SANTA ANA, Calif. -- MSC.Software Corp., the leading global provider of simulation software, services and systems, today announced the availability of MSC.EASY5 Version 7.0. MSC.EASY5 is a virtual product development (VPD) tool that provides a large number of "application libraries" with pre-built, ready-to-use components targeted to a specific engineering discipline. These libraries allow engineers to quickly design and simulate many types of dynamic systems including: hydraulic, propulsion, powertrain, internal combustion engine, control, pneumatics, mechanical, fuel, electrical, thermal, flight dynamics, climate and environmental control, gas dynamics, multiphase fluid and hybrid vehicles among others. "The MSC.EASY5 toolset has been an excellent addition to the MSC.Software product portfolio and is really gaining traction within our customer base, especially within the aerospace and automotive industries," said Frank Perna, chairman and chief executive officer of MSC.Software. "In addition to offering its own stand-alone simulation environment, MSC.EASY5 exchanges data with MSC.Nastran, and co-simulates with MSC.ADAMS for combined dynamics & controls applications. This release demonstrates MSC.Software's commitment to giving our customers interoperable VPD products to make their jobs easier." According to market analyst firm Daratech, Inc., computer-aided engineering (CAE), as part of virtual product development applications, is expected to grow as much as 14% in 2003 and 2004, with manufacturers looking to increase their investments in simulation tools that provide better process- integration between CAD designers and CAE engineers. MSC.EASY5 helps both designers and engineers build simulation models from basic functional blocks, such as summers, dividers, lead-lag filters, and integrators, and special systems-level components such as valves, actuators, heat exchangers, gears, clutches, engines, pneumatics, flight dynamics, and many more systems. By using MSC.EASY5, designers and engineers can better collaborate during the product design process and reduce design changes by jointly utilizing the component libraries that make up MSC.EASY5. Several significant enhancements aimed at increasing user productivity have been implemented in MSC.EASY v7. Examples include: -- The new Electric Systems Library, developed by Ricardo Inc, is released with this version. This library is used for modeling and simulating electric drives and systems, primarily applied to the design and development of electric hybrid vehicles. -- New tools make it easier to optimize the model parameters and perform design of experiments. -- New configurable components result in efficient and streamlined modeling. MSC.EASY5 is available directly from the MSC.Software sales team and through its worldwide network of resellers. For more information on these and other enhancements please visit http://www.mscsoftware.com/products/ .