Ansys opens new markets with user-friendly products
Software simulates how materials behave
Mark Hindsbo says he can easily divide himself into thirds: software developer, physics geek and business guy.
He has had chances to feed the physics and business parts since he came to Pittsburgh a year and a half ago as vice president of marketing at Ansys Inc. The native of Denmark, who was developing software at age 10, said he satisfies that third part by coding for fun.
Now, the 45-year-old Mr. Hindsbo is preparing for a new role at the Southpointe-based company as it seeks to expand accessibility to its engineering simulation software with new, easierto-use products. With Ansys’ computer simulation software, engineers can model calculations about such things as heat transfer, structural integrity, even water flow.
The result: less time and lower costs to get products to market.
Ansys, which reported $265.6 million in net income on revenue of $988.5 million in 2016, makes the software that engineers use to simulate how materials behave in a specific environment, reducing the time and number of physical prototypes needed to perfect a product design. Think car safety test without the need to crash a car.
“We really are an infrastructure component for the products of tomorrow,” said Mr. Hindsbo, a lifelong martial artist who has competed in national events in Denmark and the U.S.
Ansys founder John Swanson, a University of Pittsburgh graduate, was working at Westinghouse Astronuclear Labs in Jefferson Hills in the early 1960s, when he envisioned a versatile code that could answer a wide array of engineering questions. At the time, engineers typically did these calculations manually.
Westinghouse was cool to Mr. Swanson’s code idea and he left the company in 1969 to form Swanson Analysis Systems. In 1970, he developed the computer program he imagined, using a
keypunch and a time-share mainframe computer. Ansys was born.
Today, the publicly traded company has nearly 3,000 employees and its products allow engineers to create computer visualizations of structures, fluids and electronics.
As the new vice president of Ansys’ design and platform business unit, Mr. Hindsbo’s responsibilities will include managing a group of internal software developers who are developing products that are simpler to use and more intuitive and making those tools available to new markets, including startups like San Francisco-based Nebia Inc. that licenses the software.
Nebia, which was founded four years ago and employs 13 people, makes specially designed shower heads that promise to reduce water usage by 70 percent. In designing the shower heads, Nebia engineers simulated water droplets coming out of different nozzle designs to get just the right spray, shaving months and tens of thousands of dollars from development costs, according to Gabriel ParisiAmon, who is Nebia’s chief technology officer and chief operating officer. model Ansys the engineers software behavior to of also visuallywater enabled inside the shower head, affording views and analysis that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible. Nebia is eager to use the line of Ansys products that Mr. Hindsbo will be helping to develop.
“Our goal is to have anyone on our engineering team be able to answer questions about the software,” Mr. Parisi-Amon said. “That’s where some of the real power comes.”
Ansys is also targeting its new products to engineering students. Simplified engineering simulation tools will increase the number of students using the software, said Albert To, associate professor, mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh.
“If they can make it more user friendly, it will be more accessible to more people,” Mr. To said. “It may have a big impact on students learning about engineering.”