Vishay Selects Ibolt Business Integration Suite

Magic Software has announced the closing of an Ibolt business integration suite and Unipaas application platform software license sale to Vishay Intertechnology. With more than 50 Ibolt adapters, wizards, services and methods, Ibolt is said to allow any size organisation to create continuous business processes based on SAP ERP R/3 and other enterprise systems. Magic Software's meta-data-based Unipaas requires a single skill set to create applications that can deploy with client-server, web, mobile or browser-free rich internet application (RIA) interfaces.

Vishay Intertechnology selected Magic Software's Ibolt integration suite and Unipaas application platform following a proof-of-concept demonstrating agile development, straightforward integration and reliability with its existing data and systems such as SAP ERP R/3 and others. Ibolt is said to simplify integration of business applications used for enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), logistics, supply chain management and other enterprise systems.

It is based on Magic Software's Unipaas application platform, which provides additional capabilities to develop business applications that can deploy across diverse operating systems, databases and various client types such as web applications, browser-free RIA applications and client-server programs.

ESI Releases Visual-Environment 5.5 Software Suite

ESI Group has unveiled the latest release of its Visual-Environment 5.5 integrated suite of collaborative solutions. Visual-Environment offers a flexible and open engineering framework where applications and interfaces covering multiple simulation domains can be implemented. This latest release features a number of new features, addressing specific requirements for the automotive industry. Among these are a rapid Model Checker, a Barrier Positioning tool and a Model Compare function.

The latter - offered in Visual-Crash PAM and Visual-Crash DYNA, dedicated environments for crash simulation - is a tool used to compare two iterated models and to identify variations on the basis of set criteria (ID, name, area, volume, mass and properties). The differences can then be visualised and copied from one model to another. This amounts to a gain in time and efficiency as engineers no longer need to browse iteration data manually, according to the company.

Mansour Mirdamadi, senior engineering leader at Dow Automotive Systems, said: 'Dow uses Visual-Crash DYNA to develop and deliver innovative solutions. 'The model browser and compare tool in the latest release, 5.5, allows our engineers to obtain multiple versions of LS-DYNA input decks, identifying changes made to the full vehicle model rapidly, thereby helping us deliver optimised products to our customers,' added Mirdamadi.

Visual-Environment 5.5 also includes improvements to existing applications such as Visual-Viewer for injury report, in line with new US NCAP vehicle safety regulations. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has updated the US NCAP rating programme, including changed injury criteria and additional tests.

This new rating will apply to vehicles built in 2010 onwards, based on a new overall vehicle safety score combining front, side and rollover programmes. The animation speed within Visual-Viewer has been adapted to meet increasing performance targets, true batch-mode execution is now fully supported and the usability of plot windows is improved. The differences in contour values between two models can be checked using Model Compare.

Version 5.5 extends the capacity to interface with different ESI software solutions within Visual-Environment as it now provides an integrated environment for composite and electromagnetic simulations: Visual-Composites for composite structure manufacturing, in response to an increasing use of composite materials; and Visual-CEM for virtual electromagnetic testing, with a focus on the full 3D modelling of metallic structures animated by external plane waves (a computation of radar cross sections, for instance).

NI Introduces Measurement Suite For Mobile Wimax

National Instruments (NI) has introduced the NI Measurement Suite for Mobile Wimax, a software suite that can be used with modular RF instrumentation for automated testing of Mobile Wimax devices. Using the software, engineers can perform Mobile Wimax (IEEE 802.16e-2005) component and device testing faster and with accuracy and flexibility. Based on PXI Express instrumentation powered by multicore technology, the suite is claimed to be able to perform error vector magnitude (EVM), power and spectral measurements three to five times faster than traditional instruments.

National Instruments said PXI Wimax systems also provide a low-cost research-and-development grade instrumentation alternative to traditional instruments. With a typical residual EVM accuracy of -46dB at 3.5GHz (-10dBm), the company claimed the test system can perform more accurate measurements than alternative production test-grade instruments. Additionally, the suite provides engineers enhanced flexibility with the same equipment used for testing Mobile Wimax devices to test hardware that complies with other standards such as Fixed Wimax, wireless local area network (WLAN), GPS, and GSM/Edge/WCDMA cellular standards.

The Measurement Suite for Mobile Wimax supports channel bandwidths from 1.25 to 28 MHz and fast Fourier transform (FFT) sizes 128, 256, 1,024 and 2,048, as well as all Mobile Wimax modulation types with both convolution coding and turbo convolution coding. The Measurement Suite for Mobile Wimax can also generate or analyse signals with up to eight zones and 16 bursts. Combined with the NI PXIe-5663E RF vector signal analyser and NI PXIe-5673 RF vector signal generator, the measurement suite also provides continuous frequency coverage from 85MHz to 6.6GHz.

By including the NI Signal Analysis Toolkit for Mobile Wimax and the NI Signal Generation Toolkit for Mobile Wimax, the suite offers programming APIs and virtual instrument panels for signal generation and analysis in programming environments including the NI Labview graphical system design platform. In addition to a Labview API, the toolkits install with an equivalent C-style API for engineers using C, C++, .Net, or similar programming language. The Measurement Suite for Mobile Wimax supports multiple PXI hardware configurations to meet different application needs.

A standard NI test bundle for Mobile Wimax includes an NI PXIe-5663 6.6 GHz vector signal analyser, NI PXIe-5673 6.6GHz vector signal generator, NI PXIe-1075 18-slot high-bandwidth chassis and a NI PXIe-8108 dual-core controller to provide high-performance flexibility to a variety of automated test systems.

LMS Enhances Imagine Lab System Simulation Suite

LMS International has released the latest version of its multi-domain system simulation solution, LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim Revision 9. The release is said to deliver a straightforward, interactive framework with advanced capabilities for performing 1D system simulation. LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim Revision 9 is said to offer improved ergonomics, enhanced data management, ready-to-use simulators - for example, for hybrid vehicle architectures - and Modelica compliancy.

The system comes with turnkey simulators for various applications in a range of industries, including power train, hybrid vehicles, comfort and driving dynamics for the automotive sector, fluid actuators for aviation and full-wheel loader simulators for the off-highway industry. With these simulators, users no longer have to build their model from scratch and only need to adapt the model to the architecture. Users can then quickly assess drivability and comfort issues as well as performance and fuel consumption.

The release also features improved ergonomics and data management to optimise productivity, according to LMS. For example, cycle analysis is made easier with 1D and modulo plots as well as multiple 3D animation windows. Users can now manage the history of component parameter changes and model architecture changes. Sensitivity analyses can be stored in an LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim model file and recovered with a specific experiment-load-and-save GUI. Modelica code can be seamlessly written and imported from existing codes as well as combined with standard LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim components in a single tool.

The solution also makes it possible to graphically assemble different Modelica models. The LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim platform offers a complete 1D simulation suite to model and analyse multi-domain, intelligent systems and predict multi-disciplinary performance. The model components are described by analytical models representing the system's hydraulic, pneumatic, electric or mechanical behaviour. To create the system simulation model in LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim, users can make use of a large set of validated libraries of pre-defined components from different physical domains. The software creates a physics-based system model, which does not require full 3D geometry representation.

Using LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim, users can simulate intelligent system behaviour long before a detailed CAD geometry is available. The LMS Imagine.Lab software suite provides direct access to dedicated multi-domain simulation solutions for power-train (transmission and internal combustion engines), vehicle thermal management, vehicle system dynamics, aviation systems, fluids systems, and electro-mechanical systems. Each of these solutions comprises a specific set of application libraries and focuses on delivering simulation capabilities to assess subsystem behaviour.

ESI Updates Its PAM-CEM Simulation Suite

ESI has released the 2009 version of its PAM-CEM software package for computational electromagnetics. The PAM-CEM Simulation Suite offers industrial coupling capabilities to address realistic models in their early design stage and to assess real electromagnetic multi-scale phenomena occurring in the middle and high-frequency ranges.

PAM-CEM can handle 3D models featuring on-board complex antennas and realistic cable networks. PAM-CEM Version 2009 includes several key enhancements that benefit transport, aeronautics and defence, as well as the telecommunications and electronics industries. For example, it provides direct access to the electromagnetic fields radiated in the 'near zone' surrounding the 3D computational domain.

It can account for distant antennas or high frequency onboard automotive radar devices, without major computational drawbacks. The EMS (Immunity) interpolation scheme has been improved to allow cable networks to run close to the metallic (meshed) structures, thus avoiding hand-made running path redesign.

The PAM-CEM/FD output process has been reviewed, with ESI adding dedicated calibrating and/or normalising options (fully automatic or user controlled) and dedicated output of induced currents along cable networks for 3D display with Visual-Viewer. PAM-CEM Version 2009 features Visual-CEM 5.5, a dedicated user environment allowing the management of billions of unknowns, leading to higher operating frequencies. This has improved the overall performance, including graphical user interface and ease-of-use.