SolidWorks Corp has made a giant first step in providing engineers and designers with the ability to quickly determine the environmental impact of any design. In partnership with PE International, SolidWorks Corp announced today that they are providing a new tool for this purpose that will run within SolidWorks, currently codenamed Sage. It promises to make sustainability more accessible to engineers and designers.SolidWorks Corp believes that many engineers do not understand the environmental impact of their designs. This is perhaps because the engineers have little or no access to this information. But also, many companies still do not have a focus on designing with environmental impact in mind. Sage will provide this information in an easy fallow report that can be used by the engineer during the design process.
The question is this, why should engineers care about the environmental impact of their designs? Decisions they make early in the design process have the most influence on the environmental impact of the final product. Sage not only makes it possible for them to determine the impact of their designs, it also allows them to provide others (who may not be technically inclined) with this information in a clear manner.
The core areas that will be addressed by Sage are carbon footprint, energy consumption of the processes used to make a part (including regional data, transportation, etc), air and water pollution (such as emissions from the manufacturing processes). It displays this information in several easy to read charts. As stated by SolidWorks Corp, “Sage is the only CAD-integrated software to provide a comprehensive view of a design’s impact.” Sage will not only provide the overall impact, but it will allow the engineer to drill down into the design to find out which factors are having particular influence on the product’s environmental impact.
As stated above, Sage will run within SolidWorks. It is based on PE International’s GaBi software engine. Sage will use the PE International vetted database which contains extremely comprehensive information about a wide number of variables that are affected by each design. Though information in this database may be as specialized as a full blown special study conducted by PE International, the results it provides will be of the same quality. The database used by Sage contains averages for particular areas of impact
Sage will contain the ability to allow engineers to compare design changes, so they can make informed decisions early in the design process. It will allow them to “see hidden gotchas”, as stated by Rick Chin, Director of Product and Marketing Innovation, SolidWorks. The reports created by Sage will be standalone (i.e., SolidWorks or SolidWorks experience is not required to see or use the report once it is created). The reports will contain educational matter that will explain the criteria within the report, and also why the information within the report is important. This will empower the engineer to explain critical design decisions to upper management.
Though nothing is finalized yet, reports will likely be available in both Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF formats.
Two versions of Sage will be available for SolidWorks 2010. First is the Xpress version that will allow analysis of individual parts. The Pro version will provide analysis of assemblies and entire designs. Also, a downloadable version (presumably an Xpress version for SolidWorks 2009) will be available early from SolidWorks Labs by this summer.
This new tool from PE International and SolidWorks Corp gives the engineer a whole new level of understanding of their designs. It allows them to make environmentally friendly decisions rapidly based on years of data and experience from the PE International team. I’m personally looking forward to having a chance to utilize Sage as soon as it is available, not only out of curiosity, but also to write are more detailed review of it’s capabilities in action.