NATIONAL AEROSPACE LABORATORY NLR PURCHASES VISTAGY’S FIBERSIM SOFTWARE FOR COMPOSITE DESIGN

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NATIONAL AEROSPACE LABORATORY NLR PURCHASES VISTAGY’S FIBERSIM SOFTWARE FOR COMPOSITE DESIGN
13 July 2006 - VISTAGY

VISTAGY, Inc., a leading global provider of specialized engineering software, today announced that the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR in the Netherlands has selected FiberSIM software for designing complex composite products and parts.

As a result, all NLR member organizations will have access to FiberSIM for developing and automating groundbreaking designs that can provide significant competitive advantages and increase the demand for composites in the aerospace industry.

The Automated Composites Manufacturing Technology Center at the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR has pioneered many innovative fabrication technologies that have helped drive the use of composite parts in the aerospace industry in recent years. Manufacturers apply NLR’s research to enhance and automate their design and manufacturing processes. ACM-TC engineers will use FiberSIM as their specialized composite design environment to more efficiently and cost-effectively create complex, pre-formed parts with reduced development risks, costs and cycle times.

“FiberSIM supports all the processes and methodologies NLR uses to create composite parts, but more importantly, it helps automate these processes so we can develop parts more quickly and affordably,” said Bert Thuis, head of the Structures Technology Department at National Aerospace Laboratory NLR. “Affordability and strength are primary drivers for the use of lightweight composite structures. FiberSIM’s design features enable our engineers to reduce assembly and tooling costs while allowing them to create new, innovative designs that provide a competitive edge to our clients and members.”

FiberSIM’s ability to simulate how composite material conforms to complex curvature, as well as its capabilities for generating flat patterns and plybooks, helps automate design and manufacturing processes to reduce costs while ensuring parts meet all specifications. FiberSIM’s flat pattern technology enables design engineers to generate 2D flat patterns from 3D digital models. These patterns are automatically shared downstream or exported to automated cutting or laser-projection machines, saving hours of manual trial-and-error when producing hundreds of composite plies per part. In addition, engineers can define laminate ply sequences and generate 2D plybooks that ensure accurate lay-up of laminates to reduce the manual, labor-intensive and costly process of creating separate drawings.

“One of the biggest challenges for today’s engineers is to design innovative products that are cost-effective to manufacture yet meet the demanding specifications of the aerospace industry. NLR’s research is helping manufacturers strike that balance,” said Alex Edwards, general manager, Europe at VISTAGY. “We’re proud that NLR is using FiberSIM to assess and establish new ways of developing composite parts that will drive the industry forward.”

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About: VISTAGY
VISTAGY, Inc., is a leading developer of engineering software that enhances commercial 3D CAD systems. VISTAGY’s specialized engineering environments enable engineers to capture and communicate complete digital product definitions within CAD, thereby increasing productivity, improving the communication of product information throughout the product’s lifecycle, and allowing better-informed decision making early in design. VISTAGY software is used throughout the world in the aerospace, automotive, marine, medical, sporting goods, and transportation interiors industries. The company also offers training and consulting services.

FiberSIM is a suite of software that turns major CAD systems into advanced tools for designing and manufacturing composite parts. The software enables engineers to create a complete digital product definition of a composite part within their 3D modeling environment. FiberSIM supports flexible design methodologies for a wide variety of materials and manufacturing processes and automatically generates design details all the way from complex ply and zone drop-offs to variable offset surfaces for mock-up and tooling. The software simulates how composite material deforms over complex curvature and generates manufacturing information including documentation, flat patterns, and data to drive downstream manufacturing equipment. FiberSIM also uses XML technology to share composites data with people and applications throughout the enterprise.

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