Jaguar Land Rover is using OPTIS solutions integrated in CATIA V5, to improve the design and lighting of their car interiors, as well as the visbility and legibility of information on their dashboard instrumentation.

OPTIS rendering and visualisation solutions are unique in taking into account the optical properties of materials and surfaces, giving the customer the guarantee that their simulation results will be how the final product will really appear. They are also unique in taking into account human vision, and can even detect potential problem areas such as unwanted reflections, glare, areas of low visibility and stray light.

Note that OPTIS solutions, including the SPEOS for CATIA V5 product range which is available on the PLM MarketPlace, are used in various industries, including: aerospace, high-tech, automotive, CPG,...

The OPTIS Team

ECF 2010 is now going on and everyone's enjoying it. After this morning's plenary session including some customers' testimonies, guest are now invited to attend sessions, meet experts and Dassault Systèmes' partners in the Agora.

Concerning the PLM MarketPlace, we are located next to Microsoft's showroom where people can relax and have fun by trying the brand new Kinect! It's funny for us to see people jumping and laughing all day long :).

Time to relax with Microsoft Kinect...

Now, we'd like to offer you a virtual tour of the Agora. We've stopped by our partners' booths asking them to present their companies and solutions.

Noomeo: scanning the event 

I met with André Joly and Mathieu André from Noomeo at their booth. They were performing a nice demonstration of their product Optinum, a 3D-handheld scanner weighting only 1,8kg. Have a look at the video we’ve made with them to see how easy is it to use this powerful device.

Here are some additional news about Noomeo on this blog.

Rapid modeling with Forcefive
Next stop was at Forcefive's booth where I met Stefan, Christian and Ian. They were happy to show me live the capabilities of their software Fast Concept Modeller used for modeling in the automotive industry.

Find out more about Forcefive on the PLM MarketPlace blog.

I hope you enjoyed these first insights of ECF2010 with our partners exhibiting here. I'll come back tomorrow with some new great stuff to show you.

Talk to you soon...

Alexandre

This is day 2 of this year's Dassault Systèmes Customers Conference (DSCC2010). With PLM MarketPlace being there these two days, in a way, all our Referenced Partners made the trip to Florida!

But as we said in some previous blogposts, a few of them are really present in Orlando. This is the case of Forcefive (Gold sponsor) and CoastalLogic (Silver sponsor). I invite you to know a little bit more about them...

I first met the Forcefive team made of Stefan Bikanic, Christian Fritz, Thomas Schmidt and Ian Phillips. Forcefive held a conference based on an usecase at BMW: "Accelerating innovation in global automotive development" which was successful in terms of attendees. Their solution, Fast Concept Modeller, enables very fast creation of models and their variants and reduces cycle times at the early concept stages. Stefan was pretty happy to be there at DSCC2010, "where everything is done the American way, everything is huge". If you did not have the opportunity to meet the Forcefive team in Orlando, they'll be present at ECF 2010 in a couple of weeks in Paris and will present some fresh content during a session.

The Forcefive Team

My next visit was to Shaun Dawson, Khanh Dao, Wayne Hoit and Andrea Young, the CoastalLogic's team. CoastalLogic joined PLM MarketPlace a few months ago. At DSCC2010, people had the opportunity to enjoy live demos of two of their products working with ENOVIA: printLogic for batch printing and convertLogic for PDF rendering. These solutions allow high customization and are very easy to use. "DSCC was for us an opportunity to interact with existing clients and prospects. It was an enjoyable experience" Shaun told me. He'll be also in Paris for the ECF 2010 looking forward to meeting new people.

The CoastaLogic team

From my perspective, I had a really good time there, networking with experts from our partners but also with customers. It is always a pleasure to make them discover our ecosystem of partners and the value they can bring to their Dassault Systèmes configuration.

It is now time to fly back to Paris, have some post-DSCC2010 calls and meetings. And also to prepare our next big event: ECF 2010! Don't miss the opportunity to meet us there!

See you in Paris in a couple of week.

Anthony Rosendo, on behalf of the PLM MarketPlace Team

Tesla Motors has selected Dimensional Control Systems (DCS)’s 1DCS and 3DCS solutions to provide tolerance analysis as part of its commitment to lead the automotive industry in quality with the development of the Model S.

Tesla’s design engineers are using 1DCS in the earliest stages of product development to explore hypothetical designs for rapid evaluation and iteration throughout development of the Model S. 3DCS will provide the tools to run precise tolerance analyses of the Model S design and the associated manufacturing process using the Functional Tolerancing and Analysis (FTA) process in CATIA.

“We are pushing the automotive and engineering limits at Tesla in our development of the Model S,” said Tesla Motors Dimensional Engineering Manager Steve Bannasch. “To ensure our cars are first in quality, we must be the very best in fit and finish. DCS allows us to achieve our goals without adding unnecessary cost. Their solution is completely integrated with CATIA and provides the most flexibility of design. The DCS team has clearly taken the time to research the differences between rigid and flexible materials and the impact they have on tolerances.”

What kind of processes do you use to ensure fit, finish and function? Do you take advantage of dimensional engineering?

The DCS Team

The challenging economic climate of the last year means that it is very important to have an accurate uptodate view of market opportunity. Theorem Solutions has recently completed an in depth study on CAD data exchange in the UK West Midlands Automotive supply chain which has revealed CATIA’s leading position in UK automotive design and manufacturing companies.

The objective of the study was to identify the types and scale of challenges experienced in CAD data exchange amongst the UK West Midlands Automotive Suppliers. This detail is important to Theorem in order to ensure the development and supply of the ideal interoperability technology to meet the current and anticipated future needs of this important industry sector.

Whilst the core objectives of the project were to identify CAD data exchange problems the work revealed a great deal of further information, including the mix of CAD systems in place. In this respect the project discovered that CATIA dominates the UK West Midlands automotive supply chain with more than twice the number of installations as the next nearest CAD system. When the number of installed workstations is considered the CATIA dominance is seen to be even greater.

The market research confirmed that data exchange is still a problem for many companies in the automotive sector. CATIA emerges as the most widely used CAD system in the survey and this reinforces Theorem’s commitment to providing CATIA users with ‘best in class’ interoperability solutions.

Do these findings match your experience of automotive supply chains?
Do you have problems with data exchange?

The Theorem Team