Ever wondered how your own 3D avatar would look like for real? With James Cameron's movie "Avatar", 3D is becoming very popular and numerous Hollywood productions are going 3D these days. But these are movies, and all of us can only dream about having a 3D avatar and watching him as a separate entity.

Now we have made a really surprising experience at one of our local Dassault-Systemes 2010 Kick-Offs. In order to get a closer look to what's 3D, two of our Partners came with their hardware . They took a 3D picture of all of those not afraid to do so (no, no, there is no risk with 3D pictures!!) and then printed them in 3D.
How does it work?

Getting a 3D picture of your face

Noomeo's 3D scanner named Optinum goes around you in order to scan your face. You can see it in real time on a laptop. Numisoft is the software that reconstruct your 3D face in the computer so that there is no "hole" in your 3D model.

In this picture you can see Pierric Le Quement from Noomeo scanning our boss Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault-Systemes.

Printing your face in 3D

The model information is sent to Objet's software in order to put together several 3D faces before sending them to Objet's 3D printer. So OK we have there several faces, but this is not mass production! Wink: Michael from Objet has highlighted my face in blue

Now Objet's 3D printer from the Connex Family is starting to build our faces in 3D, layer by layer (see the blue light on the left picture). When finished printing, we get nice 3D faces on a Business Card size (see right picture)

Here we are, everybody's got its 3D badge?
Your host proudly presenting its 3D trophy as a badge, with Michael Anton from Objet on the back. You can also see the Connex 3D printer on the left, not so big for such a machine, isn't it?

Well, the show is over now. I'm pretty sure that this kind of process will become straightforward in the future and that everybody will be able to have a physical 3D snapshot of its face soon.
I can tell you that it's really a strange feeling to watch ourself "from outside" in our hands! Only rich and famous people get their Portrait bust today, but it will not take long to share 3D faces on Facebook with your friends! 3D will be a reality for all very soon.

What was funny afterward was that male were happy just because they could watch themselves in 3D, while (some of) our female colleagues were eventually disappointed when seeing themselves without nice lightening on cosmetics... Well, we still have some work to do before our avatars are close to reality. Hopefully we can dream with 3D movie avatars in the meanwhile!

What's your view on the 3D scan & 3D print benefits? do you know any integrated business in this domain? Would you consider this can reach mass-market for consumers? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this topic.

PS: Great thanks to Pierric from Noomeo and to Michael from Objet, they could make this happen.

Jacques

Activities associated with altitude such as mountain climbing, mountaineering and work in suspension require strong and secure equipments providing a high level of security and allowing people to do it under the best conditions. Climbing is a difficult activity that requires a lot of efforts. In order to optimize those efforts workers need to get the best equipment from the shoes to the carabiner.

PETZL's mission has been the same for 30 years now: to invent concrete solutions enabling people to go higher with less risk, day and night. PETZL had a new project consisting in reducing carabiners' weight by 25% while maintaining their mechanical properties and performance above the required standards. And, of course, controlling manufacturing costs as well.

DPS' solution
Considering those facts, French PLM company DPS used an approach of integration of analysis in the product design that is currently widespread in the automotive and aeronautics industries. According to Raphaël Lanez, manager of the project, this was the key to the project.
DPS staff also listened actively in order to meet PETZL's needs. The project proposals made by DPS provided critical insight and enabled them to anticipate their needs, to offer a new, non-intuitive geometry. They also resulted in the development of digital methods to optimize component weight.

One step further
In addition to reducing the weight of the carabiner by 25%, DPS enabled PETZL to save time by significantly lowering the number of CAD calculation iterations. PETZL even succeeded in obtaining a significant decrease in the number of prototypes and tests. These benefits led to a reduction in product development time, representing 3 to 4 working months, or 15% time savings gained for the project overall.

Following this very successful collaboration, PETZL wishes to apply these optimization and integration methods to the design of other products for the brand.

Read the full DPS / PETZL success story.

Discover how DPS solutions can help you.

Image courtesy of Traceparts

Airbus' planes fly into the sky thanks to a lot of people working hard to make it happen. For that they also work with 3D tools to study, create, test, etc. every single part of each plane. Airbus and its partners in French plants are working on CATIA V5 to design the tooling. "The tooling is made up of a large number of standard parts bought from supplier catalogues: fastenings, clamping and handling parts, bushings, cylinders, etc. and each site or sub-contractor was modeling parts it needed with a specific name and level of detail", says Laurent SENOT, a Dassault Data Services consultant who works with Airbus.

This being said, Airbus was looking for a solution to simplify this process and get a homogeneous library of components that would be used by each site and suppliers.

Traceparts brought the solution

Our partner Traceparts is a French provider who delivers standard parts library seamlessly integrated with CATIA V5. They were choosen by Airbus France, Airbus Spain and Airbus UK for its functionalities, its content and its ability to adapt its solution to their specific requirements.

Additionnally to the fact that they are the only one library developer to have the status of CAA V5 Software Partner, they were able to customize their software on a number of imperatives leading to a close collaboration.

Traceparts and Airbus are working on a brand new version, currently in a deployment phase that integrates notable developments such as the automatic replacement of instanced parts by other components and allow Airbus to build its own parts into the library.

Discover how Traceparts can work for you. Read the full success story.

Alexandre and the Traceparts Team

Dear readers,

During last ECF09, you may have been interviewed by some people asking you questions about social medias, Web 2.0, communities,... We gathered hundreds of answers among visitors and exhibitors, allowing us to figure out how much PLM professionals know about these topics.

If you are interested in discovering the results of this poll performed by Dassault Systèmes on the IT/PLM professional community, you are welcome to attend the webinar

“Social Media in Europe : result of a poll focused on IT professionals usage”

on Wednesday January 20th at 4 pm (Paris Time) Duration: 30 min.

During this free webinar I will share with you the results of this face-to-face poll conducted on 330 IT professionals.

Topics covered:

- Spontaneous Awareness of social media
- Suggested Awareness of social media (Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Viadeo,…)
- Social media actual registration pattern
- Frequency of use
- Private/ professional balance usage per media
- Best choice for professional use

If you are willing to attend, add this event to your Calendar and register.

Best regards;

The Dassault Systèmes e-Marketing Corporate Practice Team

 

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

After ten years promise ERP vendors have failed to deliver accurate production planning and scheduling or advanced planning as they call it. The problem seems to lie in ERP's inaccurate process planning and process model. This has lead to wide use of MS Excel to temporarily overcome the problem.

With Delfoi Planner companies can typically decrease their lead time by 50% compared to traditional ERP/Excel planning. Also, the simulation model enables rapid change implementation by using simulation as a virtual validation without a need of testing with the actual production. Delfoi capability to use DELMIA simulation and process models enables flexible and fast production planning and accurate finite scheduling with validated and up-to-date production model.

Read how e.g. long term Dassault customer Metso Paper Inc. has implemented Delfoi's simulation based production planning and scheduling in their operations.

Do you have initiative to reduce the lead time? And do you think that ERP and spreadsheet applications do not provide capability to improve production efficiency and visibility?

If you have question regarding this topic, feel free to ask, we'd be more than happy to help!

Raimo, on behalf of Delfoi

PS: if you want to know more about ERP, have a look at our folk Oleg who wrote an article about "PLM and ERP integration" this week on his Daily PLM Think Tank Blog.

A few days ago, from December 2 to December 5 2009, designers and engineers met in Frankfurt, Germany for the Euromold 2009 World Fair for Moldmaking and Tooling, Design and Application development.

Based on its name, this event was first dedicated to the European market but there are more and more attendees and exhibitors coming from several parts of the world. The number of exhibitors has increased by 10% (in comparison to 2008), with a significant part of people coming from China. This year, there were 1354 exhibitors from 37 countries attending the event.

Scanning Euromold

The PLM MarketPlace team wasn't there but we were well represented with some of our partners attending this major event: Geometric, Cenit and our new provider: Noomeo. 
Since it was the first time Noomeo attended this event, they kindly offer you a little feedback of the event along with their personal feeling.

“For the very first time, Noomeo attended on its own to an international show, Euromold in Frankfurt, for presenting its “scan for dummies” that can scan everything in every place without any skills. Nevertheless, we were in the middle of high level industries involved in the mold making and manufacturing processes. We welcome on our booth “000’s” and “000’s” of visitors who were really impressed by the ease of use of the system and the way it is responding to industrial processes while being so simple to handle. During this event, we had the great pleasure to demonstrate the accuracy of the OptiNum solution on a wide range of “objects”, such as a plastic bumper of a car, a portion of a injection mold, a plush of Hamtaro, a Volkswagen Combi toy, a bronze casted statue and a charming face of a booth hostess. All these lifelike experiences allowed us to capture and use in 3D these people and object as simply as taking a picture of them. Because OptiNum’s technology is unique, our capabilities are very huge and we are able to answer to very industrial and serious processes and needs. The next event we will attend will be Imagina on February 3rd to 5th, in Monaco where we will be just in front of your preferred CAD system vendor and our best partner, Dassault Systèmes.”

According to the picture above, it seems that their 3D handheld scanners attracted a lot of people!

Did you attend Euromold 2009? What are your impressions?

Alexandre and the Noomeo team.

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!

All good things come to an end…

Checklist before leaving ECF 09: complete! All the stuff is packed, last exchanges of business cards, last meetings and sessions finished. Time for all the attendees to fly back home all over Europe. We definitely had a good time here in DisneyLand Paris with our PLM MarketPlace partners.

European Value Added Resellers and Customers were really impressed by how rich our catalog is! Some of them didn’t even image that so many specific and niche application were available on the PLM MarketPlace. “It’s amazing how so many solutions are easy to find here and within our reach!” a customer told us. Indeed, the combination of Referenced Partners, Value Added Resellers and PLM MarketPlace help customer improve their PLM configuration easily, this was proven and understood during these two days.

Last but not least, we were proud to show the new auto-translation feature we've just implemented that allows all our visitors (on site and online!) to get all the content of www.plmmarketplace.com in their own native language! No need to say that this new feature made great impression during these two days...
Just select a language to get the page translated in a few seconds!

Back in the Agora for a while, just the time for me to finish our “virtual tour” we started yesterday.

Crowded Agora full of people connecting

Let’s start with our neighbors: Optis. Optis is a French company based in the South of France (you know, where’s sun, cause light is very important for them). Pete and his team explain that their aim is to illuminate your design process, make simulation an integral part of your development cycle to reduce time to market and optimize product quality. The idea with the Speos product line is to put the physic based representation of light and human vision inside CATIA V5 as part of the PLM strategy.

Let’s cross the border to see Prostep, our other neighbors who traveled from Germany to show the value of their Federated eBOM solution. As Manfred told us, the software offers the fast way to find the specific solution to reduce end-to-end life systems, integrate expert systems and build your enterprise PLM. With Prostep, you can find opportunities to make your PLM landscape more efficient using V6 technology.

Back to France now to visit our folks from ESI Group. The product lines of ESI Group (PAM-Diemaker, PAM-TFA, PAM-Quickform and PAM-RTM among others) help you to use simulation driven design to get the product right at the first time. The ESI Group team says that they offer CATIA V5 integrated solutions for composite design and manufacturing but also for sheetmetal forming and stamping simulation. These solutions are used in various industries such as automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, consumer goods products,…

We have now finished our Agora tour and I hope it helped you to see more clearly the value brought by our partners. ECF is always a great opportunity for all of us to exchange, discover powerful complimentary solutions to DS products, discuss on new business cases,…

If you attended ECF09, tell us your feelings here! What did you like? Did you discover new things? Have you met our Partners? We’re curious about it!!

Anthony