The migration of powerful computing technology from the labs to the desktops brought construction a stream of analysis software –spawned from spreadsheets and calculation programs capable of swiftly performing huge numbers of operations.

Bringing ever-heavier computing power to engineers drives innovation. From the ability to create "what-if" scenarios about stress distributions within finite regions of assemblies, to dynamic 3-D simulations of progressive changes in large-scale environments, engineers can resolve increasingly complex questions, thanks to the computer’s ability to rapidly solve large sets of equations. But still, much of the analysis technology remains rooted in its past.