The metrology department at Porsche provides custom software development services for the rest of the company. The department needs flexible tools with a wide range of functionality to cover the many different requests they receive. The solutions the metrology department provides need to display 3D graphics and need to run on the Windows platform. The programmers in the metrology department are already comfortable with Delphi. An ideal solution should be able to integrate the Delphi development environment.

Porsche's metrology department has standardized on IDL as their development tool of choice. Using IDL, they have built a flexible, modular visualization and analysis application that can be customized for individual groups and projects. The customized application has a universal data access layer and a plug-in architecture. IDL's support for ActiveX on Windows allows the Porsche application to integrate third party software, including the Delphi environment.

IDL is the ideal solution because it provides both a large library of mathematical routines and OpenGL-accelerated 3D graphics to allow Porsche engineers to visualize and manipulate large and complex technical datasets to detect and display patterns, trends and anomalies. Engineers at Porsche are enjoying higher productivity through the adoption of a single, flexible environment used by all departments.