UGS and Autodesk Form Alliance

By DE Editors

During a morning address yesterday at Daratech Summit 2005 in Cambridge, Massachusetts,UGS Chairman Tony Affuso announced his company had formed an alliance with Autodesk, Inc.(San Rafael, CA) to enable the fast and accurate exchange of productand process information between the JT Open and DWF file formats. Theeffort is aimed at making the two formats compatible so manufacturerscan build products faster and more efficiently.

According to UGS (Plano, TX), the extended interoperability shouldinitially benefit nearly 10 million users worldwide. The two open andcomplementary formats are used for sharing digital product design,engineering, and manufacturing data.

The alliance means Autodesk, a design software company, will become amember of UGS’ JT Open Program, a global initiative to support JT,while UGS, a provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) softwareand services, will join the Autodesk Developer Network and become a DWFDeveloper partner.

“This alliance between UGS and Autodesk puts our customers first byensuring seamless data interoperability between our products andefficient data flow up and down the value chain and betweenorganizations,” said Affuso. “By combining technology strengths andleveraging the widespread adoption of our data formats, UGS andAutodesk will help customers - and the PLM industry at large - advanceto a higher level of manufacturing productivity.”

UGS will support the exchange of DWF format in all its PLM applicationsby expanding upon JT and PLM XML and Autodesk will support the exchangeof JT in its applications with a complementary expansion of DWF-basedtools. More than five million users depend on Autodesk DWF for viewing2D and 3D digital product data, and it is used throughout the globe forsharing complex CAD, engineering, and mapping information.

For more information, visit the UGS website.