Iliad™ – Design Optimization and Exploration Automation Studio

Iliad™ general-purpose GUI based multidiscipline design study software was released in 1998 as VisualDOC. Using Iliad™, the user can explore the design space, optimize their solutions and integrate constituent design analyses and decisions into a single workflow. Iliad™ includes numerous design optimization and study options including:

• Design of Experiments
• Gradient and Non-gradient optimization
• Response surface optimization
• Probabilistic and Robust optimization
• Post-processing visualization tools

Iliad is a design optimization software developed to provide a seamless coupling with third party engineering tools, enable simulation process automation, and facilitate analytic decision making. The powerful workflow enables the execution of complex chains of design optimization, innovative algorithms determine the set of best possible solutions combining opposing objectives, and post-processing tools allows the user to perform sophisticated statistical analysis, data visualization and decision making.

Iliad™ Product Details

Iliad™ allows the user to graphically create a connected workflow of components and define each component in the flowchart appropriately. IliadTM features include:

• Comprehensive concurrent monitoring and visualization tools
• Storage and reuse of generated simulation data for post-processing
• Full debugging support for model execution
• The ability to interactively inspect and monitor the design process.

Product Integrations

Iliad™ integrates with Excel, Matlab, ANSYS Workbench, TAITherm, Moldex3D, various other CAE software, and user-defined libraries and executables. Scripting support (via python, Lua) is included in Iliad™. It also supports batch-mode execution and provides programmatic access to all the included design modules. Iliad™ API can be used to embed the included design algorithms into user’s own program such as Fortran, C, and C++. 

Iliad™ developers are researchers and experts in design optimization as well as excellent programmers. They have not only created best-in-class optimizers and response surface methods, but have also contributed to the advancement of design methodologies. For example How to Implement an Affordable Optimal Latin Hypercube. 

Iliad™ Highlights 

• Add multidiscipline design optimization to virtually any CAE analysis software
• Define your design process as a flowchart (natural and intuitive interface)
• Combine analysis and simulation data from multidiscipline design optimizations
• Perform various trade-off studies and identify important design parameters
• Share information and data for better decision making
• Powerful and comprehensive Simulation Data Management (SDM) capability
• Allows the user to graphically create a connected workflow of components and define each component in the flowchart appropriately

Iliad™ with Pre-Post Processors

Iliad™ being a process integration tool has seamless interfaces built for Beta CAE pre-post processing products ANSA and META. Given below are ways in which the interfaces work to enable IliadTM’s use as an efficient process integration, optimization workflow tool.

• ANSA – This interface helps modify geometries and meshes and, extract model properties such as mass and volume
• META – This interface helps investigate and extract important results data as well as computation of custom results

Iliad™ with Solvers

OmniQuest’s plugins such as the Moldex3D plugin simplifies coupling commercial solver models with Iliad™, for example, to perform gate location and process parameter optimization. 

Dedicated interfaces are available for Genesis®, Ansys, Moldex3D, MoldFlow and TAITherm solvers. In the case of large platforms such as Ansys, Iliad™ seamlessly works with the Ansys Mechanical Workbench environment. 

• Genesis® – Iliad™ can be used with Genesis® to modify and optimize NASTRAN format mesh geometries
• ANSYS – Iliad has a dedicated interface to ANSYS Workbench which allows for design studies in multiphysics analyses through ANSYS mechanical, CFX, Fluent and other solvers.
• Moldex3D – Iliad™ plugin simplifies performing gate location and process parameter optimization
• Moldflow – Iliad™ allows for modification of gate locations and process setting optimization
• TAITherm – Iliad™ can be used to modify geometrical parameters for improved thermal performance

Iliad™ with Programming Tools

For Product Data Management and Scripting, IliadTM is a powerful tool with its interfaces to programming languages and databases lending it versatility and speed. The functionalities of the seamless interfaces are given below. 

• LUA – this functionality can be used to run user defined analyses as well user implemented functionalities such as launching other software, reading and writing user specified information to text file, exporting snapshots etc.
• Excel – Iliad™ can manipulate spreadsheets for computations involving large amounts of data
• Python – Iliad™ supports full Python scripting for analyses and file manipulation

Iliad™ with Systems

Whether it is analyzing a suspension sub-system or a full vehicle or product IliadTM’s system level process integration interfaces provide a quick pathway for exchanging variables and parameters crucial in tuning the performance of the product. This is applicable for H-I-L, S-I-L types of analysis and also allows for test data to be integrated into the toolchains.

• AdamsCar – Allows for improving design of suspension systems
• MATLAB – Iliad™ supports data transfer to MATLAB and can be used for implementing a variety of functionalities