VISTAGY, Inc., a leading provider of industry-specific engineering software and services, today announced that BAE Systems, the premier global defense, security and aerospace company, has upgraded to FiberSIM® 2009 composites engineering software, which will enable the company to take advantage of advanced design capabilities and compress development cycle times as it migrates from the CATIA V4 computer aided design (CAD) platform to CATIA V5. VISTAGY's professional services organization will help provide a smooth transition by assisting in the development and implementation of best practices for standardizing composites development processes across programs.

BAE Systems has used FiberSIM for more than a decade to design hundreds of highly complex composite parts—including wing skins, intake fairings, fuselage skins and spars—for a variety of aerospace programs, including the Joint Strike Fighter, Eurofighter Typhoon, a variety of Airbus programs and, most recently, for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

"We conducted a thorough evaluation of other options but we've worked successfully with VISTAGY for over a decade so our confidence in that partnership certainly played a significant role in our decision to continue to invest in FiberSIM," said Bill Sargeant, who manages the Airframe Design research and technology team, for the Autonomous Systems and Future Capability business stream at BAE Systems. "We're facing the challenge of compressing our product development cycle by 75 percent compared to past programs so FiberSIM's ability to streamline the composites engineering process will be a big help in supporting this effort.

"Furthermore, we need to be able to access and migrate legacy data so we can leverage our engineers' experience as we transition from CATIA V4 to V5. FiberSIM is fully integrated into both versions of the product and provides a solid upgrade path to support our needs in this area."

"We found that FiberSIM is easy to use and very robust," said Tony Rudd, senior support engineer at BAE Systems. "The flexible design approach provides the ability to quickly implement changes, and the way the technology mimics the composite manufacturing process and flow gives the user a lot of power while being quite straightforward to use."

"It's very gratifying to have a customer with the prestige of BAE Systems continue to rely on our solutions as an integral part of its business as it embarks on new programs, " said Steve Peck, director of product and market strategy for aerostructures at VISTAGY. "We're glad to have the opportunity to continue to deliver products and professional services that provide significant benefits so BAE Systems can meet their goals for streamlining the composites engineering process."