Mentor expands CAE offering

Last month, Mentor Graphics announced that it had acquired Flowmaster, a developer of “1D” computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software. Just look at that sentence: Mentor, Flowmaster, 1D, CFD – how does that fit together, let alone in a single sentence? I had the opportunity to sit down with Mentor Graphics and discuss the rationale for the acquisition and strategy going forward. Mentor Graphics recognized a few years ago that EDA, electronic design automation, was moving away from pure-play electronics to electromechanical systems. Computers use fans for cooling, modern cars rely on electronic components, staplers have sensors, and so on. Add that to the fact that many of Mentor’s EDA customers were moving into the design of complete computers (rather than just PCBs) that require cooling systems, and the combination of CFD and EDA makes a lot of sense. Enter Flomerics, a UK-based supplier of CFD with a specialization in electronics cooling. In 2008, Flomerics became Mentor’s Mechanical Analysis Division and today sells its CFD products on a standalone basis and as an add-on to CATIA, NX, Pro/E, SolidWorks, and other CAD systems. FloEFD, the flagship product, is a CAD-embedded CFD tool, meaning that it takes its geometric representation directly from the CAD model with few steps between design and analysis. Since the Mechanical Analysis Division is buried with Mentor’s Integrated Systems Design business unit, it is not possible to tell how well the CFD component of the Division is performing, but ISD’s revenue was up 11% for the first three quarters of fiscal 2012 (ended October 31, 2011). It’s still a small part of Mentor overall, at $169 million, but is strategically important as Mentor looks for cross-selling and greenfield opportunities. FlowEFD and the other CFD products that came with Flomerics were inherently 3D. Flowmaster brings to this the ability to do early-stage design, when the details for a full 3D system aren’t known. This leads to more, earlier concept analyses as the design is realized. By extension, this also means that the code is suited to a far wider range of applications than Flomerics and can be sold into a wider range of end-industries. i first became aware of Flowmaster as used in the process and power industry, to ensure that piping systems were capable of withstanding the flows and pressures of the ultimate design, but the code is equally capable of analyzing fuel lines in automotive or other engines and many other applications. What makes Flowmaster unique, according to Keith Hanna of Mentor Graphics, is its front-end, which includes industry-specific component libraries and advanced systems modeling functionality. Too, says Mr. Hanna, Flowmaster gets Mentor Graphics one step closer to real-time simulation, seen by many as the “holy grail” of CAE. No immediate changes are planned to the Flowmaster offerings or distribution mechanisms and all Flowmaster development staff has joined Mentor Graphics. Even though you may not be familiar with them, the Flowmaster Group has been in existence for over 20 years and their customer list is a roster of the leading companies in each of their end-markets. What makes the acquisition so interesting is how Mentor will leverage this base — clearly, not all of Flowmaster’s customers are interested in EDA solutions so the best approach for them would be to continue to invest in the Flowmaster product but otherwise leave them alone. But for automotive, aerospace, electronics and similar customers, Mentor could now bundle 1D and 3D solutions and facilitate the movement of data between them, in a much more fluid (sorry) design workflow. Flowmaster’s small footprint limited its ability to get into and service accounts; being part of the much larger Mentor Graphics will enable it to get out to a much larger target audience, and speed adoption. That will feed into larger development investment, which will lead to greater capability that will … I think pundits call that a virtuous cycle, don’t they?