Solid Edge Takes Poll Position With Team Perkins Racing

March 30 2005 - Solid Edge has outpaced the field to win poll position as the exclusive CAD tool for Team Perkins Racing.

The V8 Supercar team is part of the racing stable of Australia�s Bathurst 1000 racing legend, Larry Perkins, who runs the renowned V8 touring car development business, Perkins Engineering Pty Ltd in Melbourne, Australia.

The deal sees plm (Product Lifecycle Management Australasia) � the master distributor in Australia of NX software - and Solid Edge reseller Edge Software Pty Ltd supply Perkins Engineering with Solid Edge and its powerful design management tool Insight Connect, along with FEMAP and NX Nastran.

Winning the business was a tough race, with strong competition all the way, but it was Solid Edge chosen as the Perkins computer-aided design and collaboration tool for the next generation of V8 Supercars.

The Perkins design team will use Solid Edge to optimise the design process on its Holden body shells, which are designed on NX.

Solid Edge provides true interoperability with NX, Insight Connect will allow non Solid Edge users to get full access and interrogation capabilities of the Solid Edge models, and FEMAP/NX Nastran gives complete �what if� and design optimisation capabilities.

The team now has intelligent capabilities to facilitate rapid creation and evaluation of large numbers of design alternatives.

Six-time Bathurst 1000 winner Larry Perkins says, "Our team has had the most wins at Bathurst in the last 25 years and produced the most reliable cars and to continue to do so we needed the latest and best tools available."

Interoperability with NX software used in the design of Holden vehicles was essential, but the other key factor in our choice of new generation software was the availability of design engineers with Solid Edge experience.

Strong local technical support and the ability of Solid Edge to handle large assemblies made it the ideal solution.

Perkins Engineering Chief Engineer, Mark McVeigh, said he could now import the Holden body shell design directly from NX into Solid Edge.

"From there we can design the roll cage very efficiently using the PathXpres feature which produces the cage tubing from a 3D sketch. Even more impressive is that end conditions, which traditionally are very time-consuming to model, are produced automatically.

"As we generally produce a new car each year, using SolidEdge will now ensure we cut our lead times considerably."

Together, Edge Software and plm now dominate the Australian motor sport design and prototype testing market with NX software used at Holden Racing Team, NX I-deas at FPR and now Solid Edge at Team Perkins Racing.

Solid Edge is a powerful 3D CAD software that allows manufacturing companies to design with Insight and achieve competitive advantage through cost reduction, without losing focus on top line revenues.

The exclusive Solid Edge Insight technology embeds design management capabilities directly within CAD, providing insight into design intent to the entire organisation and enhancing collaboration. Insight, complemented by Solid Edge's superior core modeling and process workflows, greatly eases the design of increasingly complex products required to meet continually changing market demands.

The extensive Solid Edge user community is comprised of designers at thousands of companies worldwide, including Alcoa, NEC Engineering, and Volvo. The Solid Edge Voyager Program includes 200 integrated engineering software applications and computer hardware solutions.

www.EdgeAustralia.com.au

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