Suite puts engineering design information to use

The Mathsoft Calculation Management Suite is the first enterprise software solution designed to help engineering organisations create and profit from their quantitative engineering information.

The Mathsoft Calculation Management Suite is the first enterprise software solution designed to help engineering organisations create and profit from their quantitative engineering information.

The Calculation Management Suite is a customisable solution for creating and centrally managing the engineering methods and values that represent product development and engineering designs.

Residing on top of any web repository or database, the suite lets engineers simultaneously design and document their work and centrally manage it for reuse, auditing, oversight, publishing and collaboration throughout the entire development process.

The result is faster product development, higher product quality and easier compliance with regulations.

The North American offshore pipelines division of $5.7 billion global engineering and construction company Technip is a design partner collaborating with Mathsoft to refine the Calculation Management Suite.

The company will use the suite to make standard approved calculations available on the Web for engineers responsible for ensuring the integrity of deep sea oil and gas pipelines.

"Engineering excellence is critical to our long-term success", said Neil Mackintosh, Marine Pipelines Department Manager for Houston-based Technip Offshore.

"The Calculation Management Suite will give our engineers immediate access to proven calculation methodologies for safety, efficiency, structural integrity and quality".

"Our eventual goal is to take calculation management to the rest of our organisation as the suite proves its value to our company and our customers".

The Calculation Management Suite combines two products to cover all aspects of calculation management: Mathcad 12, the world's most widely used engineering calculation tool, now producing manageable engineering information in XML format; Designate, a framework for viewing, searching, reporting and publishing an organisation's Mathcad worksheets, all from a web browser.

Organisations can customise the Calculation Management Suite to address their unique needs with optional components such as the Mathcad Application Server, which lets companies create and distribute fully interactive Mathcad Enterprise worksheets on the Internet and intranets.

This makes the worksheets accessible to colleagues, customers, partners and others via standard web browsers without requiring them to install Mathcad on their desktops.

Other options include: Binder Toolkit, software for creating electronic books from data managed via the suite; Customisation Toolkit, a set of APIs and a software development kit; Publishing Toolkit, a product for flexibly displaying and viewing XML data generated by the suite; libraries for civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, queuing theory and finite element analysis; and vertical extension packs for data analysis, signal processing, image processing, wavelets and advanced solving.

"There's a valid and pressing need for comprehensively managing engineering content and knowledge, and Mathsoft is the only company truly addressing the management of product design calculations", said Ken Versprille, PhD, PLM Research Director, CPD Associates.

"That's appropriate given the company's origination of calculation management methodology and its track record of setting the standard in calculation software for 20 years".

"In a world where products are becoming more complex and brain drain is a pressing concern, it's paramount to create, capture and intelligently reuse engineering information".

In addition to offering new features, the Calculation Management Suite's XML information architecture enables easy integration of engineering information with other engineering applications and business processes.

It also extends Mathcad 12's XML architecture to the enterprise, delivering new publishing and search capabilities.

For performance and large enterprise-level scalability, the Calculation Management Suite incorporates Mathcad's Microsoft.NET architecture.

With NET, organisations can offer Mathcad worksheets as web services, enabling collaboration across departments or with partners anywhere on the Internet.

"The Calculation Management Suite was two years in the making but is more precisely the fruit of two decades of interacting with customers who benefit from our software every day", said Mathsoft Chairman and CEO Chris Randles.

"The suite is our attempt to synthesise market direction, company vision and high-quality software to create significant business opportunities for our customers".

The Calculation Management Suite will be available this quarter.

Pricing for the Calculation Management Suite starts at GBP 8500 per installation with Software Assurance, which includes enhanced account support services and maintenance plans, onsite installation and onsite training.

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