Virtual engineering (VE) is defined as integrating geometric models and related engineering tools such as analysis, simulation, optimization, and decision making tools, etc., within a computer-generated environment that facilitates multidisciplinary collaborative product development. Virtual engineering shares many characteristics with software engineering, such as the ability to obtain many different results through different implementations.
A virtual engineering environment provides a user-centered, first-person perspective that enables users to interact with an engineered system naturally and provides users with a wide range of accessible tools. This requires an engineering model that includes the geometry, physics, and any quantitative or qualitative data from the real system. The user should be able to walk through the operating system and observe how it works and how it responds to changes in design, operation, or any other engineering modification. Interaction within the virtual environment should provide an easily understood interface, appropriate to the user's technical background and expertise, that enables the user to explore and discover unexpected but critical details about the system's behavior. Similarly, engineering tools and software should fit naturally into the environment and allow the user to maintain her or his focus on the engineering problem at hand. A key aim of virtual engineering is to engage the human capacity for complex evaluation.
The key components of such an environment include:
Virtual engineering allows engineers to work with objects in a virtual space without having to think about the objects' underlying technical information. When an engineer takes hold of a virtual component and moves or alters it, he or she should only have to think about the consequences of such a move in the component's real world counterpart. Engineers must also be able to create a picture of the system, the various parts of the system, and how the parts will interact with each other. When engineers can focus on the making decisions for particular engineering issues rather than the underlying technical information, design cycles and costs are reduced.
Usually, the modules of virtual engineering are named as such:
Other modules can exist performing various other tasks, such as prototype manufacturing and product life cycle management.
