Cray/Media:      Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538
Cray/Financial:  Brad Allen, 612/683-7395

CRAY RESEARCH ENHANCES AUTOMATIC MESH-
GENERATOR SOFTWARE FOR PRODUCT DEVELOPERS

DETROIT, Nov. 15, 1994 -- At the Society of Manufacturing
Engineers (SME) AutoFact '94 conference held here this week,
Cray Research today announced HEXAR 1.1 software, an
enhanced version of the pioneering software product it
introduced in June 1994. 

The HEXAR software is designed to save product developers
months of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars by
automatically creating three-dimensional computer models
from raw CAD (computer-aided design) data in minutes. 
Traditionally, it has taken months to hand-craft models, or
meshes, needed for computer analysis for product designs,
medical phenomena and other complex research, according to
Reza Taghavi, head of the company's HEXAR software
development team. 

"The original HEXAR software, announced only a few months
ago, is already proving its value in trial licenses at major
automakers and other research centers and firms," he said. 
"Meanwhile, we've made rapid progress and are already
introducing an enhanced version."

The new version of HEXAR has an impressive 70 percent
success rate in creating complete hexahedral (six-sided
"brick") models on the first attempt, with no user
intervention, Taghavi said.  "This is considerably better than
the 40 percent automatic mesh-generation rate many people
have been hoping for in a product of this kind."  Taghavi noted
that no product exists today with HEXAR's unique capabilities. 
He said the new version also features improved mesh-element
quality, a 50 percent reduction in computer memory
requirements, and a 50 percent improvement in speed.  

The HEXAR software is available for use on Cray research's full
line of compatible parallel vector supercomputer systems,
which begin at prices from $150,000 to $225,000 in the U.S. 
Pricing for the software product is according to computer
platform and begins at $18,000 (U.S.) for a paid-up license, he
said. 

Cray Research expects substantial interest in the product from
the automotive, aerospace, chemical, civil engineering, casting
and molding, materials and plastics, electronics,
semiconductor and biomedical industries, according to Taghavi. 
"Cray Research systems are used by all the major automakers
to help design new vehicles, as well as for other types of
products and pursuits, including medical research," he said. 
"The HEXAR mesh-generator will benefit all these fields."

HEXAR software produces meshes for the most widely used CAE
(computer-aided engineering) formats, including PATRAN,
IDEAS and EnSight.  Because of this, the HEXAR product works
with nearly all third-party engineering analysis software
packages used today, including ABAQUS, ANSYS, NASTRAN,
FIDAP, STAR-CD, FLOW-3D, PROCAST and MSC/EMAS.

Cray Research provides the leading supercomputing tools and
services to help solve customers' most challenging problems. 

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