Product design for hardware products requires a great deal of documentation. The amount of documentation increases as the complexity of the hardware product increases. 3D files, PDF documents, simulations and testing notations can quickly grow to an astronomical quantity of documentation. When the complexity of a hardware product reaches the level of a rocket engine or satellite, the number of engineers and designers working on the project generally increases. This leads to well-known interoperability issues that can amplify the potential for small errors to jeopardize the objective of the said hardware product exponentially.
In response to these challenges, Germany-based startup Valispace is calling itself the “GitHub for hardware.” What is a “GitHub for hardware”? For Valispace, it is a browser-based collaboration platform for hardware product design that enables engineers and designers to stay on the same page and avoid interoperability pitfalls.
It works by storing engineering information as formulas that are updated in realtime across the platform for a project team with distributed collaborators. If one value of a stored formula is changed, all other values across the platform are updated with the same change. Simulations run every time there is a change to a value within the data, and documentation is rewritten automatically.
Valispace provides users with a free demonstration, allowing you to tinker with different rocket engines and get a feel for how the platform works.
Bottom Line
The browser-based nature of Valispace seems prescient in the face of our current work-from-home and social distancing reality thanks to the spread of the coronavirus. Many different companies, individuals and organizations are working to help produce more ventilators and ventilator components to help address the current shortage in many hospitals and medical facilities around the world.
Valispace has joined the CoVent-19 Challenge and is offering free accounts to engineers who are working on ventilator applications.