EDS, Plano, Tex., has spun off the well-known CAD supplier UGS PLM Solutions as an independent company. Several venture-capital firms made the spin off possible. The new company will be known as UGS The PLM Co. (www.ugs.com), and will keep headquarters in Plano along with Tony Affuso as CEO. A spokesman said the company will focus on CAD and CAM software, while emphasizing knowledge reuse. Company product line includes Solid Edge, TeamCenter (a PLM system), Parasolid (a modeling kernel), and the merged Unigraphicsand I-Deas software now called the NX Series. NX3 is slated for release-later this year.
UGS also announced plans to purchase D-Cubed Ltd., a Cambridge, England-based supplier of embedded software used by many CAD software developers. “Uniting D-Cubed with UGS is an important part of our R&D growth strategy,” says Affuso. D-Cubed develops software that manages aspects of geometric modeling such as constraint management.