Altair Releases HyperWorks 9.0, Connecting Engineers with New Solver Technology and to the Global Grid

HyperWorks is an enterprise simulation platform to support product lifecycle management (PLM) processes. It is the leading simulation-driven design solution for product development across the world’s top corporations.

“Over the past decade, Altair HyperWorks has become the preferred simulation platform for the worldwide advanced manufacturing community,” says James R. Scapa, president and CEO of Altair. “Through advancements in simulation technology, a value-driven business model and superior customer support, the adoption of HyperWorks continues to outpace the CAE market with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 25%.”

Grid Enablement and New ISV Partner Program

The release of HyperWorks 9.0 is the first engineering simulation solution to deeply embed grid computing management tools with compute-intensive CAE software applications. HyperWorks 9.0 clients can now use unallocated HyperWorks units in their existing pool to immediately access Altair’s popular PBS GridWorks on-demand grid-computing technology suite at no incremental cost. This common licensing model allows corporations to virtualize their global computing infrastructure – maximizing the throughput of analysis jobs as well as the utilization of hardware and software resources.

In addition, HyperWorks 9.0 extends its patented business model to deliver on-demand, third-party software applications. Participating partners and the formal roll-out of Altair’s partner solutions program will be announced on Wednesday May 21st, 2008.

Next-generation Solver Technology and New Multi-core Licensing Business Model

With the release of HyperWorks 9.0, Altair has integrated all of its linear and nonlinear finite-element solvers into a single solver application. RADIOSS 9.0 now delivers a robust solution for simulating linear statics and dynamics, nonlinear transient dynamics and fluid-structure interaction events. This consolidation and integration uniquely positions RADIOSS in the CAE solution market and further increases the value of HyperWorks. From a user perspective, RADIOSS 9.0 simplifies multi-disciplinary analysis studies and data exchange between analysis types. Business benefits include lower software licensing costs and simplified IT administration.

“The advent of cluster and multi-core computing environments requires new, more affordable software licensing models,” says Jeffrey M. Brennan, vice president of Altair’s HyperWorks division. “Our unit-based licensing model – already a market differentiator – has been further enhanced to allow companies to take full advantage of multi-core computing environments with our solvers through virtualization and an aggressive pricing model.”

Extended Interoperability and Microsoft Office Integration
The open-systems design of the HyperWorks platform allows engineers to seamlessly work with any CAD solution, any solver, and any pre- and post-processing environment. The 9.0 release extends this interoperability even further to include Microsoft Office suite applications fostering enterprise collaboration and information sharing. This direct integration not only offers efficiencies to the reporting process but also will support design robustness investigations through a direct integration with Microsoft Excel and HyperStudy, Altair’s design optimization study application. HyperGraph and HyperView post-processing applications now export directly to Office applications, as well.

New Capabilities and Functionality

“This release is significant on many different levels,” says Dr. Uwe Schramm, Altair vice president of product technology. “Substantial investments were made to evolve the graphical user interface to quickly gain new user acceptance and shorten learning curves for enterprise deployments. Industry specific advancements, especially for our rapidly growing aerospace community, have been made across all of our core products including HyperMesh, HyperView and OptiStruct.”

Modeling and visualization advancements include:
• Enhanced “Windows-like” graphical user interfaces (GUI)
• HyperCrash: A new automotive crash pre-processor
• New rapid HEX solid meshing capabilities
• Shrink-wrap meshing to accelerate the creation of large solid models

Optimization and data management advancements include:
• Rapid multi-body dynamics optimization
• Free-shape optimization with manufacturing constraints
• Free-sizing optimization for composites
• Model assembly, batch meshing and performance data management automation