VISTAGY, Inc., a leading provider of industry-specific engineering software and services, today announced the release of FiberSIM® 2010, the latest version of its engineering software for designing and manufacturing innovative, durable and lightweight composite structures. Many features of the new software were inspired by the adoption of composites in a growing number of industries. As a result, FiberSIM 2010 enables companies such as Bombardier Aerospace, Sinomatech Wind Power Blade Co., and Renault F1 Team to deliver optimized products to market by taking full advantage of new innovations in composite materials and manufacturing processes.

FiberSIM 2010 continues to deliver key capabilities to optimize designs and increase productivity throughout the composites design and manufacturing lifecycle—including rapidly adapting to design changes, predicting manufacturability issues, and improving communication between internal departments and the supply chain. FiberSIM can be used individually or as part of VISTAGY's AeroSuite™, a comprehensive solution that enables aircraft designers and manufacturers to engineer optimized parts and assemblies in less time at lower cost from preliminary design to quality. AeroSuite also includes SyncroFIT® software for designing and manufacturing complex assemblies and large aerostructures, the Quality Planning Environment™ for developing plans to assess aerostructure quality, and Custom Consulting Services to assist manufacturers in implementing optimized processes for developing composite aerostructures.

Specifically, the new version of FiberSIM provides:

• Advanced features for preserving composite design intent, which capture the critical inputs that drive the composite part design at the earliest stages of development and automate the creation of the detailed composite part definition to increase productivity, ensure adherence to design rules, and adapt to changes during the iterative design process. The new Rules-Driven, Structure-Based Design capability enables users to capture design intent and corporate standards to ensure the production of optimized and manufacturable composite structures by leveraging basic layout geometry and design rules. In addition, breakthrough Volume Fill Composite Ply Development capability maintains the intent of engineers designing thick laminates by automating the creation of ply shapes to fill the area between the upper and lower surfaces, which dictate the shape of the part. This provides the most efficient development process available in the market today for turbine/rotor blades and other thick laminates.

• Enhanced ability to design for manufacture of advanced materials and processes, including new Multi-Layer Material Simulation that provides insight into the drapeability of non-crimp fabrics (NCF) and other advanced materials, as well as the corresponding manufacturing processes, such as forming. This reduces the need for physical prototypes that result in costly scrap and increases confidence that the as-built part will meet specifications.

• An improved connection between design and analysis to enable more efficient transfer of composite design requirements. Tightly coupling the interface between design and analysis promotes design optimization by allowing for quicker and more frequent iterations, delivering products of the highest durability and lowest weight possible. FiberSIM 2010 introduces new FEA Interfaces with ANSYS Composite PrepPost (ACP), MSC Patran, NX Laminate Composites, BETA CAE Systems ANSA, and a generic BDF data format that maps all laminate properties to the mesh. This continues VISTAGY's open strategy that enables users to choose best-in-class solutions ideally suited to their particular product and development process.

• The industry's first standardized 3D model-based representation of the composite part definition. FiberSIM's Advanced 3D CAD Integration represents the composite part in the native CAD model format, conveying the basic elements of the composite part in a standard format and improving the communication of composite design data throughout the enterprise and extended supply chain.

• New functionality for validating that the as-built part is representative of the as-designed/analyzed part, ensuring adherence to design specifications. One of the challenges of using composites is that it creates a blind part so once assembled and cured, it is nearly impossible to inspect the critical characteristics of the design. FiberSIM 2010 introduces new functionality for validating parts, including the ability to import machine paths from fiber placement NC Software and an interface to drive automated ply verification (APV) inspection equipment. These capabilities ensure that at each step—from analysis, design, manufacturing and quality—a part meets the original engineering specifications so costly manufacturing errors can be avoided.

• An improved user experience through a redesigned interface tailored to specific use cases, which puts key functionality at the users' fingertips. With a shortage of skilled composite design engineers and aggressive program timelines, FiberSIM 2010 was designed to be intuitive so new composite engineers could ramp up quickly.

"FiberSIM has been the cornerstone of our composites engineering process for the last eight years," stated Ian Goddard, senior CAE engineer for Renault F1 Team. "It's the only comprehensive software product that addresses the entire composites engineering process, meeting challenges from conception to deployment of the vehicles on the track. New functionally in FiberSIM 2010 makes it possible for us to exploit the advantages of the newest materials and processes in an effort to get the most optimized and competitive race cars to the starting line as quickly as possible."

"FiberSIM 2010 continues to strengthen our solutions for composites engineering by meeting the growing needs of OEMs and suppliers that are designing and building composite parts within the aerospace, automotive, wind energy, and various other industries," said Steve Peck, director of product and market strategy at VISTAGY. "These manufacturers acknowledge that to take full advantage of the latest advancements in composite materials and processes, they need to focus on optimizing designs to achieve the ideal balance between cost, performance, quality, manufacturability, reliability, and maintainability. FiberSIM 2010 gives them the tools to meet that objective."