NEWS BRIEFS

Wilmington, MASS. — NASA Goddard Space Flight Center hosted a DC area users’ group meeting on October 13 for IntelliSense Corporation’s market-leading CAD for MEMS software, IntelliSuite. At the meeting, IntelliSuite users from Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia discussed emerging applications for MEMS with IntelliSense management and proposed a development path for CAD for MEMS software.

IntelliSuite is unique in the CAD for MEMS industry because it can adapt its source code to incorporate user feedback into upcoming releases. The meeting is the first of many gatherings of IntelliSuite users organized to give users a further voice in defining the features of future releases of IntelliSuite. IntelliSuite users in the DC area include NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, George Washington University, Morgan State University, Northrop-Grumman, and ACT MicroDevices. Both Northrop-Grumman and ACT MicroDevices have played a role in IntelliSense’s Commercial Partnership Program, in which IntelliSense engineers developed new functionality to meet customer requirements. Among the features developed in IntelliSuite were piezoelectric analysis, micro-assembly analysis and a variety of mask editor options.

“NASA was delighted to host the regional users’ group meeting,” remarked Dr. Donald Silversmith, Visiting Professor at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “NASA encourages outreach activities to further communications between suppliers and customers which may enhance the use of products by both NASA and the general public.”

“User groups allow IntelliSense to continue setting the standard in MEMS,” added Andrew Swiecki, IntelliSense’s VP of Sales and Marketing. “Many of the best ideas in CAD for MEMS come from our users. IntelliSense listens to its user base closely and develops the analytic capabilities that the research and business communities need for the next generation of MEMS. For example, our software customers have long enjoyed the ability to move designs seamlessly between IntelliSuite and other design packages. Our customers requested and received the ability to import from and export to other industry standard packages such as AutoCAD, Vector Works, L-Edit, ANSYS, and PATRAN. As a result, they spend less time in the development phase and get new products to market faster.”

IntelliSuite is a family of process-driven MEMS design tools that includes a process simulation module; a comprehensive mask layout tool; an anisotropic etch simulator; the most comprehensive thin-film materials database; and a complete suite of modules to allow three-dimensional analysis of electrostatic, thermomechanical, coupled thermoelectromechanical, electromagnetic, and microfluidic effects.

For nearly a decade, IntelliSense Corporation ( http://www.IntelliSense.com ) has been the only supplier of CAD for MEMS software as well as design, development, and volume manufacturing services. IntelliSense’s market-leading software, IntelliSuite, allows MEMS designers to use a process-driven approach to developing MEMS devices, reducing the need for lengthy and costly iterations in the design process. IntelliSuite focuses on providing the most complete device-level analysis capability, and includes unique features such as dynamic analysis of fluid-structure interaction; analysis of piezoelectric actuation; and analysis of contact, postcontact & microassembly. The unique capabilities of IntelliSuite complement IntelliSense’s in-house development expertise and extensive flexible fabrication capability. IntelliSense operates independently as a subsidiary of Corning Incorporated, and serves customers with MEMS design, development and volume manufacturing services in fifteen countries on three continents.

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