CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
24 March 2009
Product News
VISTAGY’s New FiberSIM® 2009 Software Significantly Enhances the Composites Design-to-Manufacturing Process
VISTAGY, Inc. announced the latest version of its suite of composites engineering software, FiberSIM® 2009, which enables users to more easily define composite parts, provides improved functionality for resolving manufacturing issues and enhances the link between analysis and design. All these new improvements place FiberSIM even further ahead of the competition and confirm its status as the leading software for composites.
FiberSIM 2009 simplifies composite part design with the addition of the global stagger profile, partial boundary editor and design checker as well as enhancements to zone-based design and core definition tools:
• Global stagger profile – Users can select a desired drop-off profile and FiberSIM will assign that profile to the entire part, which improves the ability to update designs by eliminating the need to manually adjust each transition.
• Partial boundary editor – This gives the user the ability to reduce layer boundary calculations by highlighting a specific region of the part, which reduces time spent waiting for recalculations.
• Design checker – A new design status report alerts users when flat patterns need to be generated, plies need to be spliced or objects are out of date. For example, the report validates boundaries and identifies poor modeling practices so problems with overlapping geometry can be avoided.
• Simplified zone-based design – Users can define a trimming or extending angle for zone transition areas, which greatly simplifies the generation of complex transitional shapes. In addition, the ability to display zone name, thickness and ply count as well as control zone highlight colors based on assigned laminate specifications also enhances zone visualization, making it easier to interpret designs.
• Core definition – FiberSIM 2009 defines additional core types that simplify core panel definition. The software also improves error detection and reporting while eliminating inconsistencies.
In addition, VISTAGY has developed improved tools for resolving manufacturability issues in FiberSIM 2009 with significant enhancements to the (ADD) optional module: Automated Deposition Design
• Design for manufacturing – The ADD now automatically creates and places bird beaks and bat ears in the preliminary stages of design.
• Producibility feedback - Early identification of minimum course length issues streamlines the product development cycle.
• Minimum trim angle - Automated tape laying machines have a minimum deposition angle between the path of the machine and the ply boundary. A new utility identifies portions of the ply boundary that violate this minimum angle in the design phase, when it is far less costly to identify than once it reaches the manufacturing floor.
• Automated deposition machine database - Database enables users to define the tape laying and fiber placement parameters of their particular machines to ensure standard use of machine parameters across all parts.
Finally, FiberSIM 2009 features expanded integration of analysis and design with enhanced definition and interoperability between CAE and CAD for composite design. By maintaining separate analysis and design zones with linked laminate specifications, users can propagate analysis updates without manual intervention. This speeds the preliminary design process so a greater number of iterations can be performed, resulting in an optimized design.
“The new features in FiberSIM 2009 will enable our customers to enhance and streamline their composite part development processes so they can meet their goals on-time and on-budget,” said Bob Flory, vice president of product development at VISTAGY. “This new version demonstrates our commitment to maintaining FiberSIM’s status as the best-in-class solution for the design-to-manufacturing process for composite parts and assemblies.”
FiberSIM 2009 will be available for shipment in April 2009.
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