MESHING, ANALYSIS AND PRESENTATION IMPROVEMENTS ENHANCE ALGOR V14.1

ALGOR V14.1 features transparent (translucent) display capabilities in the Superview IV Results environment with a slider control for both global and part-based transparency levels and the ability to vary the display of results and mesh on individual parts. The casings of a lead acid battery (upper left) and a nickel hydrogen hybrid fuel cell (lower right) are displayed transparently to reveal the transient heat transfer analysis results on the interior parts.

PITTSBURGH, PA – November 10, 2003 – ALGOR, Inc., a leading maker of software for mechanical engineers, announced the release of ALGOR V14.1, the latest version of its FEA software that features new visualization and presentation options, improved contact for Mechanical Event Simulation (MES), meshing enhancements and other changes based on customer feedback.

"ALGOR V14.1 will help engineers be more productive in every stage of the analysis process," said ALGOR product manager Bob Williams. "This new release makes it easy for users to quickly create solid FEA meshes of thin CAD parts and assemblies, offers improved analysis capabilities including faster contact simulation and expands the ability to create high-quality presentations by including new transparent display options."

"Capabilities that enable me to dissect models, such as the option to make parts transparent, would help me view and present results on complex assemblies," said Ted Fryberger, P.E. of DeepSoft, Inc. "This new feature would be a valuable addition to the wide array of results visualization tools available in the ALGOR software."

"I use MES to simulate the behavior of heavy and medium truck suspension systems," said Brian Guthrie of Detroit Steel Products. "I am pleased that ALGOR is committed to developing MES tools with features like the adaptive contact stiffness capability that result in faster, more realistic contact simulations."

"The capabilities to easily work with CAD solid models and automatically create solid FEA meshes were important considerations when we chose ALGOR software as our FEA solution," said Richard R. Anderson of Unverferth Manufacturing Company, Inc. "Recent enhancements to the mesh generation and new diagnostic options help make ALGOR’s meshing tools even better. I am impressed by the continuous improvements ALGOR makes to their meshing technology."

ALGOR V14.1 features:

• transparent display capabilities (translucency) in the Superview IV Results environment with a slider control for both global and part-based transparency levels and the ability to vary the display of results and mesh on individual parts
• an adaptive contact stiffness calculation for improved convergence of MES surface-to-surface contact resulting in faster contact simulations
• enhanced mesh generation including:
  • improved part matching for assemblies, particularly those including thin parts
  • improved surface meshing to better handle narrow surfaces, such as those on the edges of thin parts
  • the ability to identify where parts contact one another and unconnected parts
  • improved surface verification to provide faster performance
• a thermal brick element with midside nodes for improved multiphysics modeling
• improved sparse solver to provide better performance for larger models during a static stress analysis with linear and nonlinear material models, MES, heat transfer analysis, fluid flow analysis and electrostatic analysis
• improved speed for direct CAD/CAE data exchange with Autodesk Inventor 6
• added support for the fractional power Darcy's law for flow through porous media in scenarios involving turbulence

ALGOR customers with a current software upgrade subscription for these products will get these new capabilities automatically through the software update wizard.

Contact ALGOR or visit www.ALGOR.com for more information.