A shorter product life cycle and therefore, reduced
project duration is the major success factor for machinery and
plant engineering today. One use case for Virtual Commission-
ing (VC) is the early software test without an existing plant.
The primary effort of VC lies in the manual creation of the
plant model. There are various simulation tools with different
advantages available. Selecting one tool has consequences for
the whole engineering process. The exchange of models across
different tools is not possible or discouraged by the respective
vendors due to various reasons. This paper describes a concept to
exchange behavior models via the table-based import interfaces
for an automated model generation within common simulation
tools. The concept utilizes an approach to exchange the behavior
of components using the vendor-neutral and standardized pro-
gramming language PLCopenXML containing all IEC 61131-3
programming languages. This removes the main obstacle for a
broader industrial application of VC, as it minimizes the manual
effort for creating and exchanging behavior models through the
use of standardized library elements and existing interfaces.
The concept of the digital twin (DT), which accompanies a plant or machine throughout its entire life cycle, has further reinforced the role of Virtual Commissioning (VC). Of decisive importance for the economically and technically sensible use of the DT is its creation as early as possible in the life cycle. In the field of mechanical engineering, therefore, the first digital artifacts of the DT should ideally already be created in parallel with the mechanical design phase. The first step is the kinematization of the CAD model. This paper presents a new method for the semi-automated kinematization of 3D CAD models. The method uses a verbal description of the motion sequence desired by the designer, based on DIN EN 60848 (GRAFCET) [2] and using elements from VDI Guideline 2860 (handling functions) [8]. The presented method is easy to use and self-describing to a large extent. It enables designers to define in their own domain, in parallel to their mechanical designs, the desired motion sequence of the machine they have designed in machine-readable form. The actual kinematization of the CAD model is performed automatically. At the end, the kinematized design is available in COLLADA format and can be imported via the import interfaces of common simulation tools and can therefore be used for the DT.
In laboratory practicals (labs), students actively investigate technical and scientific phenomena and thus experience autonomy, competence, and social embedding, factors that promote motivation. However, labs mostly rely on highly structured and instructive concepts and often require costly equipment. Therefore, the research question in this paper is: How can learner-centered teaching methods and learning formats be improved by rethinking the digitization of lab practicals?