What’s New in aP Design – December 2024

Key Takeaways:

• Improvements to aP Design make it easier to learn and faster to use than ever
• A new user experience creates a strong foundation to build deeper knowledge and skills as more features and functionality are added – accelerating onboarding

The Full Article:

Product development teams are under a lot of pressure to design and launch products that meet cost, quality, and performance requirements in even shorter timeframes. The speed at which they work is critical to meeting customer deadlines and product launch milestones. To ensure customers can streamline workflows, optimize design for cost, manufacturability, and carbon, and get to market faster, we have made several impactful enhancements to our aP Design solution.

This December, on the 12^th to be precise, aP Design got a whole new look. This was not just a cosmetic makeover though. It was the result of many months of customer consultations. The Product Management team visited more than 30 customers to interview, observe, and gain an even deeper understanding of how, when, and where aP Design fits into their product development workflows.

This led to a range of areas in the product identified as opportunities for improvement including adding even more value to design workflows, catching design for manufacturability issues sooner, and giving design engineers visibility into product cost and embodied carbon earlier.

Enhancement #1: New Scenario and New Comparison

Straight away, you will notice the first enhancement. Once you are logged into the Cloud-based Manufacturing Insights Platform and enter aP Design, you are presented with two new action buttons, prominently at the top of the page, for New Scenario and New Comparison.

This addition makes aP Design faster to use and easier to learn, shortening the learning curve by making common workflows more discoverable. This has been a theme throughout the application, using color to guide your attention to where you are likely to need to go for the next step.

Enhancement #2: Recent Filter No Longer Time-Dependent

Just beneath that, the “Recent” filter is now no longer time-dependent. Previously, it only showed scenarios that had been accessed within the last 24 hours. But that meant any scenarios accessed on a Friday were no longer filtered under Recent.  It now shows just the last scenarios you accessed independent of time, making it much faster to resume where you left off.

Enhancement #3: Instantly Preview Setup Options and Scenario Results

Selecting anything in the Explore list now gives you an instant preview of the setup options and the scenario results. This saves a lot of time, as you can see the key information without having to open and fully load the scenario. Additionally, you will notice a dynamic, context-sensitive action bar appears, with all the relevant options, and only relevant ones, for the selection.

Enhancement #4: Greater Clarity of User Feedback and Automatic Extraction of Geometry

Another area of improvement is user feedback. When a new CAD model is imported into aP Design, the on-screen text and graphics give users a better indication of what is happening. This greater clarity of feedback prevents windows from being refreshed or closed prematurely. We have put a lot of time into researching how to extract geometry automatically from models and want to ensure it is pulling in all relevant geometry to help you with your analysis in the fastest, most accurate way possible.

Enhancement #5: Previous Scenario Input Reuse Capabilities

Once you are in a New Scenario, a highly requested feature, was the ability to reuse inputs from a previous scenario. This has been possible via a “Copy” in previous releases. However, in a brand new scenario, you can browse previous scenarios and reuse the inputs, even if the CAD model is completely different. This can significantly save time and effort, especially for those who design similar volumes of components for comparable manufacturing processes.

Enhancement #6: Faster, Streamlined Component Analysis

The next enhancement is pure speed. The faster the application, the more productive you will be—this is true for anything.

aPriori is well known for being the fastest analysis of its type. But that doesn’t mean we stop there. We found that many customers usually run an analysis on a component multiple times, so development looked at what could be done to streamline the analysis. It was found that some operations were duplicated when running an analysis for a subsequent time. Anything already performed was removed, which led to a reduction of up to 50% in some cases.

aP Design has always come with comprehensive, professional documentation. However, to some, this was a bit overwhelming. Our training team has created some exceptional content in aP Academy to get users up to speed or refresh them at any time. To make things faster to find and more valuable, the Documentation team managed a complete overhaul, with easier navigation and clearer segmentation, reducing it from 350 pages to around 50 without any loss of key information.

This release includes many new and enhanced features. However, it is really just a starting point—a revised foundation on which to build. An exciting roadmap is already being worked on, with the next round of updates on the horizon.

Committed To Enhancement Your Design Optimization

Finally, at least for this update, it is significant in its meaning. aPriori has always been known for its excellence when it comes to evaluating product cost and that still remains true. But we are not stopping there.

In recent years, aPriori has expanded its scope to Design for Manufacturability and, more recently, Sustainability. These additional insights are critical to NPI sourcing managers, design engineers, manufacturing engineers, and anyone else involved in product development.

As a result, it only felt right to change the “Cost” button in aP Design to something more reflective of the insights being delivered. The same calculations are done in market-leading time. However, the Manufacturing Insights of cost, carbon, and manufacturability are just behind a tap of the new “ANALYZE” button.

The entire aPriori team is excited to hear your thoughts and feedback. We encourage you to relay the value and time savings you achieve with your next aP Design Analysis.