Biography:
Eric Kam is the Product Marketing and Community Manager for ESI Group supporting their Immersive Experience (Virtual Reality) solutions. He is an outspoken advocate for the ongoing transformation in Computer Aided Design, Finite Element Analysis, and Computer Aided Engineering. He has spent the bulk of the last 20+ years promoting the democratization of previously “analyst driven” technologies to bring the benefits of Virtual Engineering tools to the engineering and manufacturing practitioners themselves.
Talk Abstract: Bridging the physical to digital divide in computer based engineering
In the evolution of design practices, the reliance on developmental prototypes has yielded to complete computerization of design; what was lost in translation and how do we get it back?
Since its inception, computer aided design and engineering tools have promised the elimination of practical prototypes, replacing the need for them with digital or virtual prototypes. Thus, is built the 3D engineering business that we support today. However, as industry moves away from practical build of mock-ups as the basis for engineering discovery, the long-promised efficiency of digital design is only partially realized. What deterministic computer models and analysis tools could not capture is the intersection of people participating in the process of using, manufacturing, or servicing the products being designed. Interactive Virtual Reality enables manufacturing organizations to again have the benefit of physically responsive prototypes, without the construction or material costs required to realize them in the physical world.