Once he returned home, Leatherman spent the next eight years using his engineering background to design such a tool. In 1983, after working with hundreds of prototypes, he and Steve Berliner founded Leatherman Tool Group in Portland, Ore., and began production of the original Leatherman Tool, known as the PST.

In designing multipurpose folding tools, Leatherman uses Inventor software from Autodesk.

Today, the operation has grown to encompass a range of Leatherman multipurpose folding tools and to employ many more than two people. The growth enabled the company to bring a computerized drawing program in-house to design and manufacture the tools. Leatherman Tool uses Inventor software from Autodesk of San Rafael, Calif.

Richard Chilton, a senior manufacturing engineer at the company, creates and implements equipment to design and make the folding tools and to troubleshoot existing equipment.

"Our customers expect quality, functionality, availability, and good prices for our products," Chilton said. "We're able to accommodate those challenges by starting at the computer—with the drawing program."

He said his engineers like the Inventor program particularly for machine design because the software lets them apply motion to moving components. Each component moves through its respective cycle while maintaining its constrained position, Chilton said.

"We no longer move each component independently to achieve the final, end-cycle position," he said. "We can now watch the system components interact simultaneously with each other."

Though Chilton has not used Inventor long enough to measure quantitative advantages, he said he's already seen a shorter design timetable since Leatherman implemented the software.

By the end of the year, NIST will unveil the National Software Reference Library. The library, which will be available to law enforcement agencies and other organizations, will contain the electronic signatures of a variety of software programs. The signature is the mathematical algorithm patterns unique to a specific software file and it can be used like fingerprints to distinguish one file from another.

Preliminary tests show that comparing the signatures to programs seized during an investigation can help filter from 40 percent to 95 percent of the computer files. Investigators then can focus their attention on the remaining files to see if someone has tampered with them, according to NIST.

Software companies ranging from Adobe Systems of San Jose, Calif., to Microsoft of Redmond, Wash., have donated computer programs for the library and NIST is seeking other donations.

"One reason we got into computer estimating was to help with the outside work," said Doc Winkler, ACT manufacturing engineering estimator. "We can gather engineering requirements and data, and do a quote right with the customer. Or we can develop the estimate and get it to the customer within a matter of hours."

Winkler worked for 18 months to create customized databases for all of the ACT group's unique manufacturing processes. He was able to modify the software database to reflect the actual operating capabilities of the manufacturing machines in the ACT plant. Winkler said that because some of the manufacturing processes he estimates are not typical machining or fabricating operations, this feature was a key to the software choice.

Caterpillar started experimenting with the use of powder metallurgy at its East Peoria, Ill., plant in 1971 because suppliers could not provide parts to meet the required design criteria. In 1994, Caterpillar built a new 144,000-square-foot plant dedicated to the process in Rockwood, Tenn., and the ACT group was formed to provide the process.

"Our niche is really large parts in low volume," Winkler said. "Because of the nature of the parts we produce, our lot sizes are small, ranging from 200 to around 80,000. The plant's production catalog is nearing 1,000 parts."

Winkler added information on 35 powder-metallurgy-specific processes and machines to the customized database. The assorted data that had to be established for each operation included cycle time, speed, the speed of the belt, batch types, volumes, and weight limitations.

Impact Engineering of Jackson, Mich., hopes to market a product that would let manufacturers repair welders long-distance. Impact is part of the remote monitoring welding project carried out by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., and several industry partners, including Impact Engineering. The partners have teamed for years to develop, refine, test, and eventually commercialize advanced welding technologies, such as remote monitoring. The NIST-managed project is called the National Advanced Manufacturing Testbed.

Impact discovered that remote collaboration tools allowing welding experts to debug and optimize automated welding processes from remote locations with the help of videoconference technology could be integrated into commercial welding systems. The long-distance repair service can save manufacturers production time, decrease maintenance, reduce or eliminate travel costs for repairs, and increase the efficiency of automated welding operations.

Impact recently demonstrated the technology to representatives from Johnson Controls of Milwaukee, a tier-one automotive component supplier.

Honda makes about 10 million internal combustion engines each year. The company wants to produce engines that run cleaner, are more fuel-efficient, and make use of lighter-weight composite materials than are currently used. The Asaka Center also wants to shorten the time it takes to design and develop the motor.

Honda's goal is to fully design and simulate engine performance on the computer in order to save time and cost, according to a company spokesperson.

To that end, the R&D center has teamed with Mechanical Dynamics, a maker of mechanical system simulation software in Ann Arbor, Mich., to develop simulation technology to be used in the software company's Adams/Engine simulation software.

"Our products are high-performance, high-frequency silicon devices with power outputs usually ranging from three to five watts and sometimes as high as 10 to 20 watts," said Mark Peterson, an Applied Micro Circuits packaging engineer. "On average, these devices operate at maximum ambient temperatures of 70° or 85° Celsius in still-air environments. Thermal considerations are very critical from a packaging standpoint."

To carry out thermal analysis, the company uses Flotherm, from Flomerics of Southborough, Mass. To speed the software's analysis, Applied Micro Circuits uses another application, called Flopack, from the software vendor. The Web-based application speeds the running of thermal simulations done in the analysis software. Flopack provides users with integrated circuit package styles that can be filled in with dimensional and other data about the package and the silicon chip the user wishes to model. Flopack then creates the integrated circuit package model files, which can be downloaded into the thermal analysis software.

Peterson spent one day building an integrated circuit package model file without using software and then comparing it to a file run in the analysis software. The software gave quick results within about 5 percent of the measured data seen in the model built by hand from scratch, he said.

The use of CFD in the design of both America's Cup yachts demonstrated the wide range of CFD applications for sailboard design, which can be used when engineers design the hull and the underwater appendage; determine the aerodynamics of the sails, mast, and rigging; and find the best structure for the hull. In addition, CFD can be used for sailing performance simulations and statistical racing analysis.

CFD for yachts started to gain importance after the 1983 U.S. America's Cup entry lost to the Australian entry, according to Pointwise. A winged-keel design, which was kept hidden from view until the races were over, had given the Australia II the edge. Each competition since has seen the increasing use of CFD and other CAD and analysis techniques, according to Pointwise.

But if a message were carried by a lone photon—the smallest discrete quantity of light—intruders would be easier to detect.

"If you have only one photon per pulse, you would immediately know that an eavesdropper had penetrated the system because the receiver at the opposite end could tell that data had been disturbed," said William Esco Moerner, a Stanford chemistry professor.

He and visiting research associate Brahim Lounis were the first to use lasers to get single molecules to emit single photons on demand at room temperature. Information about the event was published in the Sept. 28 edition of Nature, the International Journal of Science.

The pair's achievement takes cyberspace a quantum leap closer to secure communications, Moerner said. The concept, called quantum communication is still futuristic, he added, but in the next five to 10 years, computers may use quantum information technology to send messages over channels one photon at a time. Or, technologists may employ quantum cryptography, which uses signals from a single photon to transmit an electronic key to decode encrypted messages.

"You want to minimize the probability of emitting two or more photons for every pulse because that would allow an eavesdropper to split off one of those photons and read your key without your knowing it," Moerner said.

Until the work of Moerner and Lounis, the only way to coax single photons from a pulsed laser at room temperature was by attenuation—that is, by making the laser beam weaker and weaker until each pulse carried only a small number of photons, Moerner said.

PTC of Waltham Mass., has introduced Pro/Engineer Shipbuilding Solutions, a CAD software application developed specifically for design engineering within the shipbuilding industry.

Mastercam Lathe Version 8, a computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing software, has been released by CNC Software of Tolland, Conn.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology of Gaithersburg, Md., has joined an interagency effort led by the Environmental Protection Agency called the National Particulate Matter Research Program, which is aimed at improving the nation's air quality and public health.

Moldflow of Wayland, Mass., has announced an Internet distribution agreement with GE Plastics of Pittsfield, Mass., that allows GE Plastics to sell Moldflow's software via the Internet.

Spatial Technology of Boulder, Colo., has changed its name to PlanetCad and has completed the sale of its component software division to Dassault Systemes of Suresnes, France.

As part of its OpenFactory computer numerically controlled initiative, GE Fanuc Automation of Charlottesville, Va., in conjunction with its recent acquisition of CimWorks of Kirkland, Wash., has designed CimWorks MCS. The CNC bundled software provides a package of CNC operator station functions, including document organization, part program management, machine monitoring, and network capabilities.

Flomerics of Southborough, Mass., has released Flotherm Version 3.1, the latest edition of its thermal analysis software for the electronics industry.

In order to develop software that includes part libraries, SolidWorks of Concord, Mass., a maker of three-dimensional computer-aided design software, has acquired the privately held Cimlogic, of Nashua, N.H., a provider of design and drafting annotation tools for the mechanical and electrical CAD markets.

Rockwell Automation of Milwaukee acquired the batch software and services business of Sequencia, which is based in Phoenix. The transaction adds Sequencia's Responsive Process Manufacturing Series suite of products to Rockwell Automation's current process software packages.

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