Cambridge, July 2003

CES4.1 - answering the Materials IT challenge

The latest version, CES4.1, of the Cambridge Engineering Selector is Granta's response to the twin challenges for Materials IT: developing an IT system for managing materials information and bringing together diverse types of materials data in an organised manner.

Why is this so important?

There has been extensive development in integrating CAD and CAE into the engineering and design process but there has been relatively little progress made with software in the materials field.

Typically, these developments in CAD and CAE have been individual initiatives. For example, material producers have put together data collections for marketing purposes; publishers did the same to sell their content and CAD and CAE companies have created material data systems to serve their own packages.

Patrick Coulter, Granta Design's Chief Operating Officer says that these do not form the coherent and integrated approach needed to meet the needs of materials professionals and their organisations and that something more is required.

He continues, "This is where Granta comes in. We developed our CES4 software to service all materials IT needs from the test lab to the engineer's desk in a coherent way. CES4.1 takes this a step further. We have added a lot more content to the existing CES databases and we've created the Material Data Network - matdata.net."

The Material Data Network brings together under one roof a range of disparate materials information sources which are directly searchable from CES4.1. Matdata.net eliminates the problem of having many different data sources in an organisation, possibly in different formats, in different locations.

Coulter concludes "I'd like to quote from a review by Al Dean in MCAD, April 2003 where he says that with CES4 any organization can now capture, analyse, manage and distribute materials related information in a much more effective manner than has ever been possible - ensuring that accurate data is available to those that need it."

"I think that this is evidence that CES is solving the Materials IT challenge and I am convinced that CES4.1 will make it even easier for engineers to find the right quality material data as they need it."