Altair Announces Successful 4th European HyperWorks Technology Conference in Versailles, France between October 27 and 29

TROY, Mich., Nov. 12, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair Engineering, Inc., a leading global provider of technology and services that empowers client innovation and decision-making, today announced that the 4th European HTC attracted around 500 engineers and simulation experts from 275 companies from 30 countries to Versailles to share and exchange their experiences with HyperWorks and to learn more about the latest trends in enterprise simulation. The high volume attendee turnout made the 4th European HTC the biggest CAE event in France.

100 presentations split into 20 sessions described various aspects of HyperWorks applications covering - among others - optimization, NVH, safety, durability, data management, and process automation. Several presentations showed how optimization has been growing from niche to mainstream application, by being integrated into the development process of almost every new product. Andrea-Ivan Marasco's keynote presentation from Airbus highlighted  new trends in aircraft development. In a so- called optimization center, the aircraft company combined its knowledge with the optimization expertise of Altair and the needed computing power to reach additional material savings and to further optimize the development process. This new combined approach is currently also applied by some of Altair's automotive customers in a customized way.

Other presentations, including one by Ronan Pitois, Eurocopter: "The new HyperMesh/SAMCEF Interface at Eurocopter: Deployment and Industrial Applications," described how HyperMesh is becoming the de facto standard for pre-processing in the aerospace industry.

"The conference was a very good platform to present our results to the European engineering community," said Ronan Pitois, calculation engineer at Eurocopter, France. "I found a very interested audience and could share my experiences with colleagues and Altair experts. Events such as the European HTC help to strengthen the relationship between Altair and its customers and give us the opportunity to influence future developments of the software. The new partnership between SAMTECH and Altair, which was actively driven by Eurocopter, has helped us to automate our development processes by interfacing two of our standard development tools. In only a couple of months, the HyperMesh/Samcef chain has demonstrated a very satisfactory level of efficiency, has enabled considerable development time savings and has increased our simulation capacity."

In the automotive industry Altair noted a stronger adoption of its solvers RADIOSS and MotionSolve. The keynote presentation of Djamal Midoun, Ford: "CAE and Testing, A Hand in Hand Process in Crashworthiness" described how virtual development with RADIOSS and physical testing, especially for crash applications, grow closer together.

Altair's CEO James R. Scapa and the company's CTO for HyperWorks products, Dr. Uwe Schramm gave insights into the future developments of the company and the HyperWorks suite. One of the most important highlights of HyperWorks 11 will be the seamless integration of data management, which will help HyperWorks users to make data management more enjoyable and user friendly, by integrating the functionality in their everyday workflow. This will increase productivity and ensure greater process stability.

"I am very pleased with the attendance of our conference and proud that the European HTC is increasingly drawing participants from outside Europe as well," said Dr. Michael Hoffmann, Vice President European Operations, Altair Engineering. "This trend shows us that the HTC conference series has become one of the VPD events to visit – in Europe and around the world. It is encouraging that almost all attendees would recommend the conference to their colleagues and that more than 90% were very satisfied with the technical content of the event. This positive feedback supports us in our striving to make the next event even more valuable for the attendees. We are looking back at a very strong year and expect our market share in Europe and our European conference to grow continuously over the next few years, making Altair the leading CAE provider in the market."

This year's conference was sponsored by Oracle, Intel and HP as platinum sponsors, and Microsoft, Moldex 3D, and nCode as gold sponsors. In addition to the sponsors, the following exhibitors presented their solutions in the technical showcase: All-HEX, Bull, Cradle, eXstream, Humanetics, FLUIDON, INTES, Magna, Metacomp, NAFEMS, Samtech, SimLab, solidThinking, SGI, and TASS.

For more information on the European HTC2010 and for a list of presented papers please visit: www.altairhtc.com/europe.

About Altair Engineering

Altair Engineering, Inc. strengthens client innovation and decision-making through technology that optimizes the analysis, management and visualization of business and engineering information. Privately held with more than 1,400 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 25-year track record for product design, advanced engineering software and grid computing technologies, Altair consistently delivers a competitive advantage to customers in a broad range of industries. To learn more, please visit www.altair.com.

SOURCE Altair Engineering, Inc.