National Instruments and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp, a mechanical design software developer, will collaborate on a pioneer mechatronics tool that helps mechanical and control engineers work together to lower the cost and risk of motion system design, according to the companies.
Connecting National Instruments’ NI LabVIEW graphical system design software and SolidWorks 3D CAD software, the new virtual prototyping solution is designed to help engineers and scientists design, optimise, validate and visualise the real-world performance of machines and motion systems before incurring the costs of physical prototypes.
Because LabVIEW is used for controlling the virtual prototype, engineers and scientists can deploy their graphical software to physical NI hardware with little to no change to the code.
“The increasing complexity of machine designs demands better collaboration between different engineering disciplines including mechanical, electrical and control,” said SolidWorks CEO of DS, Jeff Ray.
“SolidWorks and National Instruments have developed a prototyping solution that dramatically shortens the gap between idea and reality.”