Red Cedar Technology Releases Version 6.0 Of HEEDS

East Lansing-based Red Cedar Technology has announced the release of version 6.0 of its HEEDS modeling and analysis software.

In addition to enhancements to many existing features, this latest release offers the new COMPOSE (Component Optimization in a System Environment) module, collaborative optimization,  reliability studies, and two new optimization methods.

Current customers with an active HEEDS MDO license and are current on your maintenance, you can upgrade to MDO 6.0 at no additional cost.

When you have a large system that you want to optimize, but the part of the model that is changing during optimization is localized to a small area (sub-system) of the full model, you can save time and find better designs with HEEDS COMPOSE.

The new version also includes collaborative optimization, which allows users to inject specific designs to the search process during a parameter optimization study. Using this feature, users can provide design ideas for HEEDS MDO to use during its search. This allows users to combine your domain knowledge and experience with the intelligent search technology in HEEDS MDO.

The new version also includes reliability analysis, which allows users to assess the probability of failure of a design when certain features of the design will have some variability. For example, in an assembly of stamped parts, each part will have a variation in its thickness. Even though the parts were designed for a nominal thickness, the actual value of the thickness will vary with some distribution. In this case, it is important to know how many designs will fail to meet the criteria, since there will be variability from design to design.

The new version also includes new optimization methods called Nelder Mead Simplex and Particle Swarm, as well as an augmented LHS (Latin Hypercube Sampling) set, a sampling technique that tries to distribute designs evenly in the design space. The new augmented LHC set uses a special technique to add the new designs around the existing design in the LHC sample to maintain the uniform spread of the design points. The process of adding new points evaluates the minimum distance, as well as the overall quality of the design samples, when determining locations at which to add new points.

More at http://www.redcedartech.com/products/heeds_mdo/whats_new_heeds_mdo.