Sustainable Minds Teams With Autodesk to Address Growing Sustainable Product Design...

Sustainable Minds Teams With Autodesk to Address Growing Sustainable Product
Design Market Opportunity

PHOENIX, Sept. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The Industrial Designers Society of
America 2008 National Conference -- September 11, 2008 -- Sustainable Minds, a
green product design software and information services company, today
announced it has entered into a strategic relationship with Autodesk, Inc.
(http://www.autodesk.com/pr-autodesk) (Nasdaq: ADSK).
As part of the collaboration, Sustainable Minds plans to develop software
and information services that interoperate with the Autodesk solution for
Digital Prototyping(http://www.autodesk.com/pr-digitalprototyping), which will
give industrial designers and engineers the knowledge and tools required to
understand the environmental impacts of a new product.
"Our relationship with Sustainable Minds illustrates Autodesk's commitment
to driving awareness and adoption of sustainable design," said Robert "Buzz"
Kross, senior vice president of Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions. "Sustainable
Minds' design decision support software, combined with Autodesk Inventor
(http://www.autodesk.com/pr-inventor), can make a positive difference to
product environmental impact and ultimately, the world in which we live."
"Leveraging Autodesk's worldwide customer reach and reputation among
designers and manufacturers will allow us to quickly bring sustainable product
design into the mainstream in an accessible and empowering way," said Terry
Swack, CEO and co-founder of Sustainable Minds. "For the first time, product
design teams will be able to estimate the environmental and human health
impacts of their design decisions and have quantitative results early in the
concept stage, so that they can design greener products from the start --
before considerable time, cost and resources are irreversibly committed."
Market and regulatory pressures today require that manufacturers improve
the environmental performance of their products. In addition to the
sustainable product design expertise and industry information currently
available on its Web site, SustainableMinds.com, the company will offer an
on-demand software and information suite that enables designers to estimate a
product's life cycle impact using the Okala life cycle assessment methodology.
This method models ten environmental and human health impact categories (or
just global warming impacts, measured in CO2 equivalents) and combines them
into a single impact factor value that models a product's overall potential
environmental performance.
This life cycle assessment software will complement Autodesk Inventor
software -- the foundation for Digital Prototyping that produces accurate 3D
models for the validation of a design's fit, form and function before it is
physically built. Sustainable Minds life cycle assessment software is expected
to benefit end users in a wide range of professions, including industrial
designers and engineers, sustainability managers, product managers, marketers,
design consultancies and manufacturing companies who are championing
sustainable products or responsible for complying with sustainability
requirements.
BigToys, Inc., a manufacturer of environmentally friendly commercial
playground equipment, makes significant use of recycled, recyclable and
renewable materials. Autodesk Inventor software plays a vital role in helping
BigToys design its environmentally friendly play structures. "Taking
sustainability into account during the product design phase is imperative,"
said Tim Madeley, president and owner of BigToys. "We're already using digital
prototyping to create a safer, more environmentally friendly play space today.
The ability to understand and lessen the environmental footprint of our 100%
recycled products is fundamental to our business."
About Sustainable Minds
Sustainable Minds, LLC is a green product design software and information
services company. Its mission is to bring sustainable product design into
mainstream product design and manufacturing in an accessible, empowering and
credible way. To do this, the company has integrated deep knowledge of product
design, life cycle assessment and environmental systems design, expertise in
Web-based business, software design and customer experience.
SustainableMinds.com is the first on-demand, early-stage design decision
support software and information suite that estimates a product's potential
life cycle environmental and human health impacts, in a collaborative,
learning work space. Sustainable Minds is committed to helping create products
that are environmentally beneficial, economically viable and socially and
ethically equitable. More information about Sustainable Minds, founded in 2007
and headquartered in Cambridge Massachusetts, can be found at
http://www.sustainableminds.com.
Sustainable Minds, sustainableminds.com and Okala are trademarks of
Sustainable Minds, LLC.
Autodesk, AutoCAD,Autodesk Inventor and Inventor are registered trademarks
or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in
the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or
trademarks belong to their respective holders.
SOURCE Sustainable Minds, LLC

Sandy Skees of Sustainable Minds, LLC, +1-831-332-4387,
sandy@communications4good.com