Ansys, Inc. (Canonsburg, Pa.; www.ansys.com) today announced the release of ANSYS Engineering Knowledge Manager (ANSYS EKM) 2.0, a product focused on simulation process and data management (SPDM). The solution set addresses some real-world challenges that engineers face, such as how to better manage, share and reuse simulation data as well as how to capture the engineering expertise that a simulation result represents. ANSYS EKM 2.0 offers a number of significant enhancements that simplify and speed up work, especially for remote teams that hand off data to each other as part of collaborative design. By managing simulation data and processes using ANSYS EKM technology, companies can more effectively leverage the full power of simulation along with the tremendous expertise of the analysts and engineers who contribute to the process. The ultimate result is shortened time to market and protection of valuable intellectual property.
ANSYS EKM software is a web-based solution with extensive capabilities for archival and management of simulation data, traceability and audit trail, advanced search and retrieval, report generation and simulation comparison, process/workflow automation, collaboration tools, and capture and deployment of best practices. Release 2.0 enhancements allow for smarter and faster file transfer between remote locations and the ability to run simulation jobs remotely using job submission systems, such as RSM, LSF, SGE and compute clusters. A new addition to the suite is ANSYS EKM Studio, an intuitive graphical system for quickly and easily defining simulation workflows that can be used for dynamic engineering simulation collaboration. ANSYS EKM 2.0 also offers a new scripting interface that enables the creating and publishing of custom applications templates that can then be accessed by users over the Internet. This enables the capturing of simulation expertise for deployment throughout the engineering organization.
“Managing product data is a specialized subset of the broader product lifecycle management (PLM) vision, and it presents a whole new set of challenges to organizations that engineer products,” says Michael Engelman, vice president, business development, Ansys, Inc. “Engineers are interested in spending less time handling data and more time focusing on true product development efforts. As companies look for increased productivity in all aspects of their simulation activities, they start asking ‘How do we better manage and share the voluminous simulation data that is being generated? How do we better capture the engineering expertise that the simulation results represent?’ ANSYS EKM software helps organizations get the right data to the right person at the right time. This is a process that is now essential to successful product/process development in today’s global competitive environment.”
The ANSYS EKM portfolio is a scalable solution including Desktop, Workgroup and Enterprise versions designed to meet these varying needs and differing levels of deployment while providing a growth path from the desktop to the enterprise. Release 2.0 also offers improvements including automated metadata extraction and report generation for use with other CAE formats, tighter integration with ANSYS Workbench project files for performing what-if studies, extended change configuration with branching and versioning, and a new analysis project type that allows users to easily track input and result dependencies for simulation files. The software is tightly integrated with other products in the broad Ansys multiphysics suite.