UGS Corp., a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced its Lifecycle Simulation strategy to provide the PLM industry's first end-to-end integrated digital simulation solution, enabling real-time product development simulation in a collaborative, visual, managed and open environment. Highlights of today's announcement include: * The announcement of Teamcenter for Simulation, the first end-to-end, open, integrated simulation data management environment to bring simulation into the complete product lifecycle management paradigm. In addition, new analysis wizards will be delivered through NX Simulation Process Studio in NX, a unique visual environment for lifecycle simulation. (See article) * In addition, UGS announced a recent wave of new NX Digital Simulation customers and that NX Nastran set a new benchmark in its category by solving a 200 million degrees of freedom model -- the largest and fastest known calculation. (See article) * A technology partnership with FunctionBay, Inc., enabling UGS to leverage RecurDyn multi-body dynamics solver in NX Digital Simulation software. (See article) "Today's announcement represents the latest validation of UGS' ongoing commitment to enable real-time simulation across the product lifecycle to drive product innovation," said UGS Chairman, CEO and President Tony Affuso, who will announce the initiative during his keynote address today at the Daratech Summit 2006 event. "Digital simulation is integral to greater innovation as it enables companies to solve large, complex product development problems and use the results to guide product design decisions as early as possible in the process. For the past five years, we have significantly extended our 40-year history in simulation, and this announcement represents a major achievement in those efforts. While many of our competitors are planning for simulation solutions in the future, UGS is delivering proven products today." Addressing Market Needs UGS' launch of its new simulation initiative enables the company to address the growing need for visual simulation technology. "Daratech's research shows interest in CAE applications, and in how CAE can be leveraged in the product design process, is at all-time high levels," said Monica Schnitger, senior vice president, Market Analysis, Daratech, Inc. "In fact, 60% of respondents to Daratech's recent survey on CAE usage anticipate increasing their investment in CAE in 2006. UGS is clearly a part of this trend, making simulation more pervasive across the product lifecycle." Open Simulation Framework A core component of Lifecycle Simulation is its openness. UGS has extended its proven PLM Open framework by significantly expanding the use of PLM XML across its broad set of simulation solutions, enabling UGS partners and customers to take advantage of the same knowledge and best practice capabilities that UGS leverages for its own applications. In addition, UGS' industry leading JT visualization technology makes simulation results available to everyone, improving collaboration in the validation of ideas. "UGS has an unparalleled reputation for openness within the PLM industry, and our LifecycleSimulationsolution supports our PLM Open strategy by providing an open framework for the integration of simulation into the PLM environment," said Chuck Grindstaff, executive vice president, Products, UGS. "This open strategy defines our unique strength at the enterprise level and adds renewed momentum to our portfolio of leading simulation solutions." For more information, visit its Web site .