The Human Side of CAD

Want to know exactly how a human will interact with your product? The category of digital human modeling software is fast becoming an important tool for engineers to proactively analyze the human fit of their product or workplace before it is built.

NexGen Ergonomics of Montreal, has just released the first update to its HumanCAD digital modeling software since it was released last March. HumanCAD is a unified human modeling software architecture with a more intuitive interface, a plugin system for importing and exporting files with the major CAD tools along with new inverse kinematics.

The new release features the ErgoTools modules, which includes the HumanCAD 3D static biomechanical model as well as interfaces to the University of Michigan 3DSSPP and the 1991 NIOSH lifting equation. Other new features include new camera management that allows for the creation of custom viewpoints and cameras, a new library of hand postures and a variety of bug fixes and enhancements. With this release, HumanCAD also now runs natively on Mac OS X, on both Intel and PowerPC architectures.