A story by Creaform

That’s the (very philosophical) question that was casually thrown on Creaform's team meeting table back about a year ago, as we were trying to find a way to stretch our legs with a project that would pose a technical challenge to our team and soothe our fast-developing Olympic fever, all in one stroke.
We had just read an article from the CBC News Website presenting the winner of the contest to design the 2010 Olympic Winter Games logo. A bit of Internet research led us to a few pictures of the Inukshuk the article mentioned as the inspiration for the logo. Located on the beach at English Bay, close to Stanley Park, the statue has been standing there since 1986. It was first part of the North-West Territories pavilion during the Expo, and later donated to the city of Vancouver. That’s the historical end of it.

As we looked at the pictures, we suddenly realized it’s a pretty big statue. This would require some logistics planning. We decided Jérôme Baillargeon and Mathieu Magnan, 2 experienced Application Specialists, would pay the statue its scanning visit, and Louis-Philippe Gendron, our freshly-hired 3D Animation Artist, would start working on the storyboard and the 3D environment. For the logistics, we called in Julie Martineau, Marketing Writer.

Scanning the stone landmark

Everybody was immediately enthusiastic. Julie proceeded to unwind the kilometres of red tape to get the various permits and licenses for the 3D scanning in the city of Vancouver. Since 3D scanning has not yet made it into the collective public consciousness (this was before the movie Avatar was released after all!), the city officials were a bit confused at first, and did not quite know what to make of the curious request from the Québec City-area company. Finally, they decided to treat the operation as a movie shooting.

Julie located an electrician (required by the city) who supplied the hook-up to the city power grid. She also got a boom truck; it may not seem obvious at first, but the scanner has to be about 30 cm away from the surface to function properly, and the statue is 6 meters tall. Since neither Jérôme nor Mathieu can reach that high even on tip-toes (!), scanning the upper parts would require extra lift!

So on a chilly December morning, passers-by on English Bay were treated to a most unusual sight: men were first seen dotting the Inukshuk with small, round reflective stickers, and then they started pointing Wall-e shaped instruments at the Inukshuk. The team also set up a laser tracker to discreetly take in the area immediately surrounding the Inukshuk. According to the weather forecast, a storm was expected to roll in that very evening from the roaring Pacific. Jérôme and Mathieu worked fast and were able to complete their scan and clean up the area in less than 12 hours! That was fast!

Giving life to stone

Data in hand (well, in computer, actually), Jérôme and Mathieu slept like logs and got back the following day. We had our raw material.
Next, Louis-Philippe was put to work. While Jérôme worked on post-processing the 3D scan model, the tracker data was put to good use in creating the 3D environment for the short film.

A storyboard was set up, and a scenario written. Scanned models were integrated. Sounds were recorded; Julie wrote and recorded a short narrative in English and in French. Jérôme integrated the soundtrack for the film.

Eventually, creating the environment, laying out the movements, animating the Inukshuk, and putting it all together took over 200 hours by Louis-Philippe and Jérôme, with some help from Daniel Brown, another Applications Specialist. Without question, the most exhilarating part of the work was seeing the 3D environment take shape and spring to life on the computer screen. Louis-Philippe, Jérôme and Daniel did spectacular work, of which we are all very proud!

Why did we do it? It was certainly fun to stretch our legs and be creative. In our field of work, reverse engineering and inspection are the most common applications for our Handyscan 3D technology. We have been moving into the multimedia industry, and going the extra mile just might help show exactly how our scanners can be used by animation specialists.

Not to mention the most important reason for scanning an object.

Because it’s there.

Maxime Davignon, Scanning & Inspection Director
Manager for the Inukshuk Project

ELSYS serves top companies from aerospace, automotive, rail and manufacturing industries. Their applications are designed for industries which develop products combining mechanical and electrical technologies and require specialized diagram, bundle and harness design and wiring applications.

Air France Industries core business has always been the maintenance or modification of aircraft, being civil or military. For some years now, Air France Industries has been developing competency in aircraft design, leading to the improvement of passengers & crews comfort and also the avionics. In those areas, they faced some electrical systems related challenges. In this field, thanks to ELSYS and Dassault Systèmes, Air France Industries is now fully able to meet their customers' expectations.

The challenges

• Reduce aircraft down time.
• Keep to the standards and environments of every aircraft manufacturer.
• Harmonize designs around a consistent set of electrical design and management tools.
• Manage the product life cycle from end to end and ensure traceability.

How ELSYS made things happen

The initial solution chosen by Air France Industries is based on ELECTRE for wiring diagram studies, SMARTELECTRE for the management of electrical data in SMARTEAM, and CATELECTRE for integration with CATIA.

By doing so, Air France engineers can accommodate the maintenance, modification and design requirements of aircraft systems and specific features (seat layout, galleys, toilets, passenger entertainment, etc.) while improving aircraft down times. These solutions make it easier and simpler for Air France Industries to satisfy the special requirements of aeronautical engineering, such as:
- ATA standards (Airbus and Boeing), when modifying and creating electrical engineering documents,
- Specific documentation requirements in connection with configuration management,
- Simple, transparent management of electrical parts lists, however complex, in SmarTeam.

The customer's voice

“The ELECTRE solution that has been implemented saves us an enormous amount of time and totally meets the manufacturers’ standards. It covers almost 100 % of our requirements…The complementary of the electrical CAD products from ELSYS and the data management products from Dassault Systèmes is excellent. With the SMARTELECTRE integration platform, it means we can manage the life cycle of electrical products from end to end. This advanced solution makes a major contribution to our 100 % quality objective… I have great confidence in ELSYS - they’re very honest people. They are proactive, customer-focused and always find the solution. With them you can say that it’s possible, it’s quick and it’s not expensive! CGM Import-Export is a prime example of this.”

Frédéric Speyer, IT Project Manager, EDP Support,
AIR France Industries, Roissy Charles de Gaulle

You can read more about the successful collaboration between ELSYS and Air France Industries and contact me.

Jéronimo FREITAS - Business Development ELSYS
Twitter: @jeronimofreitas

PLM softwares are used widely around the globe and this is not going to slow down, hopefully for us . This means that from Italy to Mexico, Japan to South Africa or the USA to Australia, thousands of people are using our softwares everyday.

The knowledge and know-how capitalized by these people is a unique and huge value. Knowledge is key for innovation, sharing this knowledge is key for the humanity evolution (and not only in the field of PLM of course). Thus, people need to be connected in order to share and learn. So far, PLM MarketPlace aimed at “Connecting Partners”. We now want to extend this approach to the users.

All over the globe, there are some so called “CATIA User Groups”, gathering people who… guess what… share a common use of Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA ! In order to give you (no matter if you are a customer, a Solution Provider engineer, a VAR Sales Rep, a student…) an easier access to the group that might interest you, we’ve decided to start listing them under the Customers section of the PLM MarketPlace.

Get the best locally

Our goal is definitely to encourage knowledge and best practices sharing, all over the world. Someone at 10 000km from you may have faced the challenge you are facing today and can help you. Users of Dassault Systèmes and its Partners’ softwares are highly competent and talented people. They know the softwares maybe like no others and even sometimes better than we do! These Users Groups are key in our industry, be part of them opens unique opportunity in terms of sharing the knowledge, finding experts, benchmarking best practices, increasing individual competencies.

These Users Groups are traditionnaly specialized in one of our brands (the most famous one being maybe the COE – CATIA Operators Exchange – in the USA), in a specific industry such as automotive (GACI in Germany) or a domain like the NAFEMS for simulation enthusiasts. In conclusion, almost whatever your interest is, you’ll find an appropriate group somewhere.

But it’s sometimes hard to know in which user group you’ll find the right person, especially if we are talking about highly specialized solutions.

Explore new horizons

This is one of the reasons why almost two years ago, we have launched our LinkedIn business group. It offers an additionnal opportunity to find the right contact in a single place and share experience around Dassault Systèmes Partners’ complementary solutions. As of today, almost 1400 people are connected thanks to this business group and have discussions. Don’t hesitate to join this highly focused and specilized community, you may find there the right specialist in the world who can answer your question.To make it easier for all of our users, we have started to implement subgroups that provide a technical forum to discuss highly specialized matters! Last but not least, thanks to these groups, users can benefit from priviledged rates on some software and/or hardware offers.

We hope that this new access to the PLM User Groups offered by the PLM MarketPlace will be usefull for all of you. This page is meant to grow and we hope that we’ll be able to list all the CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, SIMULIA, 3DVIA User Groups all over the world. If you know (or are part of) one that is not listed here, please let us know and it will be added immediately.

Are you part of such groups? Do you think it is a valuable approach for the PLM MarketPlace to connect users not only with software providers but also to users? What do you expect from these groups and what do you bring to other users at the other side of the world? We think you opinion is key, for us of course, but above all, for all people involved in managing these User Groups on a daily basis…

Anthony Rosendo, on behalf of the PLM MarketPlace Team

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