Software Provider Gains Speed, Functionality from DevPartner Studio

Whether they're designing software modeling tools for the home improvement enthusiast or redesigning the cathedral in Dresden, Germany, ANSYS, Inc. customers span a variety of markets, using the software provider's engineering analysis products for a myriad of purposes. Along the way, Compuware DevPartner Studio helped the developers of DesignSpace improve quality and performance.

The ANSYS, Inc. development teams create engineering analysis software that allows engineers to test virtual product prototypes and simulate real-world conditions. The software lets engineers conceptualize, design, redesign and validate all of their ideas right on their desktops, before any physical prototypes are actually produced.

ANSYS, Inc.'s flagship software package—also called ANSYS—is the company's multi-physics solver, and it offers a variety of engineering analysis capabilities. ANSYS has long recognized structural loading as only one aspect of the stresses experienced by a real-world system component. Environmental factors and the complexity of true-life conditions introduce additional physical forces that affect even the simplest parts. This is why the company created the "ANSYS" product, which permits users to analyze the behavior of components under the stress of numerous physical forces.

Another key product of the company, DesignSpace, has been around since 1996. This software brings simulation capabilities to product designers and engineers so they can quickly and easily refine their designs earlier in the product development process. DesignSpace is CAD-associative and features a high degree of automation and functionality. Designers with minimal to no experience in traditional finite element methods can easily perform simulations on CAD models.

While working on the latest version of DesignSpace, the development team focused on increasing overall performance. The team researched tools that worked with C++, which the package required. Providing a broad range of capabilities, DevPartner Studio became the ultimate choice.

What Compuware Brings to the Table

According to Tony Mobley, technical fellow and development group manager at ANSYS, Inc., "The other providers' tools were simply too slow. They were almost unusable. DevPartner Studio was a lot faster. We could turn our profiles around more quickly and get data that we could use."

Mobley adds that with each progressive release of DesignSpace, his team pushes to get the most out of the engineering capabilities and functionality of this product. They needed a tool that could give them maximum performance from DesignSpace.

After carefully reviewing applicable products, Mobley's group agreed DevPartner Studio was the "superior product." Mobley says, "The integration with the Windows development environment was much nicer. That's why we chose DevPartner Studio."

The DesignSpace development team has used DevPartner Studio for the past two years and believes the product has played a key role in giving DesignSpace its most significant competitive advantages: robustness and speed. "We did a competitive analysis of our DesignSpace product against two of our major competitors and found that DesignSpace is 30-50 times faster than the competition on simple and complex models," says Mobley. "That was due to the speed of execution and the robustness of DevPartner Studio."

BoundsChecker Spots Memory Leaks

Before marketing a product to customers, the ANSYS, Inc. development team must check any added technology or product functionality in every new product release. They turn to BoundsChecker to get the job done. The team uses BoundsChecker to find and analyze memory leaks while installing new or improved functionality in the new release. Once the new features are installed, they regularly use BoundsChecker to locate and fix bottlenecks fast.

BoundsChecker speeded development and helped launch DesignSpace more quickly, by automating the debugging process and providing clear, detailed analyses of programming errors, many of which are unique to C++.

TrueTime Tracks Performance Issues

Using the TrueTime tool at least once a month, the DesignSpace development team finds performance issues. "We shaved off more time in software performance," says Mobley. "In one case, TrueTime helped improve performance by 100 percent, making DesignSpace more attractive to our customers."

When developers are unable to determine a solution by analyzing a complete model, or continuum, they try to discover the solution by analyzing several smaller pieces of geometry. This process of breaking down continuums into a finite number of elements is called "meshing." According to Mobley, TrueTime helped accelerate this process. "The mesher we have in our product is almost 100 times faster now that we are using the TrueTime profiler. That's a huge competitive advantage."

TrueTime also comes in handy when developers need to pinpoint the exact origin of a problem. "TrueTime really allows me to focus on the exact location of a problem. I can use it to basically profile one routine or the entire product," explains Mobley. "I use TrueTime almost exclusively now—about 95 percent of the time."

Other Important Benefits

In addition to the speed and functionality provided by BoundsChecker and TrueTime, Mobley sees the ease of use in the DevPartner tools as a major benefit. "The integration into the Microsoft environment, the IDE, the presentation of the data that comes out... It's great. Compared to other profilers, we're much more confident with DevPartner Studio. It's easy to see where an application's problem actually is," says Mobley.

Mobley also was impressed with Compuware's DevPartner customer support staff. "The service has been exceptional. Our sales representative hosted a seminar at which many of my team's questions were answered," says Mobley. "It was very productive."

In fact, Mobley described that ever since his team chose DevPartner Studio, his employees regularly come to his office to provide positive feedback on the Compuware tools. Mobley adds, "When they do, I can turn to my management and say, 'Yes, this has been a good investment for us.'"