VISTAGY Inc.’s (Waltham, Mass.) newest version of its FiberSIM software includes a feature designed to accommodate “spring back” in a part when it is removed from a tool. Thermal deformation can impact the final shape of a composite part by causing it to “spring” when it is removed from the tool. The feature enables engineers to map the ply boundaries of a laminate skin onto the “sprung” skin tool surface, providing full “associativity” between the engineering part and the sprung part. As a result, all changes made in the design dataset automatically propagate to the manufacturing dataset, says the company.