INTEGRATED Engineering Software, a leading developer of hybrid simulation tools for design analysis, has introduced the INTEGRATED API (Application Programming Interface) across its simulation software suite with the release of the version 9.1 upgrade, including a powerful scripting tool. The INTEGRATED API, which enables smart automation scripting, provides design engineers with an intuitive method of controlling the interface. This supplements the existing interactive, parametric and batch modes. It provides users with direct access to the internal workings of each software program in the suite, enabling them to write new specific analysis applications to meet their own needs and ability. Through the INTEGRATED API, users can seamlessly connect their own applications to INTEGRATED software programs without either application requiring prior knowledge of the inner workings of the other. Design engineers, research scientists and programmers will find this a very powerful tool, combining good design with good performance, which enables them to complete tasks that would previously have been extremely difficult and tedious to do interactively. "Our API enables design engineers and scientists to explore ideas and find new solutions with this custom analysis tool," comments Bruce Klimpke, Technical Director. "Users will now have the power and flexibility to combine INTEGRATED's CAE software programs with the applications they use for specific design analysis areas. This customisation will allow each particular design to work at an even higher level of sophistication." The INTEGRATED API also provides a key building block for users to construct custom analysis tools. The functionality is easy to explain and the names are self-explanatory and consistent, in order to drive development. A programmer can write a script, or a full program, describing how to build and analyse a specific problem with selected user controls, and can then invoke the INTEGRATED program direct through the API to provide the analytical tools. Using the dedicated user guide included within the program, samples can be written as Excel Macros with Visual Studio solutions/projects. Alongside the development and introduction of API features into the version 9.1 software release, INTEGRATED has included other new features within the upgrade, including: