AI in Focus at DE Summit

By the time you read this, we will have completed our annual Design & Simulation Summit, a virtual event that focuses on leading-edge engineering technology topics. This year’s event kicked off with a keynote discussion entitled “AI is My Copilot: Are AI-Powered Tools Reliable Enough for Design and Simulation Workflows?”, moderated by our Senior Editor Kenneth Wong.

 

During that discussion with McKinsey & Company partner Jan Paul Stein and CIMdata consultant Sandeepak Natu, the panelists discussed the value and utility of these new AI-based engineering tools; their reliability; and the pros and cons of potentially using AI or machine learning for complex design and modeling tasks.

I was particularly happy this year that we were able to include several case studies among our presentations. Craig Hamill, formerly of UL Research Institutes, explained how his organization has used a hybrid high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure combining Microsoft Azure-based cloud resources with optimized on-premises clusters to accelerate its simulation and analysis operations. We also heard from Madhav Gupta of Weber Food Technology, who explained how his company is using live digital twins for industrial automation in its manufacturing facilities.

In addition, industrial designer and engineer Fabien Chancel was on hand to discuss his “Static Pressure Launch (SPL)” project, which won first place in the international ejection mechanism design challenge hosted on GrabCAD and supported by NASA’s Entry Systems Modeling Project.

Finally, the Additive Manufacturing Track this year focused on the importance of post-processing in successful 3D printing initiatives. Professor Carmen Torres-Sanchez, who runs the Multifunctional Materials Manufacturing Lab at Loughborough University, discussed how post-processing can improve surface finish of designs with intricate details and small features, and presented a case study involving titanium alloy lattices.

I want to thank our sponsors for this year’s event. They include Platinum sponsors GoEngineer, NVIDIA and Dell Technologies, as well as Gold sponsors TotalCAE, SimOps, Rescale, and Dassault Systèmes.

If you weren’t able to attend the virtual conference, you can still access the sessions on-demand. You can visit the 2025 Design & Simulation Summit page to register.