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

Recently, Coastal Logic became one of our newest PLM Marketplace members. We thought it would be interesting to share some additional information about this dynamic company.

Coastal Logic is the leading provider of out-of-the-box printing and PDF rendering solutions for Enovia MatrixOne.

The company was founded in 2002 in response to a demand for capabilities lacking in PLM database software systems. Many PLM users have the need for robust, enterprise-controlled batch printing and PDF rendering solutions. Coastal Logic was formed to address the growing demand for commercial, out-of-the-box solutions that help companies ensure regulatory compliance, increase efficiency and accelerate profit.

Today, Coastal Logic solutions are globally deployed in a wide variety of industries including Aerospace, Industrial, Medical, and Energy manufacturing. One such client installation is at Smith and Nephew.

Smith and Nephew is a global medical device manufacturing company with operations in 33 countries and annual sales of over $2.6 billion. Prior to adopting Coastal Logic software, Smith and Nephew was running on a legacy custom-built platform for printing documents and drawings on the shop floor. As with many internally-built systems of this sort, this solution became brittle and difficult to maintain over time. One challenge of this Coastal Logic successfully installed printLogic to handle their printing requirements, along with some additional custom interface development to make the system work with their current shop floor processes. The resulting installation works seamlessly with their existing process and has the benefits of full support and maintainability. The project has been a huge success.

The out-of-the-box Coastal Logic solutions include two flagship products, convertLogic, which automatically stamps documents and renders them to PDF, and printLogic, which gives Enovia users a "print" button, right in the web interface, that allows them to print metadata-stamped documents without needing to use viewing software or native applications.

convertLogic helps to enable regulatory compliance and increase document transportability by converting files into secure, metadata-stamped PDF or TIFF files. Conversions are triggered automatically by PLM lifecycle events and occur on dedicated servers, so there is no additional load on the RMI servers.

printLogic enables Enovia users to create secure, metadata-stamped prints directly from the Enovia web interface. Prints can be queued one or hundreds at a time, and virtually any data can be extracted from the database and applied to prints. 

What are some issues that you have had with Enovia with regards to printing or file format conversions? Tell us about it in the comments.

Shaun, for Coastal Logic

The PLM MarketPlace is growing and our latest partner to be referenced in our catalog is Actas. In order to make sure that everybody perceives the benefits of their experience and solutions, we asked them for a short introduction. 

This blogpost aims at giving you a first overview of the capabilities of Actas' softwares. Do you see a value in them for your industry/job? Are you facing technological challenges you think you can win thanks to MPA or TDA? Feel free to comment!

Well, 2009 is really coming to its end, and after last week’s retrospective, and as promised, it is now time to look at the future! As we said, we’ve got really cool things to announce for the PLM MarketPlace community. In 2009 (also applies for the previous years ), we spent time meeting our customers, partners, resellers online but also for real (COE, DEVCON, ECF, …) and tried to find out how we could do better to help them.

Of course, today, it is still too soon to disclose everything, but this, for sure, what you will get from the PLM MarketPlace in 2010.

A growing catalog

The software catalog will welcome two new post-processors providers: ICAM and IMS. Their offers should be available online mid-/end-January. Note that in the field of post-processors, CENIT referenced their offer a few weeks ago.
On the hardware catalog side, we are very proud to announce that AMD decided to join the PLM MarketPlace! Their offer is scheduled to be available next month, a special announcement will be made once it is online, stay tuned!
Finally, we remind our services providers that we are still looking for candidates to be referenced on the Services Catalog of the PLM MarketPlace. The referencing mode is very flexible and made to comply with your business habits. Don’t hesitate to contact us to know more!

You remember IBM?

In October, Dassault Systèmes announced the acquisition of IBM PLM and its 700 Sales Reps. These guys showed interest in the PLM MarketPlace and the easy way it represents to deliver more value to customers. This is why, in the coming weeks, IBM PLM Sales Reps will be able to resell the solutions available on PLM MarketPlace! This represents a good opportunity to make a connection between customers and referenced partners… Again, “connecting partners” is our motto!

Buy one, get…

… maybe not one free but, for sure, in 2010, there will be special discounts from our referenced partners, even new ones! Check regularly the homepage (www.plmmarketplace.com) to discover the current discounts available and ask your VAR for more details!

2010 will be a year of new challenges and maybe, for some of us, of a new start. We want to remind you that we are here to help you find the best way to develop your activity, your business, meet your challenges,…

Consequently, whatever (well… almost )you need, feel free to contact us and ask, we’ll do our utmost to help you.

Customers, resellers, solutions providers, this program is yours and we are open to make it change the way you think it will help you. This is our challenge for 2010.

On behalf of Jacques and Alexandre, I wish you all the best for 2010!

Anthony

We are almost at the end of 2009 and I take a short break before tonight's Christmas celebration to have a look at how the PLM MarketPlace program evolved this year...

First, many new Referenced Partners joined bringing along a lot of new, innovative and comprehensive solution one click away from customers:
- Elsys, with CATELECTRE, ELECTRE and SMARTELECTRE in the field of electrical harness design;
- Icona Solutions, with the aesthetica product range helping you to face perceived quality challenges;
- Magestic and its Truenest and Truelaser View solutions for the composite manufacturing process;
- Mecamaster, with Mecamaster Analysis (Tolerance analysis);
- Noomeo, offering handheld 3D-scanners.
Take a look at what they offer and don't hesitate to drop their solutions in your shopping cart if need a quote or simply just more information!

We had also dozens of Value Added Resellers joining the program. They are now almost 100 all over the world able to deliver all the solutions listed on the PLM MarketPlace catalog to their customers.

The motto of the PLM MarketPlace has always been "Connecting Partners". Thus, we wanted to go a step ahead and open new channels where Referenced Partners, VARs and Customers would have the opportunity to interact:
- We launched a Twitter in April and today, more than 600 people (mostly users, partners, and 3D enthusiasts) follow us and discuss! Join them for free on Twitter!
- "See what you mean" is Dassault Systèmes' motto. This is why we gathered all the videos of our Referenced Partners on a dedicated channel on YouTube. People can now see for real what their software do, ask questions and share the videos in an easy way.
- Last but not least, something we are very proud of: the PLM MarketPlace application for iPhone. Thanks to it, bring all the PLM MarketPlace (RSS news, blog and, above all, the catalog, including product datasheets, videos and images) whereever you go! This application is free and can be downloaded from Apple's App Store.

This was all the exciting stuff we did in 2009! But we've been working on even more cool things for 2010! Next year, PLM MarketPlace will bring you even more opportunities. Want to know what? I suggest you to come back here next week...

I would like also to thank all our PLM MarketPlace partners all over the world for helping our customers every day with their solutions and knowledge.

On behalf of all the PLM MarketPlace Team, I wish everyone a merry Christmas.

Anthony

Our aim has always been to deliver you the value of our PLM MarketPlace solutions providers as fast and accurate as possible. We know that time is money and customers need the right information regarding the right product no matter when, no matter where.

Based on these facts, we are proud to announce today that the PLM MarketPlace is now available for iPhone! You can download the application from Apple iTunes' App Store FOR FREE!

With the PLM MarketPlace application for iPhone, you have access to our solution providers' latest news and blogposts but also, and this is the core value, to more than 145 solutions! All this right in your pocket!

Browse our catalog, discover product datasheets, videos, screenshots and share all this information with customers, colleagues, partners,... in just one click!

Also, keep in touch with our ecosystem thanks to a direct access to our LinkedIn business group, Twitter and YouTube channel.

In a few words, PLM MarketPlace application for iPhone is the latest and ultimate way to discover, share and connect around CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, SIMULIA and 3DVIA complimentary solutions! Business, technology, knowledge and communities have never been so mobile!

Feel free to download the PLM MarketPlace application for iPhone and share your impressions with us by leaving your comments below!

Stay connected!

The PLM MarketPlace Team

PS: for other devices and PDAs, our generic mobile version is still available!

PLM requirements of our customers are fullfilled by 400+ highly sophisticated solutions (provided by DS), as well as 400+ complementary applications (provided by our Software Partners). This is nice for major accounts, but sometimes represents too many possibilities for the Small and medium Business. This is why DS developped CATIA PLM Express and DELMIA PLM Express to make decisions easy in this segment, and simplify VARs Sales Reps' lives when providing packaging advices to customers.

On PLM MarketPlace, customers can browse today 130 customized solutions provided by 25 referenced partners. So we wanted to have a similar approach to simplify the process of selection, because some partner products are sometimes completely unknown by their potential buyers. This is why we have redesign the discovery experience and implemented a visual and intuitive search engine based on user industries and roles such as Style, Manufacturer or Robotics Planner. With this natural approach customers will discover our catalog without having any pre-existing knowledge of referenced products, and we'll capitalize on our Industry and PLM Express visuals. Of course, customers may still search by keywords, referenced partner / product or domain / sub-domain.

Customers are getting easy access to detailed information (as on our corporate website), but on PLM MarketPlace the benefit for you VARs is that we are pushing them to give contact informations in order to generate leads for partner products.

Any comments on this new catalog discovery?

Jacques