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PTC to acquire Onshape

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PTC announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Onshape, creators of Software as a Service (SaaS) product development platform that unites computer aided design (CAD) with data management and collaboration tools, for approximately $470 million, net of cash acquired.
The acquisition is expected to accelerate PTC’s ability to attract new customers with a SaaS-based product offering and position the company to capitalize on the inevitable industry transition to SaaS. Pending regulatory approval and satisfaction of other closing conditions, the transaction is expected to be completed in November 2019.

Located in Cambridge, MA, Onshape was founded in 2012 by CAD pioneers and tech legends, including Jon Hirschtick, John McEleney, and Dave Corcoran, inventors and former executives of SolidWorks. Onshape has secured more than $150 million in funding from leading venture capital firms and has more than 5,000 subscribers around the world. The company’s software offering is delivered in a SaaS model, making it accessible from any connected location or device, eliminating the need for costly hardware and administrative staff to maintain. Distributed and mobile teams of designers, engineers, and others can benefit from the product’s cloud nature, enabling them to improve collaboration and to dramatically reduce the time needed to bring new products to market – while simultaneously staying current with the latest software.

This acquisition is the logical next step in PTC’s overall evolution to a recurring revenue business model, the first step of which was the company’s transition to subscription licensing, completed in January 2019. The SaaS model, while nascent in the CAD and PLM market, is rapidly becoming industry best practice across most other software domains.

Onshape will operate as a business unit within PTC, with current management reporting directly to PTC President and CEO Jim Heppelmann.

Barclays acted as exclusive financial advisor to PTC on the transaction.

PTC
www.ptc.com

Volume Graphics releases new generation of CT Software

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–Volume Graphics announced the latest generation of its software solutions for non-destructive quality assurance with industrial computed tomography (CT): Version 3.3 of VGSTUDIO MAX, VGSTUDIO, VGMETROLOGY, and VGinLINE.

VGSTUDIO MAX software is used for the analysis and visualization of industrial computed tomography (CT) data and covers all requirements related to metrology, defect detection and assessment, material properties, and simulation.

Using the new version, customers can determine the surfaces of multi-material components, export measurement and analysis results to store them centrally in quality-management software, automate inspection processes more flexibly based on text recognition, and translate real CT data into volume meshes for simulation.

To further support their customers, Volume Graphics has also added a Technical Consulting unit that provides professional consulting and evaluation services.

“With version 3.3 of our software solutions, we are once again laying the foundation for customers to make their processes smarter,” says Christof Reinhart, CEO and co-founder of Volume Graphics GmbH.

“For example, using the new data export, metrology data derived with the tremendous measurement capabilities of our software can be seamlessly shared with QA systems, where the values can then be combined and checked over time. More than ever before, this new feature enables customers to better integrate leading-edge CT technology into their existing software landscape. The new export feature is based on the native support of the widely used Q-DAS format, which makes using results in third-party statistical or analysis software especially easy.”

An overview of the innovations in VGSTUDIO MAX 3.3: Multi-material surface determination

–A new mode of the local-adaptive-surface determination enables the simultaneous determination of the surfaces of each material within a volume in one go
–This significantly simplifies the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing of multi-material objects, e.g., the position of metal pins of a connector relative to the plastic housing
–The new mode also facilitates segmentation of multi-material objects

Support of native data export in Q-DAS format

–There is now native support for data export in Q-DAS format for both VGSTUDIO MAX and the VGMETROLOGY metrology solution, as well as the VGinLINE solution for automated CT inspection
–Companies that still work with traditional measurement systems can switch to this comprehensive CT measurement technology without encountering software hurdles or having to forego their established processes for further statistical evaluation
–Export of detailed, CT-based measurement and analysis results (coordinate measurement, nominal/actual comparison, wall thickness analysis, porosity/inclusion analysis, fiber composite material analysis) is now enabled in the common Q-DAS data exchange format

OCR-based automation
–New optical character recognition (OCR) allows customers to read out text in CT scans, such as object identifiers, and store the recognized text in their meta information
–In automated inspection workflows, cavity markers in CT scans of injection molded or cast components can be recognized and the right reference object or the appropriate analysis in VGinLINE jobs can then be selected depending on the respective cavity
–At the same time, the recognized text improves the traceability of the results, since the information about the cavities can be included in the reports

 

Volume meshing for simulations
–With the new Volume Meshing Module, users can create accurate and high-quality tetrahedral volume meshes from their CT scans for use in mechanical, fluid, thermal, electrical, and other FEM simulations in third party software
–This is based directly on the subvoxel-accurate surface determination for scanned parts or material samples consisting of one or more materials
–The individual components of multi-material objects are translated into volume meshes with congruent tetrahedron faces and shared nodes at material interfaces
–The complete workflow from CT scan to volume mesh is covered
–Generated volume meshes can be exported in common .pat and .inp file formats
–Each cell of the generated volume mesh can be loaded with additional information required for simulation, such as fiber orientations, fiber volume fractions, porosity volume fractions, or gray values

Backed by 20 years’ experience in industrial CT, the new Technical Consulting unit analyzes the specific requirements of each customer’s application(s), creates optimal software configurations and general CT hardware specifications, and offers complete evaluations as a contract service

Volume Graphics
www.volumegraphics.com

COMSOL News 2019 success stories: Simulation applications enable collaboration in developing new products

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COMSOL Inc. published its annual compilation of customer success stories featured in the latest edition of COMSOL News. This year’s issue features a variety of academic and commercial examples from engineers who push the limits of technology using COMSOL Multiphysics® for innovative modeling, simulation, and application design.

Collaboration is key when designing products that will change our future in unforeseeable ways. In this year’s issue of COMSOL News we find that everyone from students to professionals are working together. Both with each other and their customers to uncover the next development in their design work.

“Every year we feature some of our most innovative customers in COMSOL News. This year’s edition is no exception,” says Bernt Nilsson, Senior VP of Marketing, COMSOL Inc. “What stands out now is the expanding use of simulation, far beyond the R&D departments. Custom simulation applications are taking off. We’re thrilled to report on companies such as Viega who is bringing simulation to their sales team to design cooling and heating systems.”

COMSOL News 2019 features more than a dozen articles discussing a wide variety of projects using multiphysics modeling and simulation applications. Featured topics include: radiant heating and cooling, simulation applications, digital twins, hyperloop pod design, optical antenna design, battery design, and smart cities among others.

Availability
COMSOL News 2019 is available as an online magazine and can be viewed or downloaded in PDF format at: www.comsol.com/offers/comsol-news-2019.

COMSOL

ThingWorx 8.5 coming in late summer 2019

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ThingWorx 8.5 combines new capabilities with domain-specific solutions to serve the digital transformation needs of industrial enterprises worldwide.

Among the new and enhanced capabilities are tools that simplify the composition and deployment of solutions. Customers will be able to configure applications faster and deploy them across multiple sites and geographies. For those who want more readymade solutions, ThingWorx also offers pre-built, pre-configured capabilities for engineering, manufacturing, and service. This latest version of ThingWorx brings enhanced integration with Microsoft Azure IoT and includes additional tools for rolling out solutions at an enterprise scale.

The new ThingWorx Navigate Digital Change Management Application enables internal and external users to actively participate in change management. The series of ThingWorx Navigate Contribute Apps will expand on NavigateView suite, which makes information easily available and facilitates collaboration across the enterprise. Powered by the digital thread, engineers have real-time access to connected product data in ThingWorx to drive the design of next-generation products.

Manufacturing
ThingWorx 8.5 is now compatible with Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk Analytics. Additionally, PTC will be releasing ThingWorx Kepware Edge to provide flexible deployment of reliable and secure connectivity for dispersed equipment.

Service
PTC’s service solution suite enables service organizations to transform from cost centers to profit centers and drive product and service innovation through new IIoT-enabled business models. The service optimization solution allows companies to improve margins by minimizing truck rolls and increasing first time-fix rates. With ThingWorx 8.5, digital
service delivery is enhanced through a deepened integration with Microsoft Azure,
enabling manufacturers to now use the ThingWorx Software Content Management App
with the Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Edge.

PTC
ptc.com

COMSOL Multiphysics includes tools to support 5G, IoT design

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COMSOL announced the latest advances in its COMSOL Multiphysics software to support microwave and RF engineers working on 5G, IoT, automotive radars and satellite communications. With these tools, designers can model different PCB materials and study how they affect the performance of microwave and millimeter wave circuits. Several of the application examples to guide designers will be introduced at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) 2019.

“We are particularly excited to demonstrate how to set up and run a simulation to design and evaluate a Grounded Coplanar Waveguide (GCPW) line,” said Jiyoun Munn, technical product manager of the RF Module at COMSOL. “Connectors and low loss materials are the key components across all electronic devices and systems. Their reliability is critical in circuits that transmit and receive information.”

The use of simulation to achieve low insertion loss and reliable circuit performance in a design, requires choosing accurate material properties such as relative dielectric constant and loss tangent, while also considering surface roughness effects in the computer model.
“As the frequency increases, maintaining the impedance become more complex, as small quirks arising from the geometry or selected materials can be magnified,” explains Bill Rosas, Cofounder of Signal Microwave. “Simulation allows us to ensure that these critical pieces of RF infrastructure are optimized for 5G communications.”

Designing components ready for 5G, IoT, automotive radars and satellite communications will require multiphysics modeling. Using COMSOL Multiphysics microwave and RF designers can couple electromagnetic simulations with heat transfer, structural mechanics, fluid flow, and other physical phenomena, allowing them to represent coupled physics effects as they would occur in the real world. That means being able to accurately investigate designs and fully benefit from the virtual prototyping capabilities multiphysics simulation offers.

COMSOL
www.comsol.com/rf-module

Software automates the selection of interior or exterior parts in detailed CAD assemblies

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CoreTechnologie (CT) presents its latest version of the “3D_Evolution Simplifier” software with new functions. The new selection tool is for digital mock-up and VR applications and helps simplify large assemblies of cars, trucks, planes and trains.


Scope of data as a challenge
For VR and DMU requirements in practice often only the external or internal parts of a very large vehicle assembly are needed. Especially with extremely large assemblies such as trains, aircraft and automobiles, the selection of the desired components or sub-assemblies can be difficult and take a large amount of manual work and time. Even modern 3D systems quickly reach their limits as complete and detailed car assembly needs to be displayed to manually select the desired scope.

Balloon selects the Interior
CoreTechnologie’s team has developed a new voxel-based function for the 3D_Evolution Simplifier software tool. The software tool selects the desired items through a so-called balloon stretching out from a user defined starting point. There is practically no limit to the size of the data. The selection process takes place within the shortest space of time by using multiprocessor calculation. The automatically selected models, which represent either the interior or exterior, can be converted to all common 3D formats.

The software offers direct interfaces for major systems such as Catia V5 and V6, NX, Solidworks, Creo, Inventor as well as standard formats such as STEP, JT, FBX, DWG and DGN. A clever side effect of the balloon calculation is that the contact body consisting of voxels is representing the interior volume minus all bodies contained therein and thus represents the volume of air or liquid inside. Thus, the automatically created model is a closed volume that can also be used for further simulation purposes.

Envelop Geometry improves CAD performance
From detailed engine, gearbox or machine and plant assemblies, the Simplifier generates exact enveloping bodies as solid geometry, with significantly smaller file sizes and thereby guarantees CAD and VR performance with up to 95% reduction in element count. The simplified models represent an exact representation of the outer shell whose inner geometry has been completely removed.

In addition, the simplified shell provides the advantage of sending 3D data, effectively protecting valuable know-how. When collaborating with suppliers, customers or partners, as well as in downstream processes, automatic selection and envelope geometry generation of complex components is an integral part of the PLM process chain, both for the protection of know-how and for the automated creation of lightweight 3D models used for VR and DMU process or for further operations in the CAD system.

CoreTechnologie
www.coretechnologie.com

Altair Engineering completes acquisition of Datawatch Corporation

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Altair Engineering Inc. announced that it has completed its previously announced acquisition of Datawatch Corporation (“Datawatch”). Datawatch provides data intelligence with market leading enterprise data preparation, predictive analytics and visualization solutions that fuel business analytics.

“We are very pleased to welcome the Datawatch team as our newest Altairians with the completion of this acquisition,” said James Scapa, Altair’s Founder, Chairman, and CEO. “With a shared vision around the convergence of simulation and data science, we believe Datawatch’s current and developing products and technologies can significantly enhance the value Altair delivers to our customers. We are well-positioned to execute on the new opportunities Datawatch provides us while building on their vibrant existing business.”

The acquisition of Datawatch was structured as a merger under Section 251(h) of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware following the successful completion of Altair’s previously announced tender offer to purchase all issued and outstanding shares of common stock of Datawatch for $13.10 per share in cash, without interest and less any applicable withholding taxes.

As a result of the merger, subject to certain potential exceptions provided for in the merger agreement, all remaining shares of Datawatch common stock not previously tendered into Altair’s tender offer were converted into the right to receive $13.10 per share in cash, without interest and less any applicable withholding taxes.

Datawatch has requested that Nasdaq Capital Market file a Form 25 with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission causing the delisting of Datawatch’s common stock from Nasdaq Capital Market. Altair expects that Datawatch’s common stock will cease trading as of the close of trading on December 13, 2018.

Altair
www.altair.com

Dassault Systèmes and Cognata announce partnership to accelerate launch of safer autonomous vehicles

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Dassault Systèmes and Cognata, Ltd. announced that they are partnering to embed Cognata’s Autonomous Vehicle Simulation Suite into Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The partnership will help autonomous vehicle makers define, test and experience autonomous driving throughout the development cycle within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform brings features such as Smart, Safe and Connected to the transportation and mobility industry. Cognata’s simulation solution enables autonomous vehicle manufacturers to run thousands of different scenarios based on various geographic locations, traffic patterns, and weather conditions.

Incorporating the Cognata simulation suite into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and leveraging CATIA systems engineering and applications, gives engineers a one-stop-shop for autonomous vehicle design, engineering, simulation and program management.

“Simulation is key at all stages of cyber systems engineering. Billions of miles must be virtually run before a car can be considered safe. AI-powered experiences that combines vehicle behavior, sensors and traffic models allow alternative designs to be tested in the concept phase to identify the optimal engineering solution,” said Philippe Laufer, CATIA CEO.

Said Danny Atsmon, CEO and Founder of Cognata, “The earlier simulation is used, the easier it is for engineers to modify each component of the autonomous vehicle and test it through a virtual environment, to see how it works once incorporated in the vehicle and confronted with unexpected edge cases.”

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

Cognata
www.cognata.com

COMSOL Learning Center available to all engineers

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COMSOL announces the COMSOL Learning Center is now available to all engineers.

“This collection of instructional videos serves as a one-stop shop to learn how to use the software,” comments Amelia Halliday, Product Content Engineer, COMSOL. “The COMSOL Learning Center will provide COMSOL users with a breadth and depth of learning that fully equips and enables them to take on any simulation situation.”

There are 30+ self-service, self-paced tutorials consisting of videos and additional resources such as exercise model files and blog posts for an interactive and hands-on learning experience. The contents are based on the fundamental steps in the modeling and simulation workflow, including building a geometry, adding physics, solving, and postprocessing results.

“The COMSOL Learning Center is available to any engineer that is interested in adopting multiphysics modeling,” adds Andrew Griesmer, Product Content Manager, COMSOL. “We want to make sure our customers get the most out of COMSOL Multiphysics, and this online resource delivers on that by providing a guided learning expericence to all types of users, at their own pace, anytime and anywhere.”

COMSOL
www.comsol.com/learning-center

Zuken, CADENAS and ECAD-Port announce component library cooperation

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Zuken signed a partnership agreement with CADENAS, a leading provider of online component libraries, and ECAD-Port, a specialized provider for electrical components library services.

The three partners will provide online access to free, validated, high-quality electrical component data to users of Zuken’s E³.series electrical design tools. The agreement will extend the CADENAS offering of intelligent engineering data from more than 700 component manufactures through the addition of electrical content provided directly by OEM component manufacturers. The partnership is expected to rapidly grow the CADENAS library from its current number of 250 electrical, fluid and automation manufacturers. It will achieve these benefits for electrical designers:

–Users of Zuken’s E³.series ECAD environment will gain direct access to the CADENAS component portal where they can search for components and load the required parts directly into E³.series. This digital engineering data are enriched with intelligent information such as electronic symbols, connections points and technical product information.
–ECAD-Port will be available as a service provider to OEMs for content creation and attribute mapping services using both eCl@ss and E³.series formats.
–ECAD-Port will provide mapping assistance to all E³.series customers who operate an E³.database, offering specific attributes or content such as individual ERP number or customer specific symbols.

The initiative has already seen positive response from leading component manufacturers, with endorsements from HARTING, Weidmüller, Phoenix Contact, WAGO and TE Connectivity Technology Group. Comprehensive libraries from further industry leaders are under way.

Zuken
www.zuken.com/e3-series

Cadenas
www.cadenas.de/ecatalogsolutions/ecad

ECAD
ecad-port.com