Altair adds EMSS to its portfolio
Altair Engineering just announced that it is acquiring EM Software & Systems (EMSS), developer of the FEKO electromagnetic simulation suite. EMSS has actually been around since the 1990s but, as a South African company, has struggled to be known on an...
Quickies: DS, 3D Systems, Hexagon buy; Exa reports
While I’m at AU with 10,000 of my dearest friends, the PLMish world keeps rolling with acquisitions and earnings. Early this morning, Dassault Systèmes announced that it has acquired an 84% controlling interest in Realtime Technology AG (RTT), a provider of what...
Quickie: ANSYS to acquire Reaction Design
A very quick update to share some news I think is really exciting: ANSYS is merging with Reaction Design, maker of solutions for modeling and simulating certain types of chemical reactions. CHEMKIN, Reaction Design’s flagship products, is used by designers in...
ANSYS Q2 revenue up 10%, sees some volatility
ANSYS struggled in Q1 and, apparently, at the start of Q2 but seems to have ended the quarter with a bang. CEO Jim Cashman told investors that Q2 saw strong contributions from all parts of the business, across all product areas and from software license, maintenance...
SIMULIA shines the spotlight on topology optimization
Dassault Systèmes recently announced the acquisition of FE-DESIGN Group, makers of TOSCA for topology optimization. DS’ SIMULIA brand had already released a TOSCA-based Abaqus product, Abaqus ATOM, and the relationship between SIMULIA and FE-DESIGN was good, so...
ANSYS beats some expectations, lowers others
ANSYS is in a no-win situation: reporting the best first-quarter revenue in its history, within its guidance for the first quarter but lower than some financial analysts had expected. Too, like many other tech companies, ANSYS lowered its revenue forecast for the rest...
Quickies: Uncertain economy drags down March quarter
It’s a busy week for earnings reports from engineering software companies. While I work on longer-form reports, here are a few quotes from my notes. Note that these are not 100% representative of the company’s March quarter reports — in other words,...
Quickies: SolidWorks talks kernels, ANSYS acquires
There’s never a dull moment, is there? Kernels and marketing 101 Earlier this week SolidWorks CEO Bertrand Sicot took to the company blog to talk about the future of the core SolidWorks product, add-on offerings and which kernel will be used where. You may...

