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Effective January 1, 2017, Webasto has completed a takeover of the bankrupt electronics service provider Schaidt Innovations GmbH & Co. KG, based in Wörth-Schaidt, Germany. The business in Wörth-Schaidt will continue to operate with around 170 employees and will be absorbed into the Webasto Group bearing the name Webasto Mechatronics. By adding its own in-house electronics production, the acquisition enables the world market leader for roof, convertible roof and thermo systems to strengthen its systems competence and capability. Both parties to the transaction have agreed not to disclose details of the sale price. “The complexity and significance of electronic components for all Webasto products have been steadily increasing for years,” explains Dr. Holger Engelmann, Chairman of the Management Board, Webasto SE. “More than ever, having electronics knowhow means having strategic knowhow, which is also indispensable for automotive suppliers. With this acquisition, we are expanding our longstanding mechatronics expertise with a

Atlassian announced the Trello acquisition in a January 9 blog. To read more, please click here. Search for Atlassian on CIMdata.com

Tecplot, Inc. today announced the general availability of Tecplot 360 2017 Release 1. Three major new capabilities are included in the 2017 release of Tecplot 360, including: Chorus is a design space exploration tool that helps engineers discover trends and anomalies in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), or computational physics studies and enables them to simultaneously gain insight into the underlying fluid-dynamic phenomena that cause these variations – all in a single environment. Tecplot Chorus, originally released in 2012 as a stand-alone product, will now only be available with Tecplot 360.  PyTecplot is Tecplot’s new Python API. Python is a popular scripting language used by scientists and engineers to automate workflows. PyTecplot features an easy-to-use object-oriented approach to create plots and alter data. PyTecplot integrates fully with other Python-compatible tools. SZL Server is a lightweight application that is installed on an HPC, data server or remote file store. The server side leverages Tecplot’s proprietary SZL technology

To support its business model evolution and remain relevant in a rapidly changing and competitive industry, Uniek turned to PLM. Julianne Brickl, Vice President of Marketing and Merchandise Management, and her team auditioned several vendors who specialized in manufacturing, before settling on Silicon Valley-based Centric Software, whose experience is in fashion and fast-moving consumer goods. Although Uniek initially adopted PLM to manage the growth of its product ranges, Centric PLM has also supported another unexpected change in direction. “We’re now twelve months into adding direct to-consumer online as one of our channels and Centric has been instrumental in helping us keep up the pace of development we need to do that”, says Brickl. “In addition, we have also found Centric invaluable in helping us manage the content master data we need to provide to online retail partners as well – none of that would have been possible with our old

International TechneGroup Incorporated (ITI), the global leader providing reliable interoperability, validation and migration solutions for product data and related systems, is pleased to participate in the cutting edge industry event UK Intelligent Engineering Forum (UKIEF) as Gold Partner. Brought together by Intrinsys, the UKIEF event aims to help the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform user community in the UK get the most from their CAD and PLM solutions. ITI offers featured based CAD migration to CATIA V5 for this community, and supports PLM migrations. ITI representatives will be on hand to discuss the implementation of Model Based Enterprise (MBE) through the use of ITI’s CADIQ, CAD model quality and validation solution, as well as DrawtoPMI, an automated solution to move 2D CATIA drawings to 3D CATIA parts with all Product Manufacturing Information (PMI). By automatically combining legacy 3D CATIA part and 2D drawing files, DrawtoPMI saves months of manual work.

Materialise NV announced today that it has signed an agreement with Siemens’ product lifecycle management (PLM) software business, to help create a seamless process for designing and manufacturing parts using additive manufacturing technology. Through this agreement, the two companies will work together to integrate Materialise’s industry-proven AM software technologies with Siemens’ digital solutions. Siemens and Materialise are technology leaders who share the vision that Additive Manufacturing will revolutionize the industry. The two companies have been working closely together for several months to explore the integration of Siemens’ world-leading PLM software with best-in-class Materialise additive manufacturing (AM) technology in order to accelerate the adoption of 3D Printing for industrial production. “This agreement will bring together a set of solutions from Siemens and Materialise that will optimize and simplify customer operations within the industrial landscape. We’ve been in the additive manufacturing business for more than 25 years and our open and neutral

Novanta Inc., a supplier of photonics, precision motion, and vision technologies to original equipment manufacturers in the medical and advanced industrial markets, announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire the assets of ThingMagic, a division of Trimble, for $20 million in cash.  The transaction, subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.   ThingMagic, based in Woburn, Massachusetts, provides Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID Reader Modules and Finished RFID Solutions to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the medical and advanced industrial markets. ThingMagic's business operations and product offering will be combined with the Company's JADAK business.  "By combining the resources and RFID based technologies of JADAK and ThingMagic, Novanta will be uniquely positioned to be the leading provider of high performing RFID solutions for mission critical applications to original equipment manufacturers within the healthcare industry," said Matthijs Glastra, Chief Executive Officer of Novanta Inc. "ThingMagic

Renesas Electronics America, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the addition of an all-new highly autonomous vehicle to its development fleet and significant upgrades to previously unveiled advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) development vehicles in the fleet. These vehicles provide a comprehensive vehicle-level development platform designed to move the future of autonomous driving and automotive technology. Conceived as an open laboratory for automotive customers, the Renesas development fleet enables the development of safe, integrated solutions that extend beyond silicon. The all-new, SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicle, developed on a Lincoln MKZ car model, was realized through close collaboration between Renesas and its partners: AutonomouStuff, Cogent Embedded, PolySync, QNX, NewFoundry, eTrans, and University of Waterloo. “Together, the Renesas driving development platform vehicles represent a major step forward for our partners and customers. With this solutions platform, we’ve reduced design risk, and accelerated interoperability testing and time to market,

PTC unveiled enhancements to its FlexPLM integration for Adobe Illustrator with its next generation FlexPLM® Design Module for Adobe® Illustrator, the first of a set of apps in the FlexPLM Digital Design Suite. The Design Suite enables designers to rapidly bring concepts to life by improving workflow and information accessibility. The Design Module enables designers in the retail, fashion, footwear, apparel, and consumer goods industries to design and create products in PTC's FlexPLM retail product lifecycle management (PLM) software directly from within the Adobe Illustrator workspace. The FlexPLM™ Design Module for Adobe® was developed to address the growing need for innovation-driven design, development efficiency, and better communication across design and product development processes. Since users can easily create product sketches leveraging FlexPLM-managed data natively within Adobe Illustrator, the focus remains on creativity and product instead of on non-value and manual tasks. The FlexPLM Digital Design Suite also includes the Colorway Design Tool, Swatch

Dassault Systèmes today announced that 3DEXPERIENCE platform users can now view, explore and validate product designs in immersive virtual reality at any stage of the product development process with support from the HTC Vive™ Business Edition virtual reality system.  This opens new ways to create and refine engaging customer experiences faster. 3DEXPERIENCE platform users including industrial designers, mechanical engineers, marketers, project managers, manufacturing planners and other decision makers in any industry, can plug and play an HTC Vive Business Edition head-mounted display and work at their desktop with natural navigation in a stereoscopic virtual reality environment.  This new way to access, view and explore a native virtual model on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform during product development delivers an enhanced spatial impression for a deeper understanding of an object’s depth, solidness and design that cannot be achieved with a computer screen alone.   “Virtual reality has transcended consumer applications and is now