In today's competitive landscape, delivering custom products efficiently and accurately is a game-changer. For manufacturers dealing with complex, configurable items, the traditional "Engineer-to-Order" (ETO) or "Configure-to-Order" (CTO) processes can be slow and prone to errors. This is where Rulestream, a powerful configurator software from Siemens Digital Industries Software, steps in to revolutionize your product development lifecycle.
What Exactly is Rulestream?
At its core, Rulestream is designed to capture, store, and leverage your company's valuable engineering and design knowledge to automate complex processes. It's a descendant of the Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) industry, simplifying KBE development with a streamlined, graphical interface. Rulestream's primary goal is to enable efficient and powerful ETO applications for highly complex, custom products, where every customer order might be different.
The "Rules" at the Heart of Rulestream In Rulestream, a "rule" is any thought or piece of knowledge that can be quantified and, therefore, automated. These rules are incredibly versatile and can:
• Govern part selection and quantity.
• Manage geometric relationships like size, location, orientation, and mass properties.
• Compute functional properties.
• Constrain pricing and cost.
• Perform compliance checks.
• Enforce the decision path for generating a set of deliverables.
Object-Based and Demand-Driven Rulestream operates on an object-based paradigm, modeling complex systems by organizing objects into parent/child relationships, much like an assembly of parts. Unlike traditional procedural programming, it uses a group of interacting "objects" where data specific to an object resides. This approach emphasizes modularity, re-usability, and maintainability.
It also employs a demand-driven computation method, meaning calculations are only performed when their results are explicitly needed by another computation or by the user interface. This significantly enhances efficiency by avoiding unnecessary calculations in large, complex models.
The Architecture of Rulestream: Major Components
1. Rulestream Architect (RSA): This client provides a point-and-click authoring interface for subject-matter experts to capture and manage rules and processes into a centralized database. It allows experts to digitize best practices and optimize product content without needing complex computer programming. RSA automatically converts these inputs into executable programs.
2. Rulestream Engineer (RSE): The core business productivity component for design engineers. RSE gathers requirements and leverages the knowledge captured in Architect to automatically create partial or complete designs, 2D and 3D CAD models, analysis models, reports, and Bills of Materials (BOMs). This dramatically speeds up the design process, minimizes errors, and eliminates tedious tasks.
3. Rulestream Thin Client: Similar to RSE, this web interface allows salespeople to gather requirements, perform high-level designs of custom products, and generate quotations online. It radically accelerates proposal development and ensures accurate product costing. Visual Innovations Advanced (VIA) is Rulestream's advanced thin-client user experience, offering a modern, highly visual, and brandable interface suitable for internal teams, partners, and even end customers.
4. Rulestream Platform Server: This is the server-side, hosting a relational database repository for all captured knowledge, design models, design instances, and component information. It includes the Rules Database, Project Database, and an optional Component Database.
Key Modeling Elements within Rulestream
To effectively build applications, Rulestream utilizes several core modeling elements:
• Part Families: The fundamental building blocks, defining types of parts and forming a hierarchical Product Control Model (PCM).
• Properties: Attributes of a part family, which can be constants, calculated by rules, retrieved from databases, or specified at runtime.
• Processes and Process Steps: A process is a sequence of user interface steps defined for top-level part families, controlling the end-user interface. Steps are often categorized as Input, Design, Analyze, or Output.
• Subpart Collections: Used to create parent/child relationships between part families, enabling a tree structure in the PCM.
• Connections: A flexible linking mechanism between part families, allowing one part family to reference another based on the product model configuration.
• Contexts: Define the relative location of a part family within a product model, influencing how rules for properties behave.
• Component Databases: Crucial for leveraging existing company data, such as standard parts and materials, to drive properties and restrict valid user inputs.
Transformative Use Case for Rulestream
Rulestream empowers companies to automate and streamline the entire product development cycle, from initial concept to manufacturing routing. Here are some key use cases and benefits:
Automated Engineering Design & Documentation:
Use Case: Generating precise engineering data, drawings, and BOMs for custom products is time-consuming.
How Rulestream Helps: It integrates seamlessly with various CAD systems (like Siemens NX, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Creo, DWG, JT, Visio) to automatically generate customized 3D models, 2D drawings, and a complete Bill of Materials. This significantly reduces manual effort, ensures design consistency, and improves customization without manual intervention.
Industries that Benefit Most
• Industrial Equipment and Machinery: For configurable products with unique order specifications.
• Automotive: Especially for custom vehicle components and vehicle designs.
• Aerospace and Defense: Where strict regulatory standards and engineering constraints are paramount.
• High-Tech Manufacturing: For electronics, semiconductors, and precision equipment requiring configuration based on customer specifications.
• Energy and Utilities: For custom-built solutions in oil & gas, energy generation, and other utility sectors.
Ready to Transform Your Custom Product Development?
Don't let complex engineering processes slow down your business. Discover how Rulestream can automate your design workflows, accelerate quoting, and capture your valuable engineering expertise before it walks out the door.
See how companies like yours have reduced quote times by 80% and eliminated design errors with Rulestream's intelligent automation. Schedule a personalized Rulestream demo today.
