies represented. Also, the manufactured piece may have details for holding, potted areas that have not been cutout or prepped for installation of embedded components, etc. We need to represent the finished piece in Pro/E, trimmed of all manufacturing features, plus showing all secondary operations. From my earlier evaluation of FiberSim, it seemed like FS helps with the manufacture of the piece, but does not facilitate secondary operations within Pro/E. If this capability has been added, that would be great!
- I am not clear here if you are looking to create a final composite solid shape based on the stack-up and inserts, could you clarify? If you are looking for Fibersim to produce the final solid shape, to be trimmed with Pro/ENGINEER or Creo functionality, we cannot currently do this in Pro/ENGINEER or Creo, but with a bit of work this can be achieved manually today. We currently provide the capability to understand the thickness areas through core sampling and those thicknesses can be used to create the final shape. We have had discussions with PTC about this need and this will require some effort from PTC and our company to achieve this capability.
- 3. Assembly features include holes, cutouts, inserts, etc. that modify the piece after manufacture. Without a model that represents the differing areas of density, core, plies and potting, we have to recreate the construction in Pro/E in order to get the resulting mass properties for accurate CG calculations.
- Fibersim has and continues to take into account of holes, cutouts and inserts for composites in its weight and CG calculations, as well as its generation of downstream manufacturing data. For holes and cutouts these process features can be added into the part srtictly using Fibersim. For inserts, a ProE solid rep can can be linked to a tracked object in Fibersim which can then accurately report the entire weight and CG
Kind Regards,
Leigh Hudson
Fibersim Product Lead