CoCreate Announces Release of SolidDesigner 2000; Five New Modules Strengthen Collaboration in Process-centric Environments.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

FORT COLLINS, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 20, 1999

CoCreate Software Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Company, today announced the addition of five new modules and other significant enhancements to its SolidDesigner 3-D CAD solution. The new modules are SolidDesigner collaboration; teamwork management; and three bi-directional interfaces to CATIA, Pro/ENGINEER and Unigraphics that enable collaboration between product-development teams in process-centric environments. CoCreate also has extended SolidDesigner to support 3-D process models for 3-D-based collaboration.

The new SolidDesigner collaboration module improves engineering productivity by connecting people in real time for early decision making and on-the-fly problem detection and resolution at any point in the product-generation process. This new Internet-based module takes advantage of technology from CoCreate's award-winning OneSpace solution to allow CoCreate's customers to collaboratively measure, mark up, and modify 3-D designs.

The teamwork management module helps users organize work with electronic project folders; track design history and master data in a standard compliant environment (for example, for ISO 9000 certification); and derive customers' product structures and bills of material (BOM) directly from design assemblies while maintaining association with the 3-D model, even when changes are made to the design.

SolidDesigner 2000 introduces three new direct data interfaces to the CATIA, Pro/ENGINEER and Unigraphics CAD systems. These bi-directional interfaces strengthen SolidDesigner's position as one of the industry's best data import and export 3-D-engineering solutions available today.

"With these direct interfaces, CoCreate's customers can directly exchange 3-D designs with more than 55,000 companies worldwide, including suppliers and subcontractors, so that expertise can be leveraged across teams," said Geoffrey Hedges, product marketing manager for CoCreate.

SolidDesigner 2000 is the only 3-D CAD solution available that can completely leverage imported 3-D designs created in other CAD systems. Supported downstream design-modification capabilities include design management, analysis, drawing creation and 2-D-manufacturing processes.

CoCreate's test suite demonstrated a tremendous success rate for these direct interfaces. In tests conducted by CoCreate 100 percent of the 3-D designs were successfully imported. Ninety percent were imported and automatically converted to solid models, while the remaining designs were imported as surface parts. In more than 1,200 cases, these direct interfaces beat the standard STEP and IGES interfaces in 95 percent of the tests.

SolidDesigner 2000 supports the attachment of process information to the 3-D model. This process information can contain critical data from design, analysis and manufacturing teams and can be used to create references to any external documentation. For example, a Web page can maintain association with the 3-D design. Linking process information to the 3-D design improves collaboration and ensures critical information is communicated at each step in the product-development process. Process information can be applied to 3-D models produced by SolidDesigner and to models imported from any other CAD system. This feature automatically leverages the 3-D process information, such as 3-D manufacturing notes, 3-D dimensions, inspection notes and engineering notes, into 2-D standard compliant drawings.

Other enhancements to SolidDesigner 2000 include the addition of sheet-metal functionality for designing sheet-metal parts. Functionality includes bend creation and modification, and folding and unfolding. SolidDesigner 2000 also includes more than 220 additional customer-requested enhancements. One example is the dynamic relations module, with a new table-driven parameter-modification capability that enables users to create families of parts within seconds. Another example is clearance analysis, which reduces the number of physical prototypes required by automatically calculating the minimal distances between parts and assemblies.

"Meeting the collaborative needs of our customers with solutions that keep them one step ahead of their competition is our ongoing goal," said Ulrich Mahle, worldwide engineering solutions manager for CoCreate. "The new modules and enhancements to SolidDesigner represent our most recent accomplishment toward that goal."

SolidDesigner 2000 is available now.

About CoCreate

CoCreate Software Inc. is a software subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Company. It develops mechanical computer aided design and product data management software that supports the concept of shared-space design. The software includes OneSpace for distributed, collaborative product development; SolidDesigner for product modeling design; ME10 for 2-D design, drafting and documentation; and WorkManager for product data and workflow/process management. CoCreate solutions are known for high quality, ease of use, customization and support of industry standards. They are available in 10 languages and are installed on more than 120,000 systems in design, engineering and manufacturing organizations worldwide.

Information about CoCreate Software Inc. and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.cocreate.com.