Fan Tutorial 2 - Design System - Part 2

(9) Perform Trade-off's [Optional for tutorials]

In the design process, it is common to have multiple systems or components from various suppliers or vendors that perform the same role but with different specifications. To determine the most suitable option for our requirements, we conduct a trade-off analysis. There are different methods for this, including sensitivity analysis for the values and creating alternative containers. In this tutorial, we will use an alternative container to perform a trade-off analysis.

Creating an Alternative container

If you have multiple components that fulfil the required functionality, you can use the alternative container to compare each and see how it affects the whole system. For this tutorial, we assume that two different suppliers fit our required criteria for the speed controller. We can create two alternates and see how they affect the whole system. To create alternates,

• Right-click on the Speed_Controller and select Convert to Alternative Container. Upon clicking, Valispace converts it to the alternative container where you can add multiple components.

• When you expand the alternative container, you have the Speed_Controller_1. You can double-click on the name and rename it to Speed_Controller_variant_A.

Adding Alternates to the container

Now let’s try to add the second alternative of the speed controller to the container. You can add a new component or copy an existing component. For this tutorial, we will use the existing component and change the values of the valis.

• Click on the Speed_Controller alternative container. On the right below corner, click on + icon, select Copy an existing component, and add it as an alternative to this container.

• Upon selecting this option, a new dialog box opens. In the drop-down menu, select the Speed_Controller_variant_A. Doing this, valispace creates a new alternate Speed_Controller_variant_A1

• Similar to previous steps, rename Speed_Controller_variant_A1 to Speed_Controller_variant_B

• Hower over to Speed_Controller_variant_B and change the valis value of Mass = 10g and PowerConsumption to 0.2W

Switching between alternates and performing trade-offs

You can switch between alternates and valispace automatically calculates the changes and updates the parent's values. Currently, we are using the alternate Speed_Controller_variant_A in our calculations. Let's change it to variant B and see how it propagates throughout the model.

With the mass and power consumption values, the user can make trade-offs between the two variants.

(10) Creating Budget Tables and Pie chart

We have a preliminary design breakdown of our system, and we would like to see the mass budgets in our Analysis document Project_Summary that we created in our last tutorial. Let's add new blocks to our documentation.

Mass Budget Table

To create the mass budget table in our analysis document,

• Select Analysis Module and select the Project_Summary

• Scroll down and click Click to add new block

• Select the option Tables on the popup dialog box. Here, choose Budget.

• A new block is added to the document. Click on the Add data to this table. This opens a new dialog box where the user can select the valis they want to see the breakdown.

• In the + Add to vali, select Fan.Mass and close. This creates the budget table for our fan, which can be expanded as shown in the video below.

Pie Chart for mass breakdown

Similar to the previous, we have to choose charts instead of tables.

• Scroll down and click Click to add new block

• Select the option Charts (1)on the popup dialog box. Here, choose Budget (2).

• A new block is added to the document. Click on the Add data to this table. This opens a new dialog box where the user can select the chart type and valis which they would like to see the breakdown.

• In the + Add to vali, select Fan.Mass and close.