A lot is going on, so let’s get right to it:

Altair has made the Radioss solver available via open source as OpenRadioss, available at www.openradioss.org. Radioss simulates impact events, like car crashes and cell phone drops. Altair CEO Jim Scapa says, “OpenRadioss allows everyone to contribute, drive their own innovations, develop and share their own models, and experiment by getting inside the code. This makes OpenRadioss an agile tool that always stays on the cutting edge, regardless of industry.” Altair hopes that open sourcing the code will enable more experimentation with the technology and accelerate adoption.

PTC announced the acquisition of CloudMilling, a cloud-native CAM solution, as an add-on to Onshape. PTC and CloudMilling say that CloudMilling is the only cloud-native CAM solution on the market today –hmm– and believe that the combination is essential in building out Onshape workflows. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and it appears to be a done deal.

Tech Soft 3D acquired Redway3D, makers of the REDsdk for advanced rendering. Tech Soft 3D says this acquisition furthers its goals to “fuel growth by investing in product development, scaling the company’s global reach and increasing its product offerings. You can read much more bout Redway3D here. Tech Soft 3D CEO Ron Fritz said of the deal, “Adding the REDsdk technology to our portfolio addresses a need many of our partners have for advanced, photo-realistic visualization and rendering, which is an area in which we will continue investing. We remain focused on empowering developers of engineering software to build world-class applications for manufacturing, building and construction and other industries, and the addition of the sophisticated Redway3D technologies will help us do that on an even broader scale.” Details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Finally, on a personal note, we have to talk about the amazing life and contribution of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, who died yesterday at 96. I’m not a royalist, and TBH, not all that interested in people who are deemed exceptional simply because of who their parents are or how much money they have. I am, however, a total fan of Queen Elizabeth II because of her incredible poise, work ethic, and contribution to women’s rights. During World War II, she was a mechanic and military truck driver. She insisted on keeping her family name at a time when women didn’t do that. She drove the King of Saudi Arabia around her estate — when women in Saudi Arabia weren’t allowed to drive. Queen Elizabeth was quietly a feminist in all the ways that matter.

We must also thank the Queen for bringing technology to older folks. When the New York Times wrote that the Queen used her cell phone to text her grandchildren, my Mom thought she also wanted to try that. As she figured out her new cell phone, she gained confidence that these tools weren’t beyond her and became (technologically) unstoppable. She became part of the tech-savvy in-crowd rather than a has-been senior. That was a huge deal for her, and we owe it all to the texting, emailing, and tweeting Queen.

For these and many other reasons: Thank you, ma’am.