In their latest acquisition, Altair answers the question, why does structural analysis have to be such a complex process involving geometry simplification and meshing? With the acquisition of SimSolid, they’re saying it doesn’t.

Altair has acquired SimSolid and the company says it will change the process of analysis. SimSolid, founded in 2015, was based on technology developed by Victor Apanovitch who was also the co-founder of SimSolid. The company has pioneered meshless analysis.  The software is able to run structural simulations on actual CAD models rather than requiring models to be simplified for analysis.

As Altair says in the release announcing the acquisition, SimSolid was founded as a result of the simple question: why does the geometry used for simulation have to be so different from the actual model being analyzed?

With SimSolid, engineers are able to take the extra steps of model simplification and meshing out of the loop and perform analysis on the actual CAD models making the process faster and more efficient, but probably most important, more accurately. Thanks to Apanovitch’s math, the process is memory efficient meaning that analysis can be performed on laptops.

Dr. Uwe Schramm, Altair’s Chief Technical Officer, notes that “We are very serious about solution accuracy. Others have tried to accelerate the interface between CAD and simulation by degrading the mathematical robustness. It is our feeling that by rapidly moving forward with the methods in SIMSOLID and expanding them across applications we can have a real effect on how design gets done while maintaining our high standards for computational excellence.”

For more information on the acquisition and about Altair and SimSolid, see: www.altair.com/SIMSOLID.

Altair has released a video with Jim Scapa, Altair’s founder, chairman, and CEO explaining why his company acquired SimSolid and what he believes the technology will do for the company.

What do we think?

We are seeing the next wave of technology acquisitions bringing in technologies that were formerly in the domain of specialists and integrating them with the day to day tools of designers. In the case of analysis, the first wave married CAD and analysis. In this latest wave, companies are trying to make CAD and analysis get along together.