Digital mockup
Digital MockUp or DMU is a concept that allows the description of a product, usually in 3D, for its entire life cycle. Digital Mockup is enriched by all the activities that contribute to describing the product. The product design engineers, the manufacturing engineers, and the support engineers work together to create and manage the "DMU". One of the objectives is to have an important knowledge of the future or the supported product to replace any physical prototypes with virtual ones, using 3D computer graphics techniques. As an extension it is also frequently referred to as "Digital Prototyping" or  Virtual Prototyping. These two specific definitions refer to the production of a physical prototype, but they are part of the DMU concept. DMU allows engineers to design and configure complex products and validate their designs without ever needing to build a physical model. Among the techniques and technologies which make this possible are: