Tech Soft 3D completes acquisition of Visual Kinematics

“The CAE market is exploding and the applications for simulation will only continue to expand,” said Ron Fritz, Chief Executive Officer at Tech Soft 3D. “Analysing how your design will function in the real world offers such massive cost savings that simulation is already well established in the design process.  Tech Soft 3D is focused on adapting our tools to address this rapidly growing market space, as well as taking some of the core capabilities available in these technologies to serve the needs of additive manufacturing, AR/VR, IoT, machine learning, AI, etc.”

Based in Saratoga, California, the team at VKI has spent more than 30 years developing a component software product line that addresses a spectrum of CAE simulation technology needs: from mesh generation and interoperability tools to solvers, visualisation and graphics. VKI’s tools provide developers with the ability to import/export of the analysis results from the vast majority of the world’s most widely used simulation solutions including those from ANSYS, Siemens and Dassault Systèmes.

VKI component tools have been installed in analysis products including mechanical, fluids, electro-magnetic and multiphysics applications. With a reputation for delivering innovative, commercially robust products, VKI is relied upon by the CAE industry's largest and most respected software companies such as ANSYS, Dassault Systèmes (SolidWorks), Siemens, Autodesk, Hexagon (MSC.Software), PTC, Ceetron and ESI Group to deliver applications for structural analysis, heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics and electromagnetics.

“We have been committed to providing the absolute best solutions to our customers, enabling them to build integrated, customised, end-to-end CAE analysis solutions, and we couldn’t be happier knowing that our customers will now have even more tools at their disposal,” added Gordon Ferguson, Chief Executive Officer at VKI. “The commitment that Tech Soft 3D has to building the strongest suite of CAE development tools in the industry is unmatched, and we are excited to be joining the team.”

Tech Soft 3D has long been a provider of data access and engineering graphics SDKs to the CAE market, working with partners such as ANSYS, Dassault Systèmes (EXA), Altair, Numeca, MathWorks and Siemens (CD Adapco).

"The VKI portfolio is the perfect complement to our HOOPS toolkits, as well as our recently acquired Ceetron SDKs for visualisation of CAE results,” said Gavin Bridgeman, CTO at Tech Soft 3D. "We will be working hard to integrate our tool sets, offering the most complete and robust CAE component technology solution on the market. It’s an exciting time, and I look forward to building the future with our new colleagues.”

Tech Soft 3D intends to continue to maintain and support VKI’s existing customers and partners that are using its market-leading SDK offerings for CAE, and will retain their staff. Details of the acquisition are not disclosed. Tech Soft 3D is backed by investment firm Battery Ventures.