Think of it as very exacting, close-up closet arranging.
The European Space Agency is relying on three-dimensional digital software in order to figure out how best to arrange cargo in the automatic transfer vehicles that are to restock the International Space Station with water, nitrogen, and oxygen every 15 months beginning next year. The agency's Ariane 5 launcher will blast the transfer vehicles into orbit.

The vehicles can remain docked for up to six months while being loaded with station waste. They will then fly back into Earth's atmosphere, and burn up.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a clocklike device found in the ocean near the Greek island of Antikythera early in the last century. The mechanism is only now beginning to give up its complicated secrets to researchers, who are using the latest X-ray and 3-D analysis techniques.

Arranging cargo and tools inside the spacecraft is a complex task. Items of different shapes, sizes, and purposes need to be arranged in a confined area for easy access, according to Marco Arcioni, a simulation engineer on the transfer-vehicle project. To help with that layout, the space agency turned to ParallelGraphics of Dublin, which developed the ATV IntraVehicular Configuration Tool for the task.

The tool offers a library of 3-D items extracted from CAD models that engineers arranged in the digital 3-D cargo space. The engineers try various combinations and analyze the benefits before committing to any arrangement, Arcioni said.

Understanding how air travels across the sunroof of a car may one day make jet engines less noisy, said Clarence Rowley, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J.

But getting to the point where the problem could be looked at wasn't easy. Rowley didn't actually conduct his experiments on a sunroof.

Instead, he yoked mathematical tools from three schools—dynamic systems, control theory, and fluid mechanics—for a computer simulation that, by solving only four equations, approximated the answer to a problem that would normally take two million equations to figure out, Rowley said.

His simulations showed how sunroof airflow would behave under various conditions and how to best negate the noise the airflow produced, Rowley said.

The research could ultimately help manufacturers modify jet engines to make them quieter as they fly over neighborhoods. It could also help stealth airplanes fly faster because it would reduce buffeting when doors of a weapon bay are open, Rowley said.

He's currently using insights garnered from his work to help develop ultrasmall, unmanned aircraft for surveillance or search-and-rescue missions.

When officials at the Paris Museum at Quai Branly were readying for the museum's debut in June, they relied on visualization software to determine how best to display the works of art.

The new museum is dedicated to African and Asian indigenous culture and art. French architect Jean Nouvel designed the building, which houses more than 4,000 exhibits in 420 display cases, according to Muriel Sassen, a museum press officer.

Before the grand opening, curators had to organize exhibits by type and then mount them, which involved selecting the best base or pedestal for each piece, Sassen said.

The curators rendered the exhibits on computers first to get a better sense of how the displays would look to visitors. They used Virtools software from Dassault Systèmes of Paris. The technology helped them predict how the design would look in its surrounding environment, said a Virtools spokeswoman.

The software maker also created an application specifically for the museum's auditorium designers. With it, the designers could virtually select a seat in the museum's auditorium and essentially see what a visitor would see. The view helped them decide how best to configure the auditorium's seats and sound system.

A new software package offers one platform on which engineers can work with product design, analysis, and manufacturing information, even if that information is stored in various formats.

The package, VCollab, from Visual Collaboration Technologies Inc. of Troy, Mich., lets engineers work with and share CAD, computer-aided manufacturing, and analysis files, including finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and manufacturing-assembly files without having to access the native applications, according to Prasad Mandava, Visual Collaboration Technologies' chief executive officer.

After more than 50 years researching and experimenting on the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient bronze clocklike device discovered early in the last century, scholars still are not sure of its exact function.

The mechanism came from the remains of a shipwreck discovered in 1900 by sponge divers off the Greek island of Antikythera. Scholars believe that it dates from the first century B.C. It's one of the world's oldest geared devices and the most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient world. Nothing as complex is known for the next thousand years, said Mike Edmunds, professor of physics and astronomy at Cardiff University in Wales. He is part of the research team studying the device.

So far, researchers have come to the conclusion that the mechanism operates as a complex mechanical computer that tracks the cycles of the Solar System.

Researchers have used X-ray and 3-D analysis to find the exact function and significance of the Antikythera Mechanism.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a clocklike device found in the ocean near the Greek island of Antikythera early in the last century. The mechanism is only now beginning to give up its complicated secrets to researchers, who are using the latest X-ray and 3-D analysis techniques.

The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project comprises academic researchers and technology companies that work together under the aegis of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture in Athens, Greece.

In September 2005, three scientists from Hewlett-Packard's Mobile and Media Systems Laboratory brought a digital imaging system to Athens to examine the surface inscriptions and other features on the mechanism. The team used the reflectance imaging technique, a photographic process that captures views of a surface under varying lighting conditions.

The scientists' system included a dome that surrounded the mechanism so they could adjust lighting and manipulate optical properties while they took a series of still photos. The photography under the varied lighting can uncover inscriptions and surface details that may otherwise be missed.

Such analysis allows for the examination of faded and worn inscriptions, according to Tom Malzbender, a senior research scientist in the Hewlett-Packard lab.

The next month, in October 2005, another team of researchers, this time from X-Tek Systems of Hertfordshire, England, arrived in Athens. The company makes microfocus X-ray equipment with 5-micron to 10-micron focus. That team brought a prototype of the company's new computer tomographer, which relies on X-ray and computer tomography techniques to view minute structures. Computer tomography makes 3-D images from a series of 2-D X-ray photographs. Engineers originally designed the 8-ton machine to search for minute cracks in turbine blades, said Roger Hadland, X-Tek's managing director. The researchers used the machine to study the Antikythera Mechanism's internal structure, and its complex gear trains.

The Antikythera Mechanism results gave researchers a window on microscopic internal details of inscriptions and gearing at better than one-tenth-millimeter resolution, Hadland said.

"Inscriptions can now be read that haven't been seen for more than 2,000 years," Hadland said.

Researchers are now busy analyzing the results of their data gathering. They are planning a conference in Athens this fall to present their research findings, Edmunds said.

When a 20-piece manufacturing run of expensive turbojet engine hubs went awry at Pratt and Whitney in East Hartford, Conn., Julio Banks, a senior advanced analyst, faced a challenging, and potentially expensive, engineering problem.

The hubs had been improperly manufactured. Oh, and they cost $15,000—apiece. But were they salvageable?

Rather than scrap the parts, Banks needed to find out if they could be modified.

He quickly drew up the part as manufactured in the IronCAD system, from IronCAD of Atlanta, and played with the design. He made design changes as needed and experimented with results. Banks found a rather easy change that allowed his department to send the already-created hubs back for remanufacture and still meet company standards.

The company won't let him tell us exactly what the defect or the fix was, but, according to Banks, "We were able to salvage the parts, for a savings of $300,000."

Engineers and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a new vision for the future of Mars exploration: a swarm of probes, each the size of a baseball, bouncing across the planet in all directions.

Thousands of probes, powered by fuel cells, could cover the vast area of Mars presently beyond the reach of today's rovers. They'd explore the remote and rocky terrain that large rovers cannot navigate, said Steven Dubowsky, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering who leads the probes' research team.

"They'd start to hop, bounce, and roll, and distribute themselves across the surface of the planet, exploring as they go, taking scientific data samples," Dubowsky said.

An artist's rendering shows the baseball-size probes currently being designed by MIT researchers to aid Mars exploration.

He cites one potential use for the probes: exploring the Mars lava tubes. Scientists believe these tubes are tunnels left behind by underground lava flows and are promising locations to search for signs of water.

Dubowsky thinks that the tiny, bouncing probes could make their way into the tunnels through surface holes where sections of the tubes have collapsed. The formations are too treacherous for today's rovers to explore.

Mars is also home to canyons that may once have had rivers flowing through them. The canyons, too, are inaccessible to rovers, but small probes might be able to make their way down the canyon faces.

Dubowsky estimates that a trip to Mars for the probes is about 10 years away. He has just begun testing—via virtual reality, in one method—how the probes would behave on the rough terrain of Mars. Each probe would weigh about four ounces and would carry its own tiny fuel cell.

Artificial muscles inside the probes could make them hop an average of six times per hour, with a maximum rate of 60 hops per hour. The devices would travel about 1.5 meters per hop; they would also bounce or roll. A swarm of probes could cover 50 square miles in about 30 days, according to Dubowsky.

Each probe would carry different types of equipment, including cameras and environmental sensors. Probes made of durable and lightweight plastic could withstand the rigors of Mars travel and the extreme cold. Their fuel cells would provide enough heat to keep their electronics and sensors operable.

Possible applications on Earth for the small robots include search and rescue missions in collapsed buildings or exploring other dangerous sites, such as terrorists' hideouts in caves, Dubowsky said.

Spicer Corp. of Kitchener, Ontario, which makes document productivity software, has released version eight of Imagenation, with which users can scan, review, mark up, and print hundreds of document, CAD, and model formats.

A maker of simulation software, MSC.Software Corp. of Santa Ana., Calif., has released SimManager Enterprise, which helps companies share engineering processes.

Seemage of Boston has released a 3-D portable document format plug-in. Users have the option of publishing 3-D PDF files in either Adobe's U3D or Seemage's .smg file format.

V.I. Laboratories of Waltham, Mass., has released an application that uses cryptography and runtime monitoring to build a layer of security around applications.

BobCAD-CAM of Dunedin, Fla., has released version 22 of its 2-D and 3-D CAD-CAM system of the same name.

A Baltimore company that makes design, engineering, and facilities management software, Avatech Solutions Inc., has acquired Technology & Training Services Inc., a facilities-management software company in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Cadig of Eden Prairie, Minn., is shipping AutoTable 3.3 for AutoCAD 2007. The software gives AutoCAD users a way to import Excel spreadsheets into AutoCAD and modify them.

ITI TranscenData of Milford, Ohio, is shipping Cadiq 4.6, the latest version of its product data quality and 3-D model-comparison tool.

Engineous Software of Cary, N.C., which makes integration, automation, and design optimization software, has introduced iSight for multiple disciplines, also called iSight for MD.

In Singapore, Autodesk Inc. of San Rafael, Calif., is offering upgrade savings to customers who own valid licenses of select retired Autodesk software through the Autodesk Loyalty Program.

EVOQE of Vicenza, Italy, has released solidThinking 7.0, its surface and solid-modeling environment.

ESI Group of Paris, France, has released Pam-Tube 2G, a product suite for stamping simulation.

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