You may remember that Autodesk expanded its footprint into CAE with the acquisition of Plassotech just about a year ago. At the time, Plassotech had a small but devoted following; many thought its CAE solutions were on par with more established, extensive offerings in linear static stress, steady state thermal analysis, optimization and buckling. Most significantly, the acquisition would eventually enable Inventor users to perform analysis on entire assemblies, as well as individual parts.
Autodesk Labs this week makes available an early peek into the way it will incorporate its Plassotech acquisition in Autodesk Inventor Simulation Suite 2009. You can learn more at http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/advanced_simulation/.
According to this website, the Advanced Simulation Technology Preview for Autodesk Inventor 2009 includes:
- “Simulate Inventor parts and assemblies – Users can directly read in Inventor parts and assemblies and perform stress and modal analysis on them
- “Parametric simulation of Inventor models – The Advanced Simulation Technology Preview allows users to change parameters, simulate various permutations, and compare results
- “Multi-criteria optimization – Users can determine the optimal values of design parameters to meet their objectives using optimization
- “Automated tools to set up simulation model – Automated mesh refinement and contact detection allow users to quickly set up their simulation models and get usable results”.
Check it out and let me know what you think. It will be exciting to see how Autodesk rolls this out – and how it incorporates the Moldflow product set into its offerings.