Alliance aims to iron out incompatibility

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Feb 21, 2005

UGS and Autodesk have formed strategic alliance to enable complex product and process information to be widely and quickly shared, without the obstacle of format incompatibility.

Addressing the growing need for manufacturers to build products faster, more efficiently and with higher quality, UGS and Autodesk have formed strategic alliance to enable complex product and process information to be widely and quickly shared, without the obstacle of format incompatibility.

Designed to initially benefit nearly 10 million users worldwide, the new alliance calls for the companies to jointly build on the success of UGS' JT and Autodesk's DWF (Design Web Format) - two open, widely used and highly complementary formats for sharing digital product design, engineering and manufacturing data - to facilitate interoperability between applications using the two file formats.

As part of the alliance, Autodesk, the design software company with the world's largest engineering user base, will become a member of UGS' JT Open Programme, a global initiative to support JT, and UGS, a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, will join the Autodesk Developer Network and become a DWF Developer partner.

"This alliance between UGS and Autodesk puts our customers first by ensuring seamless data interoperability between our products and efficient data flow up and down the value chain and between organisations", said Tony Affuso, Chairman, CEO and President of UGS.

"By combining technology strengths and leveraging the widespread adoption of our data formats, UGS and Autodesk will help customers - and the PLM industry at large - advance to a higher level of manufacturing productivity.

"Customers are rightfully demanding open technologies and systems, and this alliance is a direct response to those demands, pushing the closed and proprietary systems of yesterday one step closer to obsolescence".

UGS and Autodesk are committed to ensuring that interoperability efforts, which will tap UGS' PLM XML schema, will not disrupt existing users' investment in design data.

To that end, UGS will support the exchange of DWF format in all its PLM applications by expanding on JT and PLM XML.

In a like manner, Autodesk will support the exchange of JT in its applications with a complementary expansion of DWF-based tools.

"This alliance is in direct response to market demand.

Together Autodesk and UGS will empower customers to create, manage and share compact, high-fidelity versions of complex designs in industry-leading, open file formats", said Carl Bass, Chief Operating Officer of Autodesk.

"Customers can be certain that this digital information can be easily shared, that data accuracy and integrity are maintained and that the value of their present and future technology investments is maximised".

More than five million users depend on Autodesk DWF for viewing 2D and 3D digital product data, and it is used throughout the globe for sharing complex, computer-aided design (CAD), engineering and mapping information.

The DWF specification and the Autodesk DWF Toolkit are published and available to any developer free of charge to build applications with DWF.

The JT format from UGS, the world's most widely used format for sharing lightweight 3D product images and manufacturing information, is used by nearly four million users and has been adopted by virtually all of the world's leading CAD applications.