UGS Launches Solid Edge Version 20, extending reach further into Plant Equipment Design

Core CAD Product of the UGS Velocity Series Delivers Increased Engineering Productivity and Design Collaboration for Mid-Sized Companies

FOR RELEASE Thursday, May 3, 2007

PLANO, Texas – UGS Corp., a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced Version 20 of Solid Edge® software, its industry-leading, 3D computer-aided design (CAD) solution. With hundreds of enhancements, the new version delivers key functionality for plant equipment design as well as increases engineering productivity and design collaboration across the entire global value chain.

Solid Edge V20 is the latest release of UGS’ hybrid 2D/3D CAD software and the premier design-centric solution in the mid-range CAD industry. Solid Edge is the CAD component of the UGS Velocity Series portfolio targeted specifically at the needs of mid-sized manufacturing companies. 

“Solid Edge V20 delivers substantial increases in engineering productivity through many industry firsts,” says Dan Staples, director, Solid Edge Business. “For example, V20’s 2D goal seeking technology breaks new ground in the CAD industry, while the addition of zones to our assembly modeler is a first for mid-range CAD. This opens up many new possibilities for design optimization in plant equipment design and shop floor layout. We also continue to improve design collaboration through tight integration with Teamcenter Express for cPDM.”

Massive assembly capabilities broaden footprint in Plant Equipment Design market
Companies such as Siemens VAI Clecim, Anglo Platinum and Krones use Solid Edge’s leading advanced assembly design capabilities to layout their factory floors and plant equipment, which often have assemblies of more than 100,000 parts. Solid Edge V20 takes the next step to making it even easier to layout factory floors with actual machine geometry, as well as deal with other large assemblies in industries like heavy industrial vehicles, large mechanical machinery, and process and power by becoming the first mid-range modeler to add assembly zones for massive assembly design. In addition, Solid Edge continues its 64-bit architecture development with more applications available, as well as improved performance, which aid users working with massive assemblies. 

The German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) is one of the leading accelerator centers in the world. “Typical assembly size that we use in our daily work consists of about 5000 parts, the largest assemblies being between 30,000 and 50,000 parts,” said Josef Gonschior, design engineer, DESY (Germany). “The advantage of the new Zone command in Solid Edge V20 provides is a targeted separation of the working area and better performance due to less geometry. As a result, we are able to work with several developers on even bigger assemblies. The Zone command gives us the insight in adjacent assemblies that are used by others.”
 
Design collaboration across the value chain to support PLM
Solid Edge V20 improves supply chain collaboration through integration with the new Teamcenter Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This allows improved access to the central database from remote locations via wide area networks. A new “Auto-constrain in Assembly” feature adds parametric intelligence to imported data regardless of origin or translation method. In addition, a new dynamic reviewing capability for direct editing provides real-time feedback when editing imported models.

Solid Edge V20 also introduces new translators to help users transition from AutoCAD to Solid Edge, collaborate with Catia V5, and read the STL file format for easy file sharing with a variety of systems.

Hatch (Mississauga, Ontario, Canada) has been serving the mining and metals, energy and infrastructure markets for more than 50 years and in 80 countries. “Design collaboration within our organization and outward to our suppliers and clients is always a challenge,” said John Matthews, mechanical designer, Hatch. “By using Solid Edge, we have been able to streamline our communication to complete our projects more efficiently. For example, we used Solid Edge to design six different Coilbox designs for customers in Korea, Ukraine, China and the United Kingdom. The original model was modified, improved and reused. With the new tools in Solid Edge V20, specifically the AutoCAD translation, we are able to communicate up and down our supply chain efficiently.”
 
Engineering enhancements increase productivity
Solid Edge V20 adds more than 170 enhancements to part design and drafting that drive further productivity gains, including:

• Goal Seeking to solve 2D engineering scenarios that are more easily express graphically than with equations in real time. Knowing the target value of an engineering calculation, goal seeking allows users to set certain parameters, while the system varies other factors to achieve the desired result. Results can be used to drive 3D geometry in a true hybrid 2D/3D design environment.
• Advanced Feature Libraries, including Part Feature grouping to streamlines reuse of common features.
• Tabulated drawings to create a single drawing for an entire family of parts.

Availability
Solid Edge V20 will be available in English this quarter and in nine additional languages shortly thereafter. Consistent with its “native Microsoft” strategy, Solid Edge V20 now supports Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 and Direct 3D graphics.

For more information on Solid Edge V20, visit www.ugs.com/velocity or www.solidedge.com/v20.

About UGS Velocity Series
UGS Velocity Series is a comprehensive family of modular, yet integrated solutions addressing the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) needs of the mid-market. Consisting of a preconfigured family of digital product design, analysis, manufacturing and data management software offerings, UGS Velocity Series leverages the industry’s best practices to provide significant breakthroughs in ease-of-use and deployment. Emerging manufacturers can leverage the power of UGS Velocity Series to transform their process of innovation while maintaining a low total cost of ownership; and all UGS Velocity Series products are completely scalable to the full range of UGS’ industry leading, enterprise-level PLM portfolio.

About UGS
UGS is a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services with 4.3 million licensed seats and 47,000 customers worldwide.  Headquartered in Plano, Texas, UGS’ vision is to enable a world where organizations and their partners collaborate through global innovation networks to deliver world-class products and services while leveraging UGS’ open enterprise solutions, fulfilling the mission of enabling them to transform their process of innovation. 

Note:  UGS, Transforming the process of innovation, Femap, Geolus, JT, NX, Parasolid, Solid Edge, Teamcenter, Tecnomatix and Velocity Series are trademarks or registered trademarks of UGS Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries.  All other trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks belong to their respective holders.

The statements in this news release that are not historical statements, including statements regarding expected benefits of the product, adoption by customers, continued innovation and other statements identified by forward looking terms such as "may," "will," "expect," "plan," "anticipate" or "project," are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements, including, among others, risks relating to developments in the PLM industry, competition, failure to innovate, partnering strategy, major design errors or security flaws and intellectual property. UGS has included a discussion of these and other pertinent risk factors in its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2006 filed with the SEC.  UGS disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Primary Contact

Dora Smith
UGS
+1 314 264 8480
dora.smith@ugs.com