ENGINEERING

Altair Engineering, Inc. a global leader recognized for innovative product development and advanced engineering software today announced the public release of Altair HyperWorks Data Manager (HDM). HDM is an automated data management solution specifically designed to efficiently manage, share and control engineering simulation and test data at both the user and enterprise level, regardless of the size of the organization. "As companies look for ways to reduce the cost of designing better products, computer aided engineering (CAE) is playing an increasingly significant role in the product development process," said Alhad Joshi, director of Enterprise Software Consulting for Altair Engineering. "The growth in the number of CAE simulations performed as well as the volume of test data have created an industry need for engineering data and process management tools to track this information, which, in turn, led to our development of HyperWorks Data Manager." Michel Vrinat, senior analyst with noted market research firm, Collaborative Product Development and Associates, added, "A consistent CAE data model must serve and represent all simulation data types, which range broadly from CFD to structural analysis. This model must capture and reconcile the necessary data relationships to maintain consistency with other external, dependent applications. Processes involved with other data models -- such as those for design or requirements -- should be defined as well. In developing HyperWorks Data Manager, Altair takes a major step in that direction." HyperWorks Data Manager is an open, extensible, enterprise data management solution for the CAE industry and engineering community. Built on the popular Altair HyperWorks Process Manager framework, HDM leverages a generic engineering data model to address the data management needs and requirements for virtual simulation and physical test activities. "Product data management (PDM) of CAD data within workgroups and enterprises is well established in the global manufacturing community," said Altair's Keith Parmentier, HyperWorks Data Manager business development director. "However, automating CAE workflow and efficiently managing CAE data within PDM architectures has lacked this tight integration. With the commercial release of HDM, CAE analysts can now manage, organize and control their data and processes, with transparent access to the latest product information that has been checked into deployed PDM systems and enterprise databases." HyperWorks Data Manager provides engineering departments and manufacturers with: * A PDES Engineering Analysis Core Model (EACM) and Step AP209 compliant data model, which enables compatibility with third-party PDM solutions * Consistency between as-analyzed and as-tested product assemblies, which improves product quality and lower development costs * A foundation to build and deploy data management best practices for CAE and test activities * Improved resource efficiency and results accuracy, made possible by automating and enabling easy access to the latest product, CAE and test data * Automated tracking and logical organization of all end-user CAE inputs, outputs and iterations in the context of engineering "projects" * Centralized engineering data storage, which provides efficient archival and accessibility to product teams * Transparent access to the latest product data available in enterprise databases and PDM systems for the end user -- a feature that eliminates the need to train CAE analysts in multiple enterprise data management systems * An automated environment for manufacturers and suppliers to easily share quality data The non-intrusive ability of HDM to logically archive CAE and test related data allows the end-user community to efficiently mine and better utilize this data on current and forward programs. As a result, design and engineering teams can provide faster turnaround of design direction, quickly perform trade-off studies and improve the level of correlation between test and analytical results -- further reducing the resources and time to physically validate new products. For more information on HyperWorks Data Manager, including dates and times for live webcast seminars, please visit http://www.altair.com/hdm .