Products: January 2005

By DE Editors

MathML Extends to XMetaL Users

MathFlow Editor 1.0, a publishing workflow release for XMetaL users from Design Science (Long Beach, CA; dessci.com) gives users of Blast Radius’s XMetaL 4.5 Author and XMAX (XMetaL for ActiveX) the ability to compose and edit mathematical expressions in documents expressed in MathML, the XML-based standard for mathematical notation.

MathFlow Editor for XMetaL was developed in partnership with Blast Radius (New York, NY; blastradius.com).

MathFlow Editor uses a point-and-click interface for creating and editing mathematical notation represented in MathML. MathFlow Editor for XMetaL is now shipping. Go to dessci.com for more.

Collaborative Modeler Adds Motion Simulation and Data Management

CoCreate Software Inc. (Fort Collins, CO; cocreate.com) has released OneSpace Designer Modeling 2005, the latest version of its collaborative product development and data management software program. OneSpace Designer Modeling 2005 is a family of products for rapid 3D modeling, 2D drafting and analysis, and team-focused data management and communication.

A new Advanced Design module combines several previous modules into a single solution and adds a new motion simulation capability. Through this module, users also receive mold design, 3D geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GDandT), design simplification, parametric design for parts and assemblies, and 3D inspection capabilities. The new simulation capabilities assist design verification by using motion to identify clashes and verify real-world behavior. Designers also can capture the motion into movie files for sharing with others as part of design reviews or as sales and marketing material.

OneSpace Designer Modeling’s surfacing module has been improved in version 2005. It now enables users to access more high-end surfacing tools without having to abandon their 3D design system for an industrial design package. Enhancements include predictive skinning from loosely defined surface boundaries, streamlined surfacing setup and modification, and other advanced surfacing techniques.

The Model Manager in Designer Modeling now offers increased focus on supporting distributed design product development teams with real-time change notification and more. The program presents a familiar Microsoft XP look and feel. To request a free evaluation copy of OneSpace Designer Modeling 2005, visit cocreate.com/prod_eval.cfm.

KeyCreator Enhances Productivity Support and Interoperability

Kubotek USA (Marlborough, MA; kubotekusa.com) has announced KeyCreator 4.0, the new version of its design and manufacturing software. KeyCreator 4.0, a descendant of CADKEY, delivers more than 200 customer-driven enhancements, focused on productivity, ease of use, file management, and interoperability.

KeyCreator’s productivity enhancements include layout improvements such as circular detail views and a drawing generation wizard; improved diagnostics for healing solids; perspective views; automated bill of material (BOM) generation; intelligent feature editing of standard holes; improved macro support; and sheet metal bend and unbend. New NC (numeric control) enhancements include surface contour roughing with true pocket style material removal, topology analysis, and machining by zone; positional 4-axis milling for both 3D surface and 2D functions; improved constant-Z finishing (plateau finishing); and sample tool library files.

KeyCreator 4.0 offers comprehensive translator support of other design and engineering tools. Interoperability enhancements in version 4 include support for the latest versions of ACIS, AutoCAD, CATIA, Parasolid, Pro/Engineer, Wildfire, SolidWorks, and UG NX. For complete details, visit kubotekusa.com.

NEiNastran Supports 64-bit Computing

CAE software developer Noran Engineering, Inc. (NEi; Westminster, CA; nenastran.com) has announced that its NEiNastran V8.3 has been ported to the Intel (in tel.com) Itanium 2 and the AMD (amd.com) Opteron 64-bit processors running the RedHat (red hat.com) Linux operating system. These processors provide users with a migration pathway from 32- to 64-bit computing. According to the company, users can expect at least a 2x performance increase in speed while performing linear and nonlinear solutions.

NEiNastran is part of NEi’s complete suite of analysis software, among which are linear and nonlinear statics, dynamics, heat transfer, fluid flow, fatigue, and optimization solutions. NEi’s CAE solutions handle complex structural, dynamics, and heat transfer analysis problems on platforms ranging from laptops to heavy-duty engineering workstations.

Noran will deliver NEiNastran for a variety of 32- and 64-bit platforms and operating systems, including SGI IRIX, AIX, 64-bit Windows XP, and PowerPC Mac OS X. For complete details, go to nenastran.com.

GridMathematica Gets Supercomputer Apps

Wolfram Research (Champaign, IL; wolfram.com) has unveiled the second version of gridMathematica, its technical environment for solving demanding engineering, mathematics, science, and finance problems. This latest version is now optimized for all supercomputers, heterogeneous grids, multiprocessor systems, and personal workstations so engineers can develop parallel applications using the Mathematica environment and deploy them on any supercomputer.

Features of gridMathematica 2 include scheduling and performance enhancements, automatic parallelization of wider classes of computations, programmable scheduling for problem-specific tuning, support for speculative parallelism, improved failure recovery and user configurability, universal database connectivity, web services support, high-speed binary I/O, strengthened string manipulation, and full optimization for all 64-bit architectures.

Built on the Mathematica foundation, gridMathematica is said to be well-suited for numerical supercomputing applications and parallel processing of such complex non-numeric data as images, 2D and 3D vector graphics, geospatial information, genomic sequences, algebraic formulas, logical and program constructs, and general symbolic data. Visit wolfram.com for more information.

View and Print More AutoCAD Drawings and DXF Files

CAD Systems Unlimited, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA; slickwin.com) has introduced Slick! View v1.0, a new version of Slick! that supports the viewing and printing of AutoCAD drawings and dxf files from Release 12 thru AutoCAD 2005. The easy-to-use program includes a print preview; zoom in and out capability and a zoom window that is always active; a print-to-black option; the ability to stamp the date and filename on printouts; support for drawing layouts and named views; an expandable directory tree structure; and file folders that are always present. Price: $49. A product evaluation is available at slickwin.com/skftp/slickviewx.exe.

Power Booleans Now Available with 3ds Max 7.0 Support

nPower Software (San Diego, CA; npowersoftware.com) is currently shipping Power Booleans 3.0 for 3ds Max/VIZ. nPower says the software is easier to use, faster, and more powerful than previous versions. Power Booleans 3.0 has been enhanced with capabilities requested by customers and also supports version 7.0 of 3ds Max and VIZ 2005.

Among the new features are a cutter tool, user interface improvements, increased speed, and bug fixes for reported problems. The Power Cutter is used for creating objects that explode, fall apart, shatter, or need to fit together like a 3D puzzle. It saves time over other methods for creating similar effects and facilitates creation of section views, assembly views, and construction sequencing. The new version is about two times faster than version 2 and allows the user to select a group of objects to participate in a Boolean operation.

Power Booleans is powered by POPLib, a polygonal modeling kernel from IntegrityWare (San Diego, CA; integrityware.com). Price: $295. For more information, a 5-minute video tutorial, and a free 30-day evaluation copy, visit npowersoftware.com.

PLM FOR SMBs

Omnify 2.8 is a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution for mid-sized manufacturers. According to Omnify Software (Wilmington, MA; omnifysoft.com), version 2.8 enhances product development throughout the enterprise by providing a single, central location for managing product data. This web-based product offers out-of-the-box, bidirectional integration with existing design and business systems.

Omnify 2.8 features a new search engine that let users specify a keyword or search phrase and can search any specified fields within the system. It provides a multithreaded searching function to return search values immediately while concurrently processing a background search, enabling users to continue to interact with the program. Another feature lets users define fields that must be filled in before submitting a new part request or ECO. This allows the system to set up defaults that must be adhered to in order to ensure that the appropriate data is supplied prior to the request. A reporter module provides new standard reports such as change history and approved vendors as well as the ability to compare BOMs. For more, visit omnifysoft.com.

Real-Time Quality and Performance Insight

SigmaSure Enterprise Edition from SigmaQuest (Santa Clara, CA; sigmaquest.com) is a web-architected, global-product quality and performance-intelligence tool designed to eliminate organization inefficiencies, reduce manufacturing-transformation costs, and improve product quality and reliability.

SigmaSure’s new features include a personalized dashboard; discovery wizards incorporating industry-best practices for knowledge discovery; and a module that captures the as-built configuration to provide a complete genealogical record for each unit that is manufactured and shipped. SigmaSure is available for Linux, Windows, Unix, and Macs. It includes an embedded enterprise database that runs on any browser. For details, visit sigmaquest.com.

ANSYS 9 Melds Simulation Tools and Development Environment

ANSYS (Cannonsburg, PA; ansys.com) has released ANSYS 9.0, featuring electromagnetic, computational fluid dynamics, and mesh creation simulation technologies integrated within the ANSYS Workbench product development environment. Workbench’s easy-to-use architecture, says ANSYS, eliminates manual file transfers, result translations, and re-analyses, saving time and money.

ANSYS 9.0 extends core features and offers robust design capabilities as well as mechanics,CFD, high-frequency electromagnetics, and multiphysics functionalities. Its new technology for large-scale parallel computing lets users analyze complete systems without unnecessary approximations to models.

For more about ANSYS 9.0, visit ansys.com/product/newfeatures.

New Notebook Includes PCI Express Upgradeable Video Card

The New D900T Phantom from Eurocom (Nepean, ONT; eurocom.com) is a new notebook computer that includes an upgradable NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Go graphics card via a 256MB NVIDIA Mobile PCI Express bus.

The Phantom runs on an Intel Pentium 4 processor with 1MB cache (socket-775) upgradable to 3.6GHz, has 4GB DDR2 dual-channel mobile memory, and configurable RAID on two physical SATA hard drives. The Phantom also includes an 8x slot-loading dual-layer DVD burner and a 17 in. screen.

Additional features include a digital TV tuner, a 7-in-1 card reader, two FireWire (IEEE1394a) ports and ExpressCard slot, wireless LAN, and Bluetooth Internet connection. It also includes four speakers and a subwoofer, an internal web cam for video conferencing, and a full-sized 102-key 25-inch-long desktop-like keyboard with a separate non-embedded numeric keypad.

Eurocom says the Pentium 4 processor with 1MB of cache (LGA775) and high-bandwidth PCI Express architecture alleviates the limitations and bottlenecks of the traditional notebook or PC, opening up a wealth of possibilities for 2D and 3D designers, video and audio producers, scientists, engineers, and researchers. Price: $2,499 (to start). For more information, visit eurocom.com.

GibbsCAM 2004+ Provides Enhanced Visualization and New Modules

GibbsCAM 2004+ is the latest version of computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine programming software from Gibbs and Associates (Moorpark, CA; gibbscam.com). Enhanced process simulation capabilities have been added to Gibbs-CAM, and it introduces two new modules.

The enhanced visualization capability offers improvements like dynamic view orientation without requiring the image to be regenerated; control of various scene aspects like lighting orientation, material colors and background; and transparent stock display. It also has the ability to export STL models of work-in-process stock for reuse, and comparisons between in-process stock and finished parts.

GibbsCAM 2004+ also introduces the tombstone management system (TMS), a module that improves the efficiency of programming tombstone-fixtured parts that automatically generates the offsets and rotations necessary to support a variety of part layouts and machining strategies. It also includes a new machine simulation option that allows part program motion to be validated offline to save time spent validating the program on a machine tool. An exact model of the machine tool is built and set up with fixturing and tooling as it would be configured on the shop floor.

In addition to these improvements, GibbsCAM 2004+ also ensures compatibility with the latest versions from mainstream, PC-based CAD vendors like Autodesk Inventor R9, SolidWorks 2005, and Solid Edge 16, as well as integrated MCAE systems such as Pro/Engineer Wildfire 2, CATIA V4, and CATIA V5.

For more information, visit gibbscam.com.

Multisim 8 Enables Earlier Testing to Cut Circuit Design Time

Multisim 8 from Electronics Workbench (Toronto, ONT; electronicsworkbench.com) takes advantage of today’s high-performance computers and modern software architecture by saving designers from repetitive capture tasks, speeding up simulations, and freeing engineers to create, test, and fine-tune designs. According to Electronics Workbench, that means current users will save nearly 50 percent of the time they spend on running simulations when they upgrade.

The major features of Multisim 8 include virtual instruments from Tektronix (Richardson TX; tektronix.com) so engineers can validate and optimize their circuits during the schematic entry stage of the design process rather than wait for a prototype; a new Dynamic Probes function so a circuit schematic can be annotated in real time; dynamic values such as current and voltage to provide immediate feedback; a function called Simulation Profiles so users can configure, save, and reuse complete SPICE simulation parameter setups to further save time; and the ability to attach design notes, annotations, and comments from reviewers at any point and that automatically pop up when mousing over a circuit.

Other benefits include functionality supplements to the component library, facilitating the rapid creation of even more types of component models from data book values (such as transformers, converters, motors, etc.); a new Worst-Case Algorithm to test circuits under the worst expected conditions; and a new Amplifier Circuit Wizard to automatically create circuitry that matches user-supplied parameters. Price: $1,995 (to start). Complete design suites range from $3,995 to $6,995. Check for software updates automatically and get more information at electronicsworkbench.com.

Pocket-sized Digital Multimeters for Easy Portability and Functionality

Meterman Test Tools (Everett, WA; metermantesttools.com) has developed a new PM Series of ultra-compact digital multimeters (DMMs) that offers user protection with UL safety ratings up to CAT III at 300V and CAT II at 600V.

Slightly larger than a credit card, 3/8 in. thick, and weighing less than 3 oz., each PM meters feature an oversize display and built-in leads. PM series meters measure AC/DC voltage, frequency, capacitance, and resistance using an audible continuity beeper. There are three models in the series offering a range of features. For more information, visit metermantesttools.com.

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