NVIDIA GTC 2022: Collaborative Digital Twins in manufacturing
How we leveraged NVIDIA Omniverse and Universal Scene Description to build collaborative digital twins of our composite manufacturing lines.
Industrial manufacturing projects are often slowed down by fragmented software applications. The mechanical designer, industrial architect, and simulation engineer all work in separate, incompatible software formats, resulting in slow file exchanges and communication gaps.
By adopting NVIDIA Omniverse as our coordination hub, we established a single source of truth using the Universal Scene Description (USD) format. This post details our NVIDIA GTC 2022 presentation on how we built collaborative digital twins to streamline advanced manufacturing.
Table of contents
- The Challenge of Software Tool Isolation
- Universal Scene Description (USD) as the Unified File Format
- Multi-User Real-Time Collaboration in Action
- Summary: The Connected Factory Floor
The Challenge of Software Tool Isolation
In a typical product layout cycle, files are passed sequentially from one team member to another. The mechanical designer builds parts in CAD, the manufacturing engineer lays out the assembly line in a layout tool, and the visual designer imports the models into a rendering package.
This sequential pipeline has major pain points:
- Version Control Fatigue: Any minor update in the CAD file requires everyone down the line to re-import and re-configure their setups.
- Feedback Delays: Manufacturing engineers cannot easily show CAD designers how a component design impacts assembly line clearance until late in the project.
- Visual Inconsistencies: Different departments look at different levels of detail, leading to misunderstandings.
KEY TAKEAWAY: The lack of a shared design environment forces teams to work in isolation, which delays layout validation and increases the risk of design errors.
Universal Scene Description (USD) as the Unified File Format
At GTC 2022, we demonstrated how Universal Scene Description (USD) removes this isolation. USD acts like the HTML of 3D data, allowing different software tools to read and write to the same file database simultaneously.
Rather than exporting static files, we set up live sync connections (Omniverse Connectors) to our main applications:
- Astro/Fusion 360: Sends raw component geometries to the USD database.
- Ansys: Feeds structural stress and displacement displacement data into the same file.
- Omniverse USD Composer: Serves as the central viewport, combining CAD models, simulation data, and photorealistic lighting into a single scene.
Figure 1: Collaborative digital twin environment showing real-time manufacturing coordination.
Multi-User Real-Time Collaboration in Action
With this setup, our design reviews became interactive. A designer in Tennessee and a manufacturing partner in California could walk through a virtual layout of the factory floor together inside the Omniverse.
If we noticed that a robotic arm clearance was too tight, we could modify the frame assembly CAD model, and the change updated in the virtual workspace instantly. The simulation engineer could verify the load path changes live, and the visual layout team validated the clearance without exporting files.
Summary: The Connected Factory Floor
Building a collaborative digital twin using open USD standards changes how hardware engineering teams coordinate.
Key takeaways:
- USD unifies the pipeline: Replaces disjointed file exports with a single, live-updating database.
- Connect teams, not just software: Allows mechanical, simulation, and layout engineers to collaborate in real time.
- Accelerate layout validation: Resolve structural and space conflicts virtually before cutting material.
Q&A
Q: Do you need a high-performance server to run this? A: We run an Omniverse Nucleus server locally on our network to coordinate the USD files. The heavy rendering calculations are handled by the RTX GPUs in our workstations.
Q: Does USD preserve CAD constraint relationships? A: USD is primarily a scene layout and rendering description. While it does not preserve CAD sketch parameters, it preserves assembly hierarchies, transformations, and material definitions, which are essential for layout validation.