Like every other product development organization, BMW Group (www.bmwgroup.com) wants to squeeze excess time out of its process and lower its manufacturing costs. As part of that effort, it’s decided to standardize on MSC Software’s (www.mscsoftware.com) MD Nastran, which is multi-discipline (hence the MD) enterprise software for simulation and engineering analysis, including computational fluid dynamics/fluid structure interaction, strength and durability, shock and vibration, and thermal behavior (convection and conduction).

The software, which integrates MSC Nastran, Marc, Dytran and LS-Dyna, is intended to help BMW reduce the number of simulation tools it has to manage as well as to reduce its need for physical prototypes. MD Nastran shares a common data model among various environments – fluid, thermal, structural, etc. – so no time is lost in translation from one to the next. The tighter coupling of simulation environments should also reveal design flaws earlier.