In the old days when a product didn’t work, we used to say, “back to the old drawing board”. The drawing board, where many engineers used to define their product ideas was the gold standard. 2-D drawings were the best we could do in terms of representing the ideas that we had for mechanical designs. 2-D drawings go back for thousands of years and remined essentially unchanged until we began creating digital definitions in the 70s. When computers were new, they lacked the power to truly represent the physical complexity of modern electromechanical systems.
Now, enabled by the incredible power of modern computers, it is possible to truly represent down to minute detail, an electromechanical system. This is known as the digital twin. The digital twin represents everything that is necessary to manufacture and assemble a complex product such as a car, a rocket or even on office building. The computer files that are created by modern engineers using powerful CAD programs come in various formats and capture every aspect of shape data, non-shape data and process.
The digital twin enables all of the stockholders to interact with the data to accomplish various goals such as design, manufacturing, inspection, analysis, procurement and all other aspects of the product life cycle.
