In today s competitive manufacturing markets, companies that want to stay in business absolutely must know their customers, develop ideas through sound engineering fundamentals, and rely on computer-based tools such as simulation technology to evaluate and refine designs as quickly and accurately as possible. Manufacturers today do indeed have a wide range of such simulation tools to deploy throughout the product development process. Companies are finding that such tools can be used most effectively to facilitate design innovation if they are blended seamlessly within the product development...

Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. The act of simulating something first requires that a model be developed; this model represents the key characteristics, behaviors and functions of the selected physical or abstract system or process. The model represents the system itself, whereas the simulation represents the operation of the system over time. Simulation is used in many contexts, such as simulation of technology for performance optimization, safety engineering, testing, training, education, and video games. Often, computer experiments...