HP Announces HP PE/SolidDesigner 4.0 - Major Release, Offers New Dynamic-Modeling Capabilities

Palo Alto, California. December 5, 1995 -- Hewlett-Packard Company today announced HP Precision Engineering (HP PE)/SolidDesigner 4.0, a 3-D mechanical computer aided design (CAD) system based on dynamic solid-modeling technology.

The enhanced system incorporates new dynamic-modeling capabilities, new facilities in freeform modeling, an integration kit for complementary application development, HP PE/WorkManager for Workgroups for team-based concurrent design and many ease-of-use enhancements.

New Dynamic-modeling Capabilities

New dynamic-modeling capabilities now allow users to remove faces, build offset faces or modify the wall thickness of existing thin-walled parts and reshape components by aligning their constituent faces with respect to reference faces.

Remove Face allows users to delete any face while maintaining a valid solid. So that this operation doesn't produce gaps in the model, the adjacent faces automatically "heal" to produce a solid.

A 3-D chamfer capability extends the creation of functional chamfers to the use of the chamfer as a modeling tool. B-spline edges also can be chamfered, a useful capability in styling applications. Dynamic remove and modify facilities also are included.

Dynamic modeling, unique to HP PE/SolidDesigner, makes SolidDesigner exceptionally easy to use. HP's dynamic-modeling technology gives designers the freedom to create designs without having to refer to the design history or specifying constraints on the geometry. Additionally, it, along with HP PE/SolidDesigner, overcomes the drawbacks of history-based methods that require that a designer have intimate knowledge of the history of a design.

The product's underlying system and database technology allows the user to modify and regenerate geometry at any stage in its creation, without requiring that the user know how the model was originally built. Models can be transferred and easily passed from one operator to another, and old models can be manipulated at any stage, making HP PE/SolidDesigner the easiest modeler to use in the industry, according to HP.

"With this latest release, we are getting closer to our goal of allowing all HP PE/SolidDesigner users to make changes quickly, at any time, to any model, regardless of its origin or construction history," said Peter Bohn, general manager of HP's Mechanical Design Division.

New Freeform-modeling Capabilities

New freeform-modeling capabilities allow users to construct high-quality lofted surfaces by lofting to, or between, existing parts. These parts can include imported surface models for use as a non-planar profile that can be lofted to build a solid model.

Face modeling allows users to create complex freeform geometry, easily and naturally. The tangency control is defined automatically by the geometry of the selected 2-D or 3-D curves. This interactive toolset can be used to build a solid model by selecting curves. These curves can be 2-D profiles on workplanes or any 3-D edges of a part, a face-part or an imported wire-part.

An automatic weight factor has been added to the loft operation to allow the production of smoother, higher-quality surfaces.

Openness

Face modeling now includes facilities to automatically maximize the connectivity of 3-D models imported from other systems. The interactive toolset also provides the capability to produce valid solids by modifying and repairing incomplete 3-D models that are imported using IGES or STEP. These facilities enhance the general openness of HP PE/SolidDesigner and allow users to gain maximum advantage from the manipulation of imported data in HP PE/SolidDesigner.

In addition to the facilities offered by Face Modeling, enhancements to openness include extensions to HP PE/SolidDesigners IGES and STEP capability; HP PE/WorkManager for Workgroups for team-based concurrent design; and the provision of an integration kit, which allows users and value added resellers to develop and connect complementary applications to HP PE/SolidDesigner.

HP PE/WorkManager for Workgroups

HP has introduced a new, team-oriented data-management solution for engineering workgroups, HP PE/WorkManager for Workgroups, which provides tight integration of HP PE/ME10, the leading 2-D design and drafting application, and HP PE/SolidDesigner.

WorkManager for Workgroups makes it easy to implementing a concurrent engineering design environment. HP PR/WorkManager for Workgroups comes preconfigured. Predefined forms and processes for document management, master data management, bill-of-materials and change management, allow the user to become productive instantly and help reduce implementation time to a minimum.

"HP PE/SolidDesigner's flexibility and openness make it the solution of choice for companies that are striving to cut time-to-market while improving product quality. The new levels of integration with HP PE/WorkManager provide any size of workgroup with the data, document-management and bill-of-materials generation capability appropriate to their needs," said Bohn. "With WorkManager for Workgroups, implementation time is shorter; costs are lower, and you have true concurrency straight out of the box."

HP PE/SolidDesigner Integration Kit

The HP PE/SolidDesigner integration kit provides programmable access to HP PE/SolidDesigner, allowing resellers and independent software developers to build add-on, complementary applications with the same look and feel as HP PE/SolidDesigner. The integration kit provides a programming environment that facilitates software development and customization, allowing users to build their own user interface and their own applications.

Using the integration kit, HP PE/SolidDesigner data structures can be accessed and information transferred directly from HP PE/SolidDesigner. Links can be embedded from within HP PE/SolidDesigner to other proprietary applications, such as numerical control or finite-element analysis, while maintaining a consistent look and feel for the whole system.

A number of key HP Value Added Resellers already have been trained in the use of the integration kit, and they are committed to providing add-on applications for HP PE/SolidDesigner. Applications such as cabling, piping, productivity tools, parts libraries and document management currently are under development.

The Integration Kit underlines HP's commitment to openness by providing a programming interface to HP PE/SolidDesigner. This allows more effective use of the software and its related applications within an engineering workgroup.

HP PE/SolidDesigner 4.0 includes more than 400 customer-requested enhancements. In addition, it includes quality enhancements in the areas of blending, taper, lift, layout and ease of use.

HP PE/SolidDesigner is an open solution, allowing reuse and modification of designs from other systems, independent of design history. Support of standards such as IGES, STEP and ACIS SAT allows coexistence with other solutions.

U.S. Prices and Delivery

HP PE/SolidDesigner 4.0 runs on HP 9000 Series 700 workstations and Silicon Graphics' Indy and Indigo2 workstations. Prices start from $ 7,500.

Customer shipments of HP PE/SolidDesigner 4.0 are expected to start in January 1996.

HP's Mechanical Design Division (MDD) develops 2-D and 3-D mechanical computer-aided design software, the Precision Engineering Systems, known for quality, ease of use, customization capability and support of industry standards. These products are installed on more than 57,000 systems in design, engineering and manufacturing organizations worldwide and are localized in 10 languages. The software includes HP PE/SolidDesigner for product-modeling design; HP PE/ME10 for 2-D design, drafting and documentation; HP PE/ME30 for 3-D modeling, design and drafting; HP PE/SheetAdvisor for sheet-metal design; HP PE/DDS-C for electromechanical design and HP/PE WorkManager for product-data and workflow management.

HP is the second-largest computer supplier in the United States, with computer-related revenue in excess of $25.3 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 102,300 employees and had revenue of $31.5 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.

Information in this release applies specifically to products available in the United States. Product availability and specifications may vary in non-U.S. markets.

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