ANSYS today announced that its computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT for CATIA V5 was chosen by Honda R&D Co., Ltd. for fluid flow analysis and has contributed significantly to improving design process efficiency. Honda R&D (located in Haga-gun, Tochigi Prefecture; Asaka-shi and Wako-shi, Saitama Prefecture) is a research and development subsidiary of Honda, one of the world's leading automotive manufacturers. Honda's state-of-the-art technology enjoys a high reputation all over the world. At Honda R&D, computer-aided engineering (CAE) has long been considered an important foundation in support of the company's highly advanced technology. To enhance efficiency in design and manufacturing, the company introduced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) into the design cycle as well as in research and development. Honda R&D chose FLUENT for CATIA V5 software, which works within the company's existing major design framework, CATIA V5. "CATIA V5 already has structural analysis features, which now are used efficiently by designers. Equipped with the highly reliable FLUENT solver as its core, FLUENT for CATIA V5 technology has made CFD analysis as easy as structural analysis. This has resulted in increased significance of CAE tools in our development work," commented Kouhei Oosono, chief engineer at Automobile R&D Center of Honda R&D Co., Ltd. FLUENT software, a CFD product from ANSYS, Inc., already is used by a large number of research and development engineers in the automotive industry. The development of FLUENT for CATIA V5 technology was motivated by the need to bring the superior fluid analysis capability of FLUENT software into the CATIA V5 environment. ANSYS engineers developed the product in concert with Honda to best respond to the automotive company's demanding requirements. Based on Honda's decision to choose both FLUENT and FLUENT for CATIA V5 technologies for flow simulation, engineers at Honda have been able to optimize their product development processes. The decision to bring together technology from ANSYS used in conjunction with the CATIA V5 environment is consistent with the ANSYS philosophy of being an open CAE supplier via an adaptive architecture. "The success of this product stems from our ability to be able to work closely with our customers and satisfy their needs," said Joe Fairbanks, vice president, worldwide sales and support at ANSYS, Inc. "The enormous cooperation provided by Honda during the development period is greatly appreciated."