12. Major Technology 6: Digital Mock-Up—DMU

A Digital Mock-Up (DMU) is a digital collection of 3D models that represents a comprehensive physical entity with the help of a structured digital representation. Usually, two different types of comprehensive physical entities are subject for such digital representation, products like e.g. machines, cars, aircrafts, trains or ships and factory or production line environments. This book chapter explains the role of a DMU in product creation, the way a DMU is created from respective data sources and how a DMU is delivered continously to engineering and other functions in industry. A Digital Mock-Up has gained serious attention in Virtual Product Creation since it represents a virtual (“light weight”) representation of the entire product with all its variants, options and versions (depending of the type of DMU). This chapter, therefore, provides an insight into the technical delivery solution for a DMU, the enrichment options to integrate CAE results, DMU based clash and clearance analysis solutions and the extension of a DMU towards FMU (Functional Mock-Up) or FDMU (Functional Digital Mock-Up) solutions. In addition, detailed technical understanding is provided how rich and complex CAD model data can be converted into “light” visualization model formats for DMU usage of complex products and for mega-size DMUs of factory and city environments.