We are often asked ‘what does Iliad do exactly?’. It is understandable why this question arises: most engineers tend to categorize software into discrete groups such as computer aided design, computer aided engineering, programming languages, data handling, machine learning tools, statistics etc., and Iliad spans a lot of these categories.
To put it plainly, Iliad is a tool to create a digital version of the heuristic design process unique to your organization. Iliad takes disconnected pieces of your design process such as hand calculations, white board charts and codes on individual computers, and unifies them onto a digital canvas. Thanks to its robust integration capabilities, you can integrate your CAE simulations, custom programming scripts, small and big data, and logical design making into your digital flow chart. Creating a digital representation is a very powerful thing, which unlocks the ability to perform design exploration, automation, and optimization.
For example, consider an Electric Vehicle (EV). It is a classic system of systems, containing several subsystems such as body structure, suspension, drivetrain, and battery configuration. A team of engineers is responsible for each of these subsystems, and they have their proprietary CAE simulations, programming scripts, Excel spreadsheets etc. specific to their team. Usually, these tools are used manually in a certain sequence for every design cycle. Similarly, the teams responsible for other systems operate in their own silos which limits collaboration and design improvement. With Iliad, we first create a hierarchical flowchart, integrating all the subsystems and their constituent components. This enables us to run design of experiments studies and to optimize individual sub-systems and eventually, overall system characteristics such as cost, weight, and performance.
Moreover, Iliad enables engineers with different experience levels across different teams to work together; a senior member could setup the overall flowchart and assign junior members to configure the components and run different design studies and ‘what-if?’ scenarios. It is because of these powerful capabilities that is called the Iliad Design Exploration and Automation Studio.