New Major Release: CAESES 5

To begin the new year on a positive note, and hope­fully soon leave all the com­pli­ca­tions of 2020 behind us, we are more than happy to announce the official release of CAESES 5, which is now avail­able for download!

After many years of devel­op­ment, CAESES 5 is the begin­ning of the next gen­er­a­tion in the devel­op­ment of CAESES, both in terms of tech­nol­ogy and user expe­ri­ence. It brings along exciting new func­tion­al­ity to enable and ease many tasks solved by our users. CAESES 5 rep­re­sents a com­pletely new platform upon which the future versions of CAESES will build, creating the foun­da­tion for many inno­v­a­tive developments.

Come along for a test drive and get an idea of what to expect!

More Power and Speed

CAESES 5 comes with a new fully par­al­lelized and improved software core that is able to exploit the capa­bil­i­ties of modern multi-core proces­sors and thereby allows much faster geometry updates.

Keep working while the update process is still running. No need to wait for minutes for the update to complete when dealing with sophis­ti­cated para­met­ric models.

In addition, the pro­cess­ing core is decou­pled from the user inter­face. Meaning, the model update happens in the back­ground, while the user inter­face stays respon­sive, allowing you to keep working while the update process is still running.

All in all, this will result in a smoother inter­ac­tion, espe­cially with large and complex projects.

Advanced Ren­der­ing

Another change at the core of CAESES is related to the ren­der­ing engine. The new, advanced ren­der­ing engine of CAESES 5 makes your geometry models even more vivid by inducing highly real­is­tic reflec­tions, shadows and transparency.

Tune the visu­al­iza­tion by defining visual material settings for indi­vid­ual surfaces and parts and place your model in a 3D envi­ron­ment. Quickly switch global settings for render accuracy, or ded­i­cated visu­al­iza­tions like the section and isophotes views.

Beyond the visu­al­iza­tions, the new ren­der­ing engine is able to realize a vastly increased ren­der­ing speed for large models with numerous facets. It, fur­ther­more, opens new pathways for fast inter­ac­tive work in the 3D view, as used in the new morphing tools of CAESES 5.

Redesigned Graph­i­cal User Interface

The new graph­i­cal user inter­face of CAESES 5 is designed with the specific intent to better support existing, and espe­cially new CAESES users in their design work­flows. It is better orga­nized, more intu­itive in its handling and easier to use. CAESES 5 comes with a modern look and feel, includ­ing a new design and icon set, light and dark styles.

The new user inter­face intro­duces the concept of work­spaces: complete arrange­ments of windows and menus fitted to a specific task. Whether you are modeling, con­nect­ing external tools, or opti­miz­ing, the right work­space includes all the elements you need. Also, clean ribbon menus with sub-reg­is­ters provide easy access to func­tion­al­ity within a specific context.

Finally, if you are an advanced user or have specific require­ments, the user inter­face is fully con­fig­urable and lets you tailor the work envi­ron­ment to your needs.

Easy and Powerful Morphing

Some­times, creating a new para­met­ric model of your geometry from scratch is unrea­son­able for the opti­miza­tion task you want to solve.

Shape morphing allows you to easily import an existing geometry model and reshape your design with regards to the flow and struc­tural performance.

Automat­ing these mod­i­fi­ca­tions lets you go from a baseline geometry to an opti­miza­tion in a matter of minutes!

CAESES 5 further supports this approach with addi­tional morphing methods based on radial basis func­tions (RBF) for an even quicker, easier, and more flexible para­met­ric vari­a­tion of imported geometry!

Just put together a few curves or surfaces as source and target geome­tries, i.e., where you start and where you want to go, compute the defor­ma­tion, and apply it to your NURBS-based or discrete geometry.

Addi­tion­ally, discrete geome­tries can be deformed with an easy-to-use inter­ac­tive morphing tool. ​“Spray paint” the region you want to modify, place some handles, and move them either inter­ac­tively, or by means of design variables.

Faster Opti­miza­tion in High-Dimen­sional Design Spaces

The opti­miza­tion of complex para­met­ric models with many free design vari­ables requires a high number of sim­u­la­tions, which can be pro­hib­i­tive when dealing with expen­sive simulations.

The new design space dimen­sion­al­ity reduc­tion method of CAESES 5, which is based on prin­ci­pal com­po­nent analysis (PCA), trans­lates the original para­me­ter­i­za­tion into a com­pletely new para­me­ter space, where the para­me­ters are uncor­re­lated (it is not uncommon for a typical para­met­ric model that several para­me­ters have similar effects on specific areas of the geometry, there­fore being correlated).

This allows for a massive reduc­tion of the number of free design vari­ables, while retain­ing most of the model’s vari­abil­ity. Running the opti­miza­tion in this reduced para­me­ter space leads to a sig­nif­i­cant speed-up of the opti­miza­tion process.

Cus­tomiz­able Inter­faces for Project Setups

The so-called app view allows you to create a sim­pli­fied and cus­tomized view on a project setup. It can be con­fig­ured by an expe­ri­enced CAESES user to share complex projects and work­flows with less expe­ri­enced col­leagues, or even cus­tomers. Dif­fer­ent tasks within the workflow can be split between dif­fer­ent pages and typical user inter­face elements.

Finally, this app view can be deployed and used directly within the CAESES inter­face or via a web browser, in both a local and remote setting.

Easier Modeling and Cleaner Projects

Several improve­ments on a small scale will ease the modeling process by reducing cum­ber­some tasks and intro­duc­ing more flex­i­bil­ity. It also supports you in creating a cleaner and more readily under­stand­able project structure.

Dynamic Object Types

New generic point, curve and surface object types allow you to choose the creation method after the gen­er­a­tion of the object and will give clues as to which method is suitable for the task you have to solve. You can also flexibly change the creation method later on, while design­ing your model, without breaking depen­den­cies. It is no longer required to know all object types with their indi­vid­ual prop­er­ties and make a decision upfront!

Object Post-Pro­cess­ing Oper­a­tions for Points, Curves, Surfaces, BReps, and more

Object post-pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions such as trimming, basic trans­for­ma­tions, revers­ing, or exten­sion for many object types let you directly modify them without the need for image or trans­for­ma­tion objects. This speeds up the workflow and keeps the project struc­ture slim and clean!

Object Tree Search

The new search func­tion­al­ity will help you to find your way around the object tree, espe­cially of complex projects.

All the Help You Need

The over­hauled and improved doc­u­men­ta­tion center provides central access to all help and training resources from within CAESES. An extended search function will help you to quickly find infor­ma­tion on object types, global commands, samples, and tutorials.

If you do not find what you are looking for or need to get in touch with us, the new helpdesk can also be accessed directly through the doc­u­men­ta­tion browser within CAESES. Helpdesk tickets can be easily created from the CAESES user inter­face, with the options to attach screen­shots of the user inter­face and the project file.

License Admin­is­tra­tion

A new license-server and ‑man­age­ment will facil­i­tate the admin­is­tra­tion of your licenses. It offers improved support for multi-license setups and lets you now perform several admin­is­tra­tive tasks, which pre­vi­ously required our support, e.g., adding users to your license or changing your hardware.

Download

If you observe any issues or problems, please get in touch with us through the helpdesk or use the newly inte­grated ticket sub­mis­sion in the CAESES 5 Help work­space to support us in making it even better.

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