Paraform Expands the Boundaries of Digital Form Development with Next Generation Product Release

Increased Automation, Greater Scalability, and Enhanced Color Management Deliver Dramatic Performance Enhancements for Design, Engineering, and Digital Content Applications --

SANTA CLARA, CA -- February 19, 2002 -- Paraform, a technology innovator in industrial and digital content creation software, today announced the introduction of Paraform 3.0, the newest release of its pioneering digital form development software. Employing breakthrough enhancements in workflow and productivity techniques, Paraform 3.0 is changing the way that 3D professionals create complex, free-form shapes in a variety of industrial and design environments, including the automotive, aerospace, consumer products, defense, entertainment, and medical markets.

Paraform 3.0 represents a major milestone in our endeavor to complement traditional 3D parametric modeling with a more scalable and accurate way of designing organic, freeform shapes and 3D digital content," said Venkat Krishnamurthy, CTO of Paraform. By embedding intelligent automation, enhanced workflow tools, and full color support within an improved, easy-to-use platform, we have added increased power and flexibility that will substantially speed up the product design and delivery process."

Originally developed to link all the steps in a production workflow and to bridge the gaps between industrial design, CAD/CAM, and quality assurance processes, Paraform comes with modeling and editing tools that transform point-cloud data to polygonal files or polygonal files to NURBS (non-uniform rational b-spline) surfaces. The core functionality focuses on free-form geometry and patented mechanisms that automatically adjust design geometrics based on intelligent inferences.

Paraforms goal of enabling designers to rapidly and freely create, explore and evaluate organic shapes in three dimensions, supports the industry goal of being first to market with complex free-form products

The latest version of Paraform provides increased automation, scalability, and comprehensive color management capabilities. Together, these new functions enable designers to use Paraform in a highly automated mode. When more domain expertise and insight is required, user intervention can be employed for complex, customized objects requiring precise inputs and refinements during the design process.

Optimized for large datasets, Paraform 3.0 features automatic surfacing and sectioning, global shape deformers, surface and space curve-based deformers, full color support, solids and inspection enhancements and a variety of interoperability improvements.

Automatic Sectioning and Surfacing

Paraform 3.0 delivers improved automated curve generation.

·        Curves can now be based on precisely created section curves at numerically or visually specified planes, sections swept along guide curves and automatically over the entire model.

·        All curves, whether on the mesh or in free-space, can be automatically intersected and patches or surfaces can be automatically created, while still offering precise user control.

·        Curves can be edited directly on the surface with Paraforms patented surface curve formulation and comprehensive editing tools -- all editing is associative with mesh edits.

Paraform already offers unparalleled user control that is crucial for our applications," said Jeff Hutchings, of Boeing Commercial Aircraft. By adding intelligent automation tools such as automatic sectioning and surfacing, Paraform further leverages the user's expertise resulting in dramatically improved productivity."

Fully Associative Points, Polygons, Curves, Surfaces and Solids

The Paraform 3.0 product suite supports all elements of digital design, engineering, manufacturing and inspection workflows. Regardless of the source or intended use of the data elements, Paraform integrates seamlessly into the CAD/CAM/CAE platform environment. Specific key enhancements of Paraform 3.0 include:

· Mesh boundary editing and inverse templates that allow users to edit meshes with arbitrary space curves.

· Global shape deformers that enable flexible and precise global deformations of polygon meshes with up to C2 continuity.

· Comprehensive color support throughout editing and surfacing.

Texture Mapping and Mesh Editing

Texture capabilities include very large surface management and user-defined areas. Paraforms approach makes texture mapping more precise and usable compared to arbitrary, patch-delineated topology approaches. This includes support for texture maps on exported polygons as well as NURBS. Patch UVs can be automatically aligned and textures can be stitched during export to ensure convenient management of large models. Mesh editing operations such as hole filling, mesh refinement and other functions automatically interpolate mesh color. Interactive painting tools are also available to add or repair color data.

The advanced enhancements in Paraform 3.0 provide unparalleled texture management throughout the workflow. This allows us to leverage color data in a multitude of ways," said Tom Flack, COO of Optimal, one of the largest suppliers of reverse engineering equipment and services for the U.S. automotive industry. These new capabilities reduce both cost and time-to-market by streamlining workflow and the re-use of knowledge gathered during previous projects. Paraform 3.0 is easy to learn -- it can be used for basic projects requiring entry-level skills -- but its also ideal for the most demanding digital design applications."

Paraform 3.0 is compatible with a wide variety of third-party products and file formats.

About Paraform

Paraform develops and markets Digital Form Development software applications for a variety of industrial and digital content creation applications including concept modeling, reverse engineering, vendor verification and inspection, rapid prototyping, engineering analysis (FEA, CFD), manufacturability analysis, tooling modification and repair, legacy data processing, visual effects and animation. Paraforms 200+ customers come from a range of markets including: automotive (Honda, Daimler Chrysler, Ford, Porsche); aerospace (Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon); consumer products (Mattel, Titleist, Adidas); defense (US Navy & Army, NASA, Sandia National Labs), entertainment (Disney, Sony, Electronic Arts); industrial (Alcoa, GE, Sumitomo); and medical (3M, Dentsply, Stryker). Paraform is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. For more details, dial 408.241.6601, send email to sales@paraform.com, or visit our Web site at www.paraform.com.

Paraform and Paraform 3.0 are trademarks of Paraform, Inc.

All other names are trademarks of their respective holders.