Taking a break from all things Bentley,

Altair just announced that it has acquired SIMSOLID, the company based on the notion that we shouldn’t need to create a mesh in order to run a simulation. Founded by Ken Welch and Victor Apanovitch, they sought to simplify CAE and make it more accessible by using the CAD model or assembly as it is — no cleanup, simplification or other processes that could, fundamentally, branch a simulation model from the design model.  SIMSOLID, the technology, is based on approximations that (via computational magic) generate accurate results, very quickly. Altair’s Uwe Schramm, CTO Solvers, highlights this in the press release, saying “We are very serious about solution accuracy. Others have tried to accelerate the interface between CAD and simulation by degrading the mathematical robustness. It is our feeling that by rapidly moving forward with the methods in SIMSOLID and expanding them across applications we can have a real effect on how design gets done while maintaining our high standards for computational excellence.”

More on this when there’s time.