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MathWorks today introduced Release 2018a (R2018a) with a range of new capabilities in MATLAB and Simulink. R2018a includes two new products, Predictive Maintenance Toolbox for designing and testing condition monitoring and predictive maintenance algorithms, and Vehicle Dynamics Blockset for modeling and simulating vehicle dynamics in a virtual 3D environment. In addition to new features in MATLAB and Simulink, and the new products, this release also includes updates and bug fixes to 94 other products. MATLAB Product Family Updates Include: MATLAB: Live functions, documentation authoring, debugging, and interactive controls for embedding sliders and drop-down menus in the Live Editor App (UI) testing framework, C++ MEX interface, custom tab completion, and function assistants for advanced software development MATLAB Online: Hardware connectivity for communicating with USB webcams Econometrics Toolbox: Econometric Modeler app for performing time series analysis, specification testing, modeling, and diagnostics Image Processing Toolbox: 3-D image processing and volume visualization Partial Differential Equation Toolbox: Structural dynamic analysis to find natural frequencies, mode

Commenting on full-year sales, Alain de Rouvray, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ESI Group, said: “Our fourth quarter of 2017 marked a return to growth in Licenses at constant exchange rates. However, the strong investments in the Group’s transformation, aimed at securing the success of the “Objective 2020” five-year plan, will substantially impact the 2017 EBIT. On the other hand, the reported rebound in Licenses bodes well for better sales momentum in 2018, supported by the benefits of the strategic investments and management reorganizations made over the last two years. Our new value proposition, based on the Hybrid TwinTM, aims at supporting our customers on predicting their products’ performance and piloting once in operation. This approach has required an in-depth adaptation of our marketing strategy as well as a new alignment of our sales and support teams. Meanwhile, the excellent performance of our Virtual Prototyping core business should continue

Rolls-Royce, the University of Nottingham, and ANSYS have embarked on a five-year collaboration to develop breakthrough technology for advanced aircraft engines. The research project known as AERIS, will improve modelling and simulation in aero engine bearing chambers and internal gearboxes by developing, validating and optimising new techniques to address air and oil flows in the engines.  The project is part of Clean Sky 2 where the University is a Core Partner and Member of the Systems, Airframes and Engines Integrated Technology Demonstrators (ITD). In this role, researchers are working with aerospace primes and supply chain organisations on a range of areas. These include the design and manufacture of advanced wings for compound helicopters; development of low-power ice protection systems, technology bricks for More Electric Aircraft and two-phase flows for aero-engine bearing chambers, which is the subject of AERIS. The University won a call for Core Partners issued

EMA Design Automation®, a full-service provider and innovator of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) solutions, today announced that access for its more than 14 million component library is now free, allowing downloads from the world’s largest collection of verified symbols, footprints, and 3D STEP models through www.ultralibrarian.com. “Today’s engineers don’t have the time or the desire to do the tedious work of creating library parts,” said Manny Marcano, president and CEO of EMA. “By providing free access to the world’s largest library of verified EDA component models, we can help them maintain focus on their primary task of designing circuits.” Ultra Librarian contains symbols, footprints, and 3D models for over 14 million electronic components, making it the largest EDA model library in the world. Working closely with component manufacturers, EMA has doubled the size of the library from seven million to over 14 million parts in less than two years. The Ultra

DHL has released a trend report in cooperation with Accenture, a leading global technology consultant, on blockchain technology’s potential to transform the logistics industry. Global supply chains are notoriously complex, with a diverse set of stakeholders, varying interests, and many third-party intermediaries – challenges that blockchain is well suited to address. The report includes initial findings on a working prototype developed by DHL and Accenture, which tracks pharmaceuticals from the point of origin to the consumer, preventing tampering and errors.   “The experiments with blockchain in finance are well known, but we believe logistics is an area where the new technology will have a truly profound impact,” insists Matthias Heutger, Senior Vice President DHL Customer Solutions & Innovation. “Implementing productive solutions however, will require further technological development and, critically, collaboration between all stakeholders.”   Blockchain is a new type of database system that maintains, records and authenticates data and transactions. In supply

Hexagon AB announced today the acquisition of AGTEK, a US-based software company specialising in planning and productivity solutions for the heavy civil construction industry. With headquarters in Livermore, California, AGTEK is the pioneer of 3D takeoff (cost estimation) software for civil construction and the developer of the widely used Earthwork 4D, a complete takeoff, modelling, and production tracking solution for civil contractors. AGTEK's products are aimed at streamlining the contractor's workflow for estimating and project management, using an Internet-enabled graphical toolset that is shareable between office and field. They provide the ability to integrate innovative machine control and positioning solutions with intuitive software that enables fast and accurate quantity takeoffs, 3D models, production plans, and machine tracking analysis. This provides construction companies with a unified approach for optimising plans, controlling grade, and monitoring performance to maximise productivity.  "This acquisition gives construction contractors comprehensive field to enterprise solutions for construction

Synopsys, Inc. today announced release of the latest versions of its circuit simulation and custom design products—HSPICE®, FineSim® SPICE, and CustomSim simulators and the Custom Compiler™ IC design tool—to address the growing need for robust custom design. The growth in automotive electronics and transition to FinFET process nodes have led to a significant increase in IC design complexity and the need for rigorous analysis to validate custom and analog/mixed-signal (AMS) designs across a broad spectrum of process corners and environmental conditions. The latest releases of Synopsys' custom design solution provide 2X faster simulation and Monte Carlo analysis speed, as well as enhancements to Custom Compiler, including interactive device-level routing to accelerate robust custom design. Circuit Simulation Performance for Robust Design Validation FinFET designs have significantly more post-layout parasitics, making transistor-level simulation of large analog and custom digital designs a formidable challenge. The 2017.12 release of FineSim SPICE delivers core engine

A component for embedding RomaxDESIGNER processes into Dassault Systèmes’ SIMULIA Isight application is now available. The component enables the engineering analyst to effortlessly combine detailed driveline models within their SIMULIA Isight process, bringing its automation, integration and optimization capabilities to bear on the driveline discipline. SIMULIA Isight is a powerful tool for simulation-based, repeatable, automated design processes. Its processes, including Design of Experiments and Six-Sigma reliability and robustness studies, can now be used to drive RomaxDESIGNER analyses to provide insight into design decisions, increasing confidence in designs for real world duty cycles. Through processes created by SIMULIA Isight, RomaxDESIGNER can work alongside a whole host of other industry standard software tools (such as Excel, MATLAB, Dassault Systèmes’ SOLIDWORKS and many others), enabling automatic mapping of input and output parameters, improved process automation and decreased development time.  Sumanth Kumar, Vice President, Growth, SIMULIA, Dassault Systèmes, comments: “In today’s complex product development and manufacturing environment, designers and engineers

Accruent has announced major enhancements to Meridian, Accruent’s innovative Asset Lifecycle Information Management (ALIM) software used by over 1,200 companies. These new products mark the first upgrades to Meridian since it was added to Accruent’s portfolio through the BlueCielo acquisition in November 2017. These enhancements include new cloud and analytics products, an enhanced mobile interface and major updates across existing Meridian client and server applications. The improved product line will provide organizations in asset-intensive and highly regulated industries even greater real-time accessibility to their mission-critical asset information. “As we’ve moved from working with 1,200 BlueCielo customers into Accruent’s world of over 7,000 global customers, there’s a growing demand for the maximum reliability and global availability of a cloud-based solution for managing engineering information throughout the asset lifecycle,” said Willem-Jan Scholten, Accruent’s SVP of International Sales. “The Meridian development team and our beta customers are delighted by the way Accruent’s scale and expertise

Infor today announced that Vida Shoes International, Inc. has selected a suite of Infor applications specialized for the retail industry to help simplify its supply chain network, achieve process improvement, and provide the organization with trusted, real-time data in a fully integrated business solution. Specifically, Vida will deploy Infor CloudSuite Fashion, which offers access to industry specific analytics providing critical metrics and key performance indicators to end-users through a unique user interface that utilizes Infor ION®, a purpose-built middleware, and Infor Ming.le™, a social collaboration engine. These enhancements support global value chains by allowing users to view real-time data at any time and from any location. In addition, Infor Fashion PLM will deliver tools to bring products to market faster and finish in a few days what would otherwise take weeks or months, linking every step in the product development process, which will help reduce errors, costs, and time to market. Better