Altair Engineering today announced the release of Altair HyperForm Solista and Altair HyperBlank, two standalone technologies that allow sheet-metal part manufacturers to easily simulate forming operations to cut production costs and material scrap while improving product quality. Leveraging Altair's powerful finite-element solver engine, RADIOSS, HyperForm Solista and HyperBlank offer efficient, cost-effective and accurate solutions to simulate the entire manufacturing process for sheet-metal forming, tube bending and hydroforming.

"HyperForm Solista and HyperBlank have been developed by manufacturing engineers to aid product and cost engineers, die designers, process and try-out engineers by accurately simulating the stamping process," said Altair Stamping Technology Manager Simone Bonino. "We leveraged more than 20 years of Altair's global experience in manufacturing simulation and process design to provide a cost-effective solution to aid in developing the optimal manufacturing process. Our development priorities for these products have been to automate the set-up process by building in the users' knowledge base, use the language of the manufacturing engineers throughout the software user interface, and provide the solution at an extremely competitive price. HyperForm Solista and HyperBlank deliver turnkey solutions that dramatically reduce the overall product development cycle time, generating a return on investment in the first year."

 Altair HyperForm Solista: Sheet-Metal Forming Essentials
 --  Predict Forming Problems and Reduce Cost - The most accurate
     incremental sheet-metal forming solver on the market, Altair RADIOSS,
     is seamlessly integrated into HyperForm Solista's process-driven user
     interface. This solver allows users to quickly predict wrinkles and
     splits prior to cutting steel, avoiding the unnecessary costs
     associated with die machining and press downtime.
 --  Streamlined, Process-Oriented GUI Increases Productivity - HyperForm
     Solista's extensive built-in knowledge of the manufacturing domain
     efficiently captures the stamping process. A comprehensive collection
     of tailored, process-oriented automations for virtually every stamping
     application further boosts user efficiency. Together with an
     intuitive, easy-to-understand user interface with navigation and
     terminology that are consistent with the production floor, these
     products do not require prior finite-element analysis training or
     knowledge.

 --  Complete Simulation Solution for Stamping - The HyperForm Solista
     stamping platform efficiently manages the entire stamping simulation
     process from feasibility analysis through final process validation and
     optimization. It also boasts a broad and robust functionality suite,
     including concept die face design, springback prediction and
     compensation, and a powerful results-visualization framework to meet
     and exceed users' high-performance requirements.

 Altair HyperBlank: Accurate Blank Size and Cost Analysis

Altair HyperBlank is a simple, reliable and affordable tool that quickly and accurately estimates the initial feasibility, along with the required blank size, for stamping of sheet metal parts. HyperBlank predicts the proper blank size in the early stages of product testing, efficiently evaluating initial costs. The powerful nesting module minimizes material scrap, further lowering production costs. HyperBlank is based on the RADIOSS inverse solver, providing a fast, yet accurate, answer to sheet-metal engineers, purchaser, die designers and press-shop engineers. A very short learning curve allows users to go from blank screen to report generation in seconds.