CEI Introduces EnLiten and EnVideo Software, Enabling Enterprise-Wide Visualization Sharing.Business Editors, High Tech Writers MORRISVILLE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 16, 2000 CEI CEI Competitive Enterprise Institute CEI Conferenza Episcopale Italiana (Italian bishop conference) CEI Central European Initiative CEI Comitato Elettrotecnico Italiano (Italian Electrotechnical Committee) announces EnLiten and EnVideo, two new products that enable engineering and research organizations to use the Internet and corporate intranets to share high-end visualizations throughout the enterprise. EnLiten and EnVideo work in conjunction with EnSight and EnSight Gold, used by 350 organizations worldwide to analyze, visualize and communicate computer-aided engineering See CAE. Computer-aided engineering Any use of computer software to solve engineering problems. With the improvement of graphics displays, engineering workstations, and graphics standards, computer-aided engineering (CAE) has come to mean the computer and scientific research results. EnSight users include aerospace, automotive, general engineering and chemical companies; national and international research labs; and universities. "These are the first tools that allow high-end visualizations to be easily and cost-effectively shared in a collaborative work environment - any time, anywhere, any place," says Kent Misegades, CEI president. "Until now, there's been a chasm between the visualization experts and those who could benefit from their work. EnLiten and EnVideo provide access throughout the enterprise to rich animations for collaborative design and engineering; customer, supplier and internal communication; presentations; and marketing and sales applications." Collaboration and Communication EnLiten is a platform-independent, rich geometry player that requires no special software skills. It allows interactive collaboration and communication of complex visualizations in areas such as computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics The numerical approximation to the solution of mathematical models of fluid flow and heat transfer. Computational fluid dynamics is one of the tools (in addition to experimental and theoretical methods) available to solve (CFD CFD - Computational Fluid Dynamics ), finite element analysis Finite element analysis (FEA) is a computer simulation technique used in engineering analysis. It uses a numerical technique called the finite element method (FEM). There are many finite element software packages, both free and proprietary. , crash analysis, and aerodynamics aerodynamics, study of gases in motion. As the principal application of aerodynamics is the design of aircraft, air is the gas with which the science is most concerned. . EnLiten imports EnSight scenario files containing geometry, color, clip planes, isosurfaces, particle traces and animation information. Scenario files can be configured to show only what the originator wants seen by others. EnLiten's GUI (Graphical User Interface) A graphics-based user interface that incorporates movable windows, icons and a mouse. The ability to resize application windows and change style and size of fonts are the significant advantages of a GUI vs. a character-based interface. automatically configures itself depending on the content of the scenario file. If the file contains an animation, for example, an appropriate video-player interface appears on the screen. EnLiten plugs into MS PowerPoint, MS Internet Explorer Microsoft's Web browser, which comes with Windows starting with Windows 98. Commonly called "IE," versions for Mac and Unix are also available. Internet Explorer is the most widely used Web browser on the market. It has also been the browser engine in AOL's Internet access software. and Netscape. It supports 3D stereo viewing and a full range of computing and display systems, from notebook computers to workstations to semi-immersive environments such as the ImmersaDesk. EnLiten users can manipulate 3D models, view models and animations from different perspectives, and run a variety of 3D animations provided by EnSight users. Engineers and scientists can use EnLiten, for example, to analyze detailed EnSight visualizations and exchange information interactively over the Internet or corporate intranets. Rich Video for the Internet EnVideo is simple-to-use, platform-independent software that solves current problems with viewing videos of high-end visualizations over the Internet or intranet. The two current standardized video formats - AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) A Windows multimedia video format from Microsoft. It interleaves standard waveform audio and digital video frames (bitmaps) to provide reduced animation at 15 fps at 160x120x8 resolution. Audio is 11,025Hz, 8-bit samples. and MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). - have drawbacks that typically affect engineering and scientific organizations. AVI files work well with Windows, but not as well with other operating systems Operating systems can be categorized by technology, ownership, licensing, working state, usage, and by many other characteristics. In practice, many of these groupings may overlap. , and file sizes tend to be large. MPEG files work well with UNIX systems, but don't play on the Windows Media Player Digital jukebox software for Windows from Microsoft that plays a variety of audio, video and streaming formats including MP3, WMA, CD audio and MIDI. Starting with Version 6.2 in 1999, the Windows Media Rights Manager was added for securing copyrighted content. . The quality of AVI and MPEG video is not considered good enough to meet the needs of some high-end visualization users. EnVideo uses compact evo files created in EnSight. The evo format produces files that are smaller than AVI files and about the same size as MPEGs, but with much better quality than either format. Animations output as evo files to EnVideo are indistinguishable from the original EnSight files. CEI offers two versions of EnVideo: EnVideo Basic, a free software package that enables users to view EnSight videos one at a time, and EnVideo Pro, a full-featured online video player. EnVideo Pro allows users to sequence multiple evo files, output to print, size image windows, and access easy-to-use controls for looping, cycling, changing playback speeds, and playing in forward or reverse. EnVideo Pro output can be embedded in MS PowerPoint, Internet Explorer or Netscape for presentations and online communication. Like EnLiten, EnVideo Pro supports 3D stereo viewing and a full range of computing and display systems, including VR devices. Volume Discounts EnLiten and EnVideo will be available in September for UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). , Linux and Windows systems. EnLiten starts at $3,000, with volume discounts for five seats or more; corporate-wide site licenses also are available. EnVideo Basic is free, and EnVideo Pro starts at $450, with volume discounts for five seats or more and special pricing for corporate-wide licenses. None of these products require a license manager or keys. EnSight, EnLiten and EnVideo are exclusive products of Computational Engineering International (CEI). CEI has corporate headquarters in Morrisville, N.C., and authorized distributors around the world. In addition to its products, CEI provides consulting services to engineers and scientists from organizations that use computational methods for research, product design or product refinement. |
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