Leading Diesel Engine Manufacturer Perkins Selects solidThinking Inspired

TROY -- Altair Engineering Inc., a leading global provider of technology and services that empower client innovation and decision-making, announced today that the engine manufacturer Perkins has deployed solidThinking Inspired to optimize the design of industrial engine components.

"Perkins has a reputation for delivering durable, long-lasting industrial engines," said Martin Dirker, engineering team leader at Perkins Engines. "We were looking for an affordable tool that could help us optimise the design of our engine brackets to meet stiffness targets and reduce overall design iteration time."

In 2011, Perkins invested in solidThinking Inspired 3D conceptual design software to help visualize, explore and evaluate designs in less time.

"SolidThinking Inspired has helped us optimise bracket designs to meet stiffness targets and therefore improve the overall system stiffness by more than 10 times," Dirker said. "We have also significantly reduced the design iteration time. Whereas we were previously taking up to two weeks to optimize a single component, we are now able to do this in just an afternoon. This means that we have been able to reduce the overall design time from six weeks to just over four weeks."

The ability to use Pro Engineer geometry directly, together with the ease of learning the software, were key drivers for Perkins's selection of solidThinking Inspired.

"We know about Altair and are very enthusiastic about solidThinking," Dirker added. "It's easy to use, delivers results quickly and has given us the confidence to meet our targets. solidThinking Inspired has impressed us and is the most effective structural optimisation tool I've worked with."

Perkins is a global manufacturing company, with plants in the United Kingdom, United States, China and Brazil. For more information, visit: www.perkins.com

SolidThinking (www.solidthinking.com) develops and markets industrial design and styling software that helps designers invent, explore and evaluate new ideas easily, rapidly and cost-effectively, without the limitations of traditional software. Using solidThinking's conceptual 3D modeling capabilities, visualization interface and fast real-time rendering, designers can model, render and share their projects on the fly, from architecture and automobiles to electronic devices, jewelry, product packaging and yachts. SolidThinking is a subsidiary of Troy-based Altair Engineering Inc. (www.altair.com).