Massively Scalable Architecture for High-End Visualization

Five Fundamentals of 3D PLM

The Mission
Dassault Systemes' goals are focused on leveraging our expertise in 3D to engineer, simulate and optimize the entire lifecycle of manufactured goods.

The Vehicle
Meeting this objective and thus realizing 3D PLM is pursued through the consolidation of process centric brands; CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, SMARTEAM and Spatial. CATIA addresses product engineering. DELMIA addresses manufacturing and maintenance process engineering. ENOVIA and SMARTEAM address synthesis, collaboration and product lifecycle integration. Spatial is our 3D software component development and distribution.

The Engine
The development of the V5 solution is the engine that powers and aligns the brands towards the shared destination. The five fundamentals have been established to provide the underlying context to fuel the development of V5

The Fuel
The five fundamentals are:

• Process Centric - Industry specific business process optimization.
• Collaborative Workplace - Pervasive 3D based communication and collaboration.
• PPR (Product Process Resource) - Unique product, process and resource description and integration model.
• Knowledge - Capturing, sharing and re-applying corporate knowledge.
• CAA V5 - Openness and extension through component-based architecture and community.

The Road
3D PLM is achieved by constructing the broadest and most integrated solution that is fundamentally based on the power of 3D to optimize the product lifecycle.

Process Centric
Process centricity involves becoming a learned and captive professional of the processes employed by our customers in the context of the competitive needs of their respective industries.

This is achieved by investing time, resources and energy to grasp the basis behind the business processes that drive manufacturing industries. Benefit for manufacturing industries will not be achieved by mapping current practices into 3D PLM, it will be achieved by understanding the direction in which their businesses are being driven and defining together the processes that need to be realized.

The success of 3D PLM will largely hinge on effective partnering between visionary customers, our partners and us. Sharing a common and thorough view of the next breakthrough processes and then realizing them achieve delivering competitive advantage through end-to-end process optimization.

Collaborative Workspaces
When people interact in a shared workspace, they understand each other, they communicate with each other and they collaborate in a manner that is uniquely enhanced by the power of 3D.

The most significant contribution to collaboration within product development in the past ten years has been DMU. Pioneered by DS, DMU provides an immersive environment where all the participants in the product lifecycle can interact with each other's "In-Work" designs, thus significantly enhancing communication through rapid exchange, direct-use, simulation and validation in 3D.

The emergence of design segregation across corporate and geographic boundaries has presented new challenges and opportunities. Harnessing the Internet and corporate information networks to extend the pervasiveness of 3D across the extended enterprise brings a new level of decision support and collaboration that breaks down the barriers of design segregation and further accelerates the product development process.

PPR
The lifecycle of a manufactured good extends beyond the product to incorporate the means and methods required to produce and maintain it. In addition, simulating the complete lifecycle requires that a product and its processes and resources be defined in 3D. Optimizing the lifecycle of a product can only and truly exist within this larger context. At the core of V5 lies a unique technology called PPR that provides an associative model that integrates the product with its processes and resources. It also incorporates a virtual product model that captures the logical, functional and spatial definition of the product with its processes and resources. Capturing where (position and orientation), when (configuration) and why (functional and logical) a component is installed in a product is critical to accurately model a 3D based design. Further capturing the dependencies established against an installed component by other components that contribute to it's function or the manufacturing processes employed to produce or assemble it or the tools or equipment employed during the execution of those processes is required to give life to the virtual product lifecycle. With this model, an accurate context can now be established to ensure configuration management, simulation, change propagation and thorough linkage across the lifecycle. PPR is the unique enabler of end-to-end process lifecycle optimization; it is a unique enabler of 3D PLM.

Knowledge
Manufacturing corporations have recognized that intellectual property is increasingly becoming their most valuable asset as competitive pressures place a premium on innovation. It is also understood that innovation leads to the creation of better and more desirable products thus providing a competitive advantage. Harnessing knowledge to innovate can be broken down into three processes:

• The first consists of capturing or mining knowledge in an exploitable manner.
• The second consists of sharing knowledge, thus making it available.
• The third process consists of reusing or re-applying knowledge quickly, accurately and efficiently.

The successful execution of these three processes allows corporations to replicate the capabilities of its most learned people across a broader population.

The integration of knowledge-based services throughout V5 provides the necessary capability to enable a corporation to harness its knowledge to innovate. V5 applications make a further breakthrough by directly imbedding knowledge. Critical industry specific processes are supported by dedicated applications that incorporate best practices and design rules. These applications have knowledge, they understand aero-elastic effects on a wing, and they understand the nuances that drive the styling for a car. These applications provide a clear example of what lies behind 3D PLM. CAA V5 Deploying 3D PLM necessitates a complete and integrated solution capability. The specific needs of a company will further require that this capability be tailored, extended and integrated with their business systems and procedures. These requirements necessitate openness and the ability to re-apply components to achieve different behavior or capability. The component application architecture provided within V5 has been specifically developed to meet these needs. Built using state of the art object oriented programming languages including Java and C++, the V5 is architecture is similar to other leading edge software such as Microsoft COM/ActiveX or J2EE. Components are building units that allow the design and implementation of complex software products; they allow software designers to focus on high level conceptual programming and enforce encapsulation of implementation details. This approach allows larger groups of developers to contribute to and enrich the software application system as it evolves. This is augmented through a community of application developers that have recognized the value of 3D PLM and the opportunity to enrich V5 through their individual areas of expertise. Market leaders in each of their respective disciplines characterize the richness of the partner community around V5.

Arrival
The focus of Dassault Systemes is the virtual product lifecycle. This means creating the product, engineering it, producing it and maintaining it. Our space is 3D. We are delivering, with our partners, the largest and broadest product portfolio to meet these goals. We are delivering 3D PLM.

IBM and Dassault Systems Announce ENOVIA Version 5 Release 8 Targeted for Full Enterprise Deployment

IBM and Dassault Systemes announced today the availability of ENOVIA Version 5 Release 8 (V5R8). Building on the industry's most complete solution for end-to-end 3D PLM, Release 8 of ENOVIA Solutions delivers enhanced integration with CATIA, richer product lifecycle management (PLM) process support, extended supply chain collaboration solutions, and new open 3d PLM middleware.

This announcement includes ENOVIA Portal Solutions and Life Cycle Applications (LCA) V5R8 and ENOVIAVPM Version 1 Release 5 enhancements. ENOVIA provides decision support and lifecycle management solutions within the 3D PLM portfolio. 3D PLM enables customers to optimize their business processes within Engineering, Manufacturing, Maintenance & Support, and in collaborative workspaces by sharing a common product, process, and resource model (PPR). PPR allows companies to capture, share and reuse knowledge throughout the entire product lifecycle. The CAA V5 open architecture allows extension and integration of this solution within multiple enterprise environments.

"As the PLM industry develops and matures, the ENOVIA suite of products is positioned to grow and evolve with it," said Bruce Jenkins, Executive Vice President, Daratech.

"Collaboration and interoperability are key in the PLM space, and this latest release is packed with features that help ENOVIA solutions connect every element of a manufacturer's extended infrastructure."

Process-Centric
ENOVIAVPM extends its lead as the de-facto standard in configured digital mock-up environments. A major refresh of ENOVIAVPM Release 5 provides proven reliability, platform choice, scalability and rich support for industry-proven best practices for collaborative product development. For customers transitioning across CATIA versions, ENOVIAVPM continues to enhance its support for CATIA V5 and delivers focused capabilities for product development processes requiring seamless use of both CATIA V4 and CATIA V5.

Archibald Dreyer, Head of Engineering Systems, Information Management, ASTRIUM Space Infrastructure Division, said, "The features available on ENOVIAVPM, such as Digital Mock-Up, allow our design team to share an incredible amount of information about our space projects with our partners around the world. Since we are dealing with brand new concepts that must integrate so much scientific data, design modifications occur quite often. ENOVIAVPM facilitates design changes by updating them immediately and automatically ensuring that all our extended product development and production teams use the same correct data. Tracking design changes is critical for complex projects, such as the international space station, and this is key to our success as an innovator in space technology. Plus, we are able to reduce design and development costs."

ENOVIA's Life Cycle Applications (LCA) support new and enhanced Industry Best Practices. A new Catalog solution, together with CATIA catalog interoperability, enables in-depth V5 component management. New inter-related Engineering Change Orders, and Change Order simulation, support advanced change management practices and decision support. New workflow management capability allows consistent deployment of customized Best Practices. As well, ENOVIA LCA supports best practices in the shipbuilding industry and includes a new "structure penetration management" product that accelerates processes for routing of piping and electrical systems through bulkheads and other structural parts.

3D Collaborative Workspace
ENOVIA Portal creates a 3D collaborative workspace for players across an enterprise and all tiers of its supply chains across the Web. Connecting people in a 3D workspace provides a unique and powerful level of communication with immediate understanding of 3D information. ENOVIA Portal 3d Com boasts instant access and sharing and publishing, of 2D and multi-CAD 3D information making it a robust enterprise portal. It provides managed access to decision support aids such as ENOVIAVPM, ENOVIA LCA and SMARTEAM, as well as knowledge developed throughout a product's lifecycle. Further enhancements including support of Japanese and simplified Chinese languages and access to SMARTEAM, provide a complete Web-centric platform to product definition, whether managed by ENOVIA, SMARTEAM, or other mission-critical enterprise systems. Tight integration of ENOVIA LCA and SMARTEAM optimizes inter-enterprise cooperation. OEMs and suppliers can now collaborate and develop innovative products faster; through secure exchange of intellectual property in iXF industry-standard based "Smart briefcases". (For more information on iXF standards, consult www.ixfstd.org.)

PPR
New product, process and configuration modeling services provide unique configuration management to satisfy both requirements of Digital Mockup and Production within a unified environment, providing full control of product variability for configuration with any complexity of variants and packages. New CATIA objects have been exposed within the PPR model such as hyperlinks, catalog objects, and drafting objects providing greater knowledge exploitation This release also offers PPR-based interoperability between ENOVIAPM and ENOVIA LCA, for joint use of both products across a coordinated change management process.

Lou Pascarella, Executive Vice President R&D, ENOVIA Corp., said "The PPR model is the core enabler of the Digital Enterprise, as it enables both federation of enterprise data and processes, as well as aggregation of data and processes into knowledge that may be leveraged for innovation".

Knowledge
Within ENOVIA Portal Solutions, ENOVIA DMU (Digital Mock Up) further strengthens its position as market leader in multi-CAD product synthesis and simulation with over 100 functional enhancements including new, knowledge-based, interference detection and best-in-class real-time rendering for 'right first time' engineering.

CAA V5
New support for IBM WebSphere completes ENOVIA 3D PLM Middleware that already embeds other industry-standard components from IBM and other IT manufacturers. Enhancements to ENOVIA Rapid Application Development Environment (RADE) allow for easier application and process customization. ENOVIAVPM & ENOVIA LCA also continues to benefit from improvements in performance and scalability.

Joel Lemke, chief executive officer, ENOVIA Corp., said, "Today's announcement strongly demonstrates our commitment to continuously provide customers with leading edge, off the shelf, process-based solutions. It is also another step of our vision to cover the entire digital enterprise process landscape, binding all enterprise domains into a 3D PLM Collaborative Environment. With enhanced support for the Enterprise Value Chain, ENOVIA V5R8 enables the achievement of greater levels of innovation and optimization."

Ed Petrozelli, general manager, IBM Product Lifecycle Management said, "Dassault Systemes' adoption of the IBM WebSphere middleware architecture is a strong move toward helping our mutual customers construct a more complete solution, thus reaching all facets of their business processes with product content and knowledge derived from CATIA and ENOVIA."

Product Development in the Age of Collaborative Product Commerce
by Avichay Nissenbaum, SMARTEAM Corporation

Product Development in the Age of Collaborative Product Commerce By Avichay Nissenbaum, Co-founder and Executive VP Product Marketing, SMARTEAM Corporation

For manufacturers, the rules of the game have changed. Chalk it up to what one industry watcher calls "the judicious use of technology" - in product development, supply chain collaboration and in implementing best practices. And like it or not, for manufacturers the new millennium heralds a brave new world fraught with market pressures that can't be ignored, including:

• Increasing product complexity and demand for greater product innovation
• Need for faster time-to-market and greater resource efficiency
• Globalization and decentralized operations

Collaborative B2B e-commerce: The only way to stay competitive
To stay competitive, manufacturers must share information across an extended enterprise that includes departments, suppliers, resellers and, ultimately, customers. Manufacturers also need to streamline and coordinate the multiple interrelated processes required to design, build and support their products.

This involves more than engineers collaborating on concepts and designs. It also must embrace manufacturing, where designs are transformed into production processes; procurement, which must acquire the right parts at the right time; and aftermarket support, which must maintain products in the field. What's more, throughout the product life cycle, engineering changes must be processed and shared.

Collaborative product commerce: Getting the right tools
To bring the advantages of e-commerce to the product development life cycle and the supply chain that feeds it, manufacturers are turning to new product data management (PDM) tools that exploit the Internet, Web interfaces and portals, as well as 3-D visualization and XML-based data exchange capabilities. These collaborative PDM tools - or collaborative product commerce (CPC) - enable manufacturers to define and manage work processes, coordinate activities and improve communication between workers, groups, departments and enterprises.

Using Web-based communications and workflow management, these tools reach beyond their original use in engineering and design to embrace the entire product life cycle and the extended-enterprise processes on which it depends. Thus PDM is evolving into an enterprise collaboration platform that permits users in widely dispersed locations to access and route critical product development information. But these advanced PDM tools have typically been too expensive - especially for small and midsize companies - and have involved lengthy implementation schedules. Fortunately, affordable CPC solutions are now available which are implemented in weeks, with surprisingly rapid ROI.

What CPC Solutions Can Do
CPC solutions facilitate product life cycle management by providing a framework for capturing, managing and sharing knowledge and business intelligence within the company, throughout the extended enterprise and across the supply chain. In particular, these solutions help manufacturers to:

• Share data across the extended enterprise and the supply chain
  Using Internet infrastructure and portals, and simple, user-initiated web publishing and conferencing, CPC solutions enable two-way exchange of mission-critical product data - between designers and manufacturing managers as well as purchasing, sales, field personnel, suppliers and customers.
  
  
• Share data offline
  Solutions are available which facilitate collaboration on product definition and outsourcing. One example packages data - including Bills of Material, diagrams, performance specifications, business process or other related information - in a self-contained, executable 'briefcase' for emailing. The embedded editor and viewer enable recipients to display and manipulate data, before returning the package.
  
  
• Expedite engineering changes
  Workflow software streamlines engineering processes, speeds transfer of information between people and companies, defines and standardizes these transfer paths, and monitors the status of projects. By automating the processes of initiating, reviewing, performing and approving changes, CPC solutions maintain a document trail and tasks are assigned automatically so overall organizational efficiency improves.
  
  
• Link engineering and manufacturing
  Deploying robust Enterprise Application Integration tools, CPC solutions disseminate and synchronize all mission-critical enterprise systems, including PDM, ERP, CRM and others. The automated transfer of data, eliminates redundant efforts, speeds workflow, improves communication throughout the organization and reduces errors and delays in recreating data.

Collaborative Product Commerce solutions are available, which enable manufacturers of any size to compete more effectively. Because these solutions can be implemented quickly and easily, and because they're customizable and scalable, the companies using them can quickly shorten development cycles, cut development and procurement costs and exploit their supply chains much more effectively.

Massively Scalable Architecture for High-end Visualization
By Kathy Carlson, Kubatech Marketing

Imagine a world where you can review complete digital mock-ups of your design in real time. Imagine photo-realistic image quality so real, it seems like an actual car…or an airplane, or a bulldozer you are seeing, and not just a computer image. What if you could interact with it, and make it do what you want? Get inside. Turn knobs. Push buttons. See what happens. This is not the stuff of fairy tales, but a new technology from Hewlett-Packard called the HP visualization center sv6.

The HP sv6 is a racked system of HP j6000 workstations that can be teamed to run a graphical application on one or more displays, with very high performance, and very high image quality, both of which scale with the number of workstations. Conduct reviews at full size. Have your system keep up with your thought process. Interact with your team in real time. Trade off computing performance, image quality, and display resolution-all independently of each other.

Now you can work seamlessly from Dassault Systemes CATIA to DMU Navigator and benefit from the industry's fastest visualization performance. DMU Navigator will soon be available for the HP visualization center sv6. The performance and value are phenomenal.

Experience the HP visualization center sv6 in the HP booth at COE in Palm Springs. See how your team can invent in real time and real size. Can't wait? Then visit www.hp.com/go/immersive for more information.