SANTA ANA, Calif. -- MSC.Software Corp., the leading global provider of virtual product development (VPD) products including simulation software, services and systems, today announced the availability of MSC.Marc 2003. MSC.Marc is a general-purpose, non-linear, parallel finite element program used everyday by customers around the world in several industries including rubber/tires, automotive, aerospace, electrical/electronics, bio-medical, construction and manufacturing. "MSC.Software is committed to providing our customers with virtual product development tools to efficiently analyze, improve and finalize product designs before they enter the prototype and physical test laboratory," said Frank Perna, chairman and chief executive officer of MSC.Software. "MSC.Marc is an integral part of our software portfolio and the 2003 version makes the entire MSC.Software portfolio even more competitive." As world's first commercial non-linear finite element software, MSC.Marc has been long known for its versatility in helping market leaders in various industries to design better products and solve complex real-world engineering problems since 1971. Today the MSC.Marc family of products has evolved and matured through constant development and worldwide usage by thousands of engineers involved in product design and manufacturing. MSC.Marc 2003 introduces several new enhancements aimed at increasing user productivity for products and applications in several industries including Automotive (engine and power train modeling, steady state rolling of tires, air springs and other cord-rubber composite products), Manufacturing (sheet metal forming and machining), Bio-medical (medical devices including stents and orthodontics archwire), Electrical (MEMS, high voltage switches, PCB analysis and ultrasonic motors), Aerospace (satellite antennae and super plastic forming) and Consumer goods. Some of the significant new functionality or enhancements in MSC.Marc 2003 release include: contact (modeling with quadratic elements, beam contact, thermal contact), material models (new anisotropic plasticity models, shape memory material models, cyclic plasticity and viscoplasticity, thermo- mechanical gaskets, implicit creep), elements (reduced integration shell, several new rebar elements, thermal composites), electrical (piezoelectricity, coupled Joule-mechanical), tires, ease-of-use and robustness (adaptive and automatic 3D remeshing, automatic load stepping, several multipoint constraints), major speed and memory enhancements for single and parallel analysis as well as a 64 bit version of the GUI, MSC.Marc Mentat 2003 and MSC.Marc-MSC.Adams integration. MSC.Marc products are supported on single shared memory machines as well as network systems with 32 and 64 bit architectures.