It is time for us to launch the new Opus Suite version

13 April 2016

The first quarter is always an exciting time, with spring around the corner and all the possibilities a new year brings with it. For those of us who are involved in developing Opus Suite, this is the period when we are putting the final touches on the new version. After a year of intensive work the suite is being finalized and delivered to our users.

Inspiring users

Opus Suite users are numerous and widely scattered across the world. I think from my point of view that the user group is unique thanks to the many dedicated and professional users it includes. Few are privileged to work with such a dedicated group of customers. Being able to do just that is one of the great gratifications I have as Head of Development at Systecon. Of course this position also carries obligations. Every year we want to include new capabilities and functionality in the suite, which should best address the needs and requirements that you have. It is a delicate and challenging task to prioritize the different ideas that exist and are added each year.

Our users' needs have always been our primary focus. We want to further strengthen it by finding ways to involve you more closely in other aspects of our development. This ambition places new demands on our presence, our technology and our methods. We will continue to improve our work so that we can quickly adapt to changing needs - both technical aspects and how the suite is used. The main factor in achieving this is that we understand your needs. Our hope is that you too will feel that your ideas and challenges are important to us and that your feedback is of great value to the entire user group and the continued development. Therefore I call on you to contact us with your thoughts either directly or through our representatives so that we can better understand your needs and ideas.

Larger models create new demands

In recent years we have seen a change, or rather a widening, of the needs that are highlighted through our dialogue with you. Some clear trends that we've seen among many customers are larger and larger models that, in many cases, change frequently and are used in a work process that includes all the tools. For us, this has meant that this year we have focused our development efforts on implementations that aim to increase flexibility, improve performance and enhance the integration of the suite.

Flexibility, performance and integration

To increase flexibility we added, among other things, the ability to build models using different measuring units of operation, common in many applications. The operations of train and land vehicles, for example, are naturally expressed in kilometers while those of aircraft engines are measured in cycles rather than operational hours. There are also situations where multiple operation parameters are needed in a model. Support for multiple operation parameters is now included in both OPUS10 and SIMLOX.

In terms of performance, we have parallelized the SIMLOX simulation in order to utilize multiple cores which exist on most modern computers. We have also focused on improving memory structures and algorithms to speed up the whole Opus Suite.

The integration of the suite has in recent years been a focus area and will continue to be so in the future. This year we have prioritized the unified implementation of the new functionalities in OPUS10 and SIMLOX. Another integration effort has been to provide the ability to link the results directly from OPUS10 and SIMLOX to the cost model in CATLOC, which means that you can immediately evaluate the cost effects of the changes.

We have also added a lot of large and small improvements that you can read more about on our website.

On the whole, Opus Suite 2016 is a step that we feel very proud of and which we hope will deliver great value in your work. With these words, it is time for us to launch this new version, watch with eager anticipation as it sails toward new ports and begin to tackle the new challenges that we expect to realize in Opus Suite 2017.