New Timeline Utility Simplifies Time-Dependent Mechanical Simulation

    PITTSBURGH--June 18, 2001--ALGOR, Inc., a leading maker of software for mechanical engineers, today announced the addition of Timeline, a graphical utility enabling engineers to more quickly and easily specify and visualize time-based events within its transient finite element analysis (FEA) software products.
    Timeline can be used within the ALGOR environment for transient analyses including Mechanical Event Simulation (MES).
    "Being able to produce multiple and complex time-based event curves within ALGOR instead of having to transfer them from a third-party spreadsheet program will help engineers to more quickly perform transient analyses," said Michael Bussler, president and CEO of ALGOR, Inc. "Timeline improves the simulation of real-world events by graphically plotting curves based on users' time-dependent variable inputs, making it easy to catch set-up errors prior to analysis by simply viewing the resulting curves and how they interact throughout the event."
    Timeline consists of two components: an Event Viewer and an Event Editor. The viewer helps engineers validate event setup by displaying curves and seeing how loads will act on a model during analysis -- their activation and deactivation times and how their magnitude changes over time. With the editor, users enter curves into a spreadsheet-style dialog to define individual events or loads. Curves can also be generated using the built-in functions, a start time and an end time.
    Timeline stores plotted curves within comma-separated value files that can be archived in its included library and used with applications such as Microsoft Excel. The new utility also features:

--	the ability to click and drag points on a plot display;
--	a built-in equation editor for creating event curves;
--	a tree view to track different analyses for multiphysics applications involving linear and nonlinear structural or thermal effects;
--	depiction of various event curves on a single plot or multiple plots for multiphysics analyses; and
--	presentation support, including capabilities to save curves as images for reports.

    ALGOR has been a leader in mechanical simulation software since introducing FEA for PCs in 1984 and interfacing with CAD systems in 1985. The company's software products have enabled over 20,000 engineers in over 60 countries to create safe, efficient, cost-effective designs. ALGOR also offers educational support and customer service that includes the use of Internet audio/video technology for distance learning Web Courses, which provide step-by-step software instruction, and free Webcasts for live software demonstrations.
    ALGOR's family of products features Mechanical Event Simulation software for FEA-based motion and stress analysis, InCAD technology for seamless CAD/CAE integration with virtually all popular CAD systems and full multiphysics capabilities. The company also offers structural, linear dynamic, thermal, fluid flow, electrostatic and piping analysis tools. ALGOR's software interchanges data with products from ANSYS, Inc. , Autodesk, Inc. , CADKEY Corporation, MSC.Software Corporation , Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), Structural Dynamics Research Corporation, UGS , SolidWorks Corporation, a Dassault Systemes S.A. company, and others.

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