The courtship between 3-D CAD systems and simulationsoftware turned a bit more serious this week as ANSYS,a leader in the analysis arena, inked a licensing deal with SpaceClaim to offer its CAD package as anoption within the ANSYS Simulation Driven Product Development platform.

The new ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler, which will workwith either the ANSYS 11.0 or 12.0 releases, as well as with ANSYS Workbench2.0, is based on SpaceClaim Engineer. A relative newcomer to the CAD world,SpaceClaim is trying to carve out a niche as a CAD-neutral, 3-D direct modelerdesigned for non-CAD experts. The pairing of the two products will allowengineers to create and model 3-D geometry models and push analysis tasks upmuch earlier in the design process. Traditionally, ANSYS users would have towait until they had detailed 3-D data from the CAD system to do theirvalidation and verification work, but with the SpaceClaim option, they can nowverify and validate designs upfront, accelerating time-to-market, explainsScott Gilmore, director of management at ANSYS.

Typically, engineers will save CAD models in the neutralSTEP or IGES formats to do simulation work, sacrificing intelligence for theflexibility of working with a dumb model. While that step lets them validatedesigns, it doesn't let them optimize work in process - a best practice thatcan greatly reduce development time and ensure optimal results, Gilmore says.Because SpaceClaim employs a direct modeling approach, CAD models imported intothe system aren't constrained by the history-based parameters that cansometimes get in the way of effective simulation work. "SpaceClaim letsengineers attach intelligence to the model (during analysis) so they canexperiment with the effects of changing that model," he adds.

New model preparation features added in the SpaceClaim2009 release help detect and repair problems with imported designs andsimplify models, making them better suited for analysis than detailed 3-Dmodels - a key reason ANSYS choose SpaceClaim as its OEM partner, according toGilmore. "The focus of traditional CAD systems is on detailed design andmanufacturing and they're not approachable by the typical engineer doingsimulation to optimize product design," he explains.

The price of ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler ranges fromapproximately $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the type of license.

ANSYS Licenses SpaceClaim Direct Modeler_A