National Instruments and SolidWorks Collaborate on a Virtual Prototyping Solution

AUSTIN, Texas, and CONCORD, Mass. – Aug. 11, 2009 – National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI), a leader in control design and embedded systems, and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp., a leader in mechanical design software, today announced their collaboration on a pioneer mechatronics tool that helps mechanical and control engineers work together to lower the cost and risk of motion system design. Seamlessly connecting NI LabVIEW graphical system design software and SolidWorks® 3D CAD software, the new virtual prototyping solution helps engineers and scientists design, optimise, validate and visualise the real-world performance of machines and motion systems before incurring the costs of physical prototypes. Because LabVIEW is used for controlling the virtual prototype, engineers and scientists can deploy their graphical software to physical NI hardware with little to no change to the code.

“The increasing complexity of machine designs demands better collaboration between different engineering disciplines including mechanical, electrical and control,” said Jeff Ray, CEO of DS SolidWorks. “SolidWorks and National Instruments have developed a prototyping solution that dramatically shortens the gap between idea and reality.”