Knovel Accelerates Speed to Solution for Engineers

By DE Editors

Editor’s note: This commentary was sponsored as part of DE’s Visionary Voices section.

Industry leading companies worldwide, including 74 of the Fortune 500, rely on Knovel as a source of trusted technical references. Engineers use Knovel to support design decisions, save time, avoid mistakes and expand their knowledge.

We continually add new content and features to increase the speed by which engineers can find answers to their technical questions. Engineers have an insatiable need for data that often exists in a variety of sources that isn’t convenient to access. Our customers increasingly need to locate reliable data for very detailed requirements that are otherwise time consuming to find.

In response, we have revamped our Data Search functionality to facilitate queries. Additionally, we will also exclusively publish new databases to supplement the technical information in our existing subject areas. The data will include interactive tables, graphs and calculations compiled from authoritative, publicly available and unpublished sources. In Q4 2011, we’ll roll out a Magnesium Alloy Database to extend our coverage of the properties of lightweight, high-strength alloys, and an Optical and Filter Glass Database that will include properties of commercial optical and filter glasses from 16 commercial manufacturers around the world.

In 2012, we’ll offer must-have equations for day-to-day use in several engineering disciplines. They will be in MathML format that can be exported for calculation in software applications, and each equation will have standard metadata for easy keyword search. The equations will be validated by experts and have worked-out calculation examples and links to the sources.

With the new databases and the equation libraries, we further our goal of providing answers and data that engineers can easily incorporate into their workflows.

Sasha Gurke is Senior Vice President & Co-Founder Knovel.