Sometimes design entails the creation of a brand new thing on a clean sheet of paper (or a blank computer screen). But more often than not, engineering and design is about the assembly of existing parts or subassemblies into a product or system to meet a customer's needs. Instead of a blank sheet of paper, you start with an old drawing that comes close to the solution you have in mind and you salvage what fits for the new design. Which drawing should that be? Where can you find it? Maybe a combination of several drawings would be better.
The best answer would be to assemble quickly on one page the parts and subassemblies that provide the function dictated by your customer's requirements, and then to easily connect them in technically correct ways. The best answer would also include methods for collecting complete and accurate customer requirements, and painless documentation of your solution.
Apprentice Systems has a special focus on engineering and design for complex products and systems. We build on the Visio Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Process Engineering stencils, and make the Visio shapes even smarter by adding your data. We also create custom Visio shapes to represent necessary components in your application. The engineer or designer can be prompted to provide information on use requirements when a generic shape is dragged and dropped on the page. A suitable component is automatically selected from the database to meet the given requirements. If a component cannot be found, the Apprentice will tell you which requirement is not being met, and allow you to either relax the requirement or enter a new component in the database.
Ancillary components necessitated by an element of the design can be automatically added.
Validation of the correctness of components and connections can be done continuously or on demand, based on your preference. Either way, validation occurs before a drawing is released to a customer or for implementation, saving time and money down the line. The Apprentice can also be used to collect customer requirements, and the validation process would help ensure that only complete and correct information is passed on into the design process.
The Apprentice can also be designed to infer rules from existing and new designs, allowing the Apprentice to learn and adapt over time. And finally, the Apprentice can automatically generate the necessary bills of materials and other detailed drawings to facilitate implementation.
