Editor's Pick: Access Simulation Throughout Design

Dear DE Reader:

Not so long ago a bit of structural or flow analysis functionality embedded in CAD—or otherwise readily CAD-accessible—rocked the design engineering world's boat. The druids of analysis thundered that it was like handing toddlers heavy weapons. Some CAD jocks were irked that once again they had to do somebody else's job without the training. Yet the idea caught on, evolved and now simulation-driven design has become the wave of the future.

In a recent double-barreled release, Altair announced the availability of its Altair Inspire simulation-driven design platform and Altair 365, a cloud-based engineering collaboration platform. Young'uns, these platforms are a long way from the dumbed-down CAD-accessible CAE tools that caused such a ruckus back then.

Altair Inspire is meant to enable simulation-driven design throughout the entire product development process from concept to manufacturing. It provides simulation solutions for generative design/topology optimization, engineering analysis and manufacturability.

The platform offers what Altair calls a 3D hybrid modeling and rendering environment. Its manufacturing simulation tools can handle such processes as casting, metal and polymer extrusion and sheet metal forming. Whatever your design and engineering shtick, Altair Inspire's capabilities operate in a single user environment that should be friendly to you regardless of your simulation experience level.

The Altair 365 engineering collaboration platform is hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing service. So, right away you know that it puts you into the realm of scalable high-performance computing and graphics processing.

The skinny is that it provides you the on-demand nimbleness to access Altair Inspire and Altair's full solidThinking suite of model-based development, concept design and manufacturing simulation tools. You can use it for surge power, add one-off specialized tools to your design arsenal, whatever. Altair 365 has the identical user experience and simulation tools as Altair Inspire, but it also offers additional services like visual collaboration, version control and secure data management.

Altair 365 uses Altair's new solidThinking units licensing model. You can get more details about solidThinking units and how they work from a link in today's main write-up. For now, think of them as a method that can get every team access to a library of software tools without the hassles of traditional software licensing schemes.

Simulation-driven design is the coming wave. Hit today's link to learn more about the Altair Inspire and Altair 365 platforms. Visit their landing pages and take in the video intros.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, DE