Systems engineering is a paradigm which sets guidelines for developing sophisticated products in technology-driven industries. Mechatronic products are examples of such products which bring together components demanding design knowledge in different domains and through often distinct functions in organizations such as electrical, mechanical and software engineering in the product development process. The aim of this project was to utilize a product development process by utilizing a Product Lifecycle Management tool. The tool was a platform for integrating engineering applications in order to improve the product development process and make it more effective and accurate.
I wrote an application using Visual C# to automate the design task. The application read internal or external customer orders and passed data to MATLAB/Simulink as an engineering design tool for technical computation and simulation. With the solution that I developed, I demonstrated two cases where in one, CAD models of the product were automatically and simultaneously generated when a customer changed desired parameters and configurations, and in the other, simulation models were produced as prototypes to help design verification. The PLM tool was based on a conventional RDBMS which facilitated modifications to the embedded Object Database structure. With my knowledge of RDBMS structures, I manipulated the data model at a low abstraction level to utilize the tool especially when the dedicated solution application was written. I created an interactive design environment which facilitated seamless data conversation among multiple engineering software tools.
