IBM and Dassault Systemes Announce CATIA Version 5 Release 6

On March 20th, IBM and Dassault Systemes announced Release 6 of CATIA V5. This release contains 17 new products and major improvements to existing products. Available worldwide on March 23, CATIA V5 now contains a total of 78 products.

Spatial Joins the Dassault Family
By Isabelle de Cidrac, Dassault Systemes

Last November, Dassault Systemes acquired the component activity of Spatial thus creating a new company to provide world-class 3D software components to the industry.

Dassault Systèmes and Spatial mutually agreed to join their component software forces in the common objective to serve customers in various segments of the industry in long-term business relationships. Before acquiring Spatial's technologies, Dassault Systemes was already in the component business. Dassault was already providing 3D technology to software development companies and end-users that need to build solutions where 3D data is manipulated. It is the only 3D-technology provider offering components that target all aspects of 3D from Visualization to Solid Modeling, to Interoperability and covering PDM. Furthermore, the solutions built can either address the process centric market, the design centric market or the mass market. For process centric solutions, Dassault Systemes provides an end-to-end 3D-infrastructure (V5) addressing the entire product Life Cycle for 3D data. For design centric or mass market applications, Dassault Systemes provides dedicated and standalone 3D technology components that target the access to any type of 3D data, whether it is creation, viewing, manipulation, translation, management, etc.

Spatial's team has significant expertise in developing high value added software components for 3D modeling, visualization and interoperability:

• 3D modeling with
  • ACIS 3D Toolkit, a 3D geometrical modeler developed in C++ with an Object Oriented architecture.
  • Deformable modeler: enables the deformation of curves and surfaces using Nurbs or Beziers, customers are Autodesk, Honda, Alias, Kockum, Solidworks

• Visualization with
  • Intravision: gives access to a great number of users to 2D and 3D product data of most existing CAD formats. (This product originates from the acquisition of IDA in December 98.)

• Interoperability with
  • Translation services supporting formats such as IGES, STEP, Pro/E, CATIA, These translation services are used in " 3Dshare.com ".
  • Healing technologies also used in " 3Dshare.com ". (These technologies were bought from GSSL)

Leveraging opportunities offered by Internet, Spatial started investing in the development of Web technologies. They have created a Web portal to offer industry resources, e-commerce and application services to help manufacturing and design engineers streamline the digital manufacturing supply chain and more effectively manage difficult, time-consuming design engineering tasks. This web portal is named PlanetCAD.

PlanetCAD will benefit from cross-licensing, technology sharing and marketing agreements with Dassault Systemes and SolidWorks.

Expanding CATIA and ENOVIA Technology at COE 2001 Spring
By Todd McCall, IBM

The CATIA and ENOVIA product families are continuously expanding in function and capability. Each new release brings increased levels of opportunity for users to improve their product development process. COE 2001 Spring provides an excellent venue where people can see the very latest capabilities that CATIA and ENOVIA can bring to their companies. IBM will be sponsoring a variety of sessions and seminars at the COE 2001 Spring, April 1-4, in Anaheim California that will demonstrate the very latest capabilities that CATIA and ENOVIA provide. Visit these sessions and see how IBM can help you make the leap, from concept to reality, in record time.