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Simulation has come a long way since it was generally adopted in Aerospace and A

utomotive industries in the 1970 s.


On the other hand, we still see archaic terminology such as card image when today s
users may have never seen
or used a card punch.
Engineers are normally conservative and somewhat slow to change which is a good
thing for the safety aspects of the
products they design. But we live in an ever changing and accelerating technolog
ical era. Today, simulation is used in every
industry that designs and manufactures products from toothpaste tubes to rocket
engines. The demand for engineers
in the simulation field has never been higher. The advance of computing is relen
tless. Today s mobile devices are more
powerful and can store more information than the supercomputers of the early day
s of simulation. The pace of computing
continues to grow at an exponential rate even though a receding growth rate has
been predicted many times. The only thing
that is not changing is the basic physics behind the simulation computations. So
where are we going with all of this advance
in capability and demand?
The level of detail in the simulation models continues to increase with fewer an
d fewer assumptions required to get answers
in a reasonable time. As the models become more complex the requirements for ass
embling models, analysis of the
results, and storing the volumes of input and output are increasing. Altair is w
orking to bring the future of simulation to
engineers in both an evolutionary and revolutionary way. We continue to moderniz
e our tradition tools for ease of use, large
model handling, and efficiency and at the same invent new ways of working for th
e future generations of engineers.
The challenge for the future is to make the complex simple by reducing the requi
rements put on the user to get into the
details unless necessary or desired. The simulation process can be more systemat
ic and guided versus more of an art
as it is sometimes today. Two engineers solving the same problem should be able
to get similar results by establishing
processes that are repeatable. More realistic representation of reality can be a
chieved by stochastic analysis where the
variation of real products is a standard part of the simulation process. Data an
d processes can be shared within teams and
across teams. Finally with advance in technology we will see a return to remote
computation or as it is called today cloud
computing which will include high speed 3D graphics. Altair is working in all of
the directions described above to bring the
best value and experience to the engineering community worldwide.
In the document that follows, you will see elements of where we are going. But t
he reality is there is a lot to learn and the
knowledge you need to successfully apply simulation is quite vast. Good luck in
your endeavors and we hope we can be of
value to you now and throughout your career.

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