ESI Announces the Release of Visual-Environment 6.5

21 December 2010
Paris, France
An integrated and versatile virtual prototyping platform for improved productivity

Visual-Environment offers a flexible and open engineering framework within a common platform for applications and interfaces, addressing simulation domains simultaneously or on a stand-alone basis. With two releases scheduled every year, ESI customers benefit from an ever-evolving platform adapted to the needs of various disciplines, solvers and industries.

NVH-Interior Acoustics module in Visual-Environment

NVH-Interior Acoustics module in Visual-Environment

Along with an optimized workspace, Visual-Environment 6.5 includes general performance enhancements and notable updates to existing applications, all aimed at increasing productivity and efficiency. Examples include, a generic and consistent entity selection procedure to improve usability within the selection wizard, as well as optimal layer management in the Visual-Viewer application, which enables the study of multiple models in one window. In addition to managing enterprise workflows and simulation content within VisualDSS and its web client, customers will also benefit from this Decision Support System (DSS) for complete design lifecycle management.

Interface with various disciplines

Every application in ESI’s Visual-Environment is updated with each new release. For instance, Visual-Crash PAM 6.5 features a new Belt Tool to create a multi-point seat belt in just a few clicks and a new plot editor to visualize and edit curves, supporting the crash and safety simulation solver PAM-CRASH.

This latest release of  Visual-Environment also incorporates three new applications: Visual-CEM for computational electromagnetic (CEM) simulations, Visual-Composite Materials for composite structure manufacturing and Visual-Weld for welding and heat treatment simulations. While Visual-CEM includes a harness manager to handle all types of cable networks, from simple lines to sophisticated bundles, Visual-Composite Materials now allows the management of material data related to shape distortion simulations. As for Visual-Weld, visualization is improved thanks to the creation of weld sequence animations. The automatic creation of reports and weld lines is also available in version 6.5.

Support for NVH & Interior Acoustics

In a special release, Visual-Environment 6.6 is being simultaneously made available with version 6.5 for selected ESI customers. In version 6.6 the setup of Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) simulations ranging from Structural Transfer Functions and Point Mobility Analysis to full Vehicle Interior Acoustics with road excitation, is possible. The 6.6 edition provides advanced tools to visualize acoustic coupling, create structural panels, as well as process automation for setting up NVH and Interior Acoustics models.  ESI’s Visual-Environment platform not only covers the complete sequence typically used in automotive NVH simulation, but also extends to the integration of Porous Elastic Materials (PEM) for improved predictability of the sound pressure level experienced by drivers and passengers.

“Our new NVH and Interior Acoustics module allows customers to improve their productivity by reusing data already available from other domains like Crash, Strength and Stiffness. Furthermore, the physical realism and accuracy of the NVH solution can be enhanced by bringing in the effects of the manufacturing and assembly history on the mechanical properties of the parts and assemblies,” said Willem Van Hal, NVH Product Manager at ESI Group.

“Our customers are our coaches and their constant feedback has been instrumental in guiding us forward,” said Anitha Nanjundaswamy Rao, Platform Product Manager at ESI Group. “With this latest release of Visual-Environment, ESI comes closer to delivering to its customers an integrated platform for End-to-End Virtual Prototyping.”

For more information, please visit: www.esi-group.com/visual-environment