From Conception Phase up to Virtual Verification Using AutomationML

This paper describes an innovative approach and infrastructure for a collaborative production engineering environment – from conception phase up to virtual verification. The presented approach allows the exchange of intelligent components for virtual commissioning between different engineering tools. The components provide in addition to geometric information (which is a common feature) also their logical behavior. An application programming interface (API) enables the integration of these components (so-called SmartComponents) into various engineering tools of different domains. Manufacturer of engineering tools may use the provided API to create, import and export single SmartComponents as well as the complete product or resource structure and reuse them in different tools. Thus, functional, virtual product catalogs may be offered and applied to different simulation or programming systems. Based on a standardized specification, SmartComponents, which are virtual representations of real components, enable the exchange of their full functionality between heterogeneous engineering tools.