IBM and Dassault announce the arrival of CATIA-CADAM SOLUTIONS Version 4

Citation

(1998), "IBM and Dassault announce the arrival of CATIA-CADAM SOLUTIONS Version 4", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 70 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1998.12770fab.014

IBM and Dassault announce the arrival of CATIA-CADAM SOLUTIONS Version 4

IBM and Dassault announce the arrival of CATIA-CADAM SOLUTIONS Version 4

Keywords CAD, Dassault, IBM, Software

Customers in the aerospace industry are among the major beneficiaries of three new products and 37 others enhanced in CATIA-CADAM Solutions Version 4 Release 2.0 announced by IBM and Dassault Systèmes. The new release expands the CATIA portfolio to 115 products. It operates on IBM, Silicon Graphics Inc., Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems Unix workstations.

Version 4 Release 2.0 supports customers from 2D drawing to digital mock-up methodologies and notably expands customer competitiveness and productivity in three major domains: manufacturing, analysis and digital mock-up.

For mechanical, construction and other industries requiring comprehensive, yet integrated, associative and easier-to-use manufacturing tools, Release 2.0 expands the manufacturing solution by introducing a new product, Lathe Machining Programmer.

This product provides extensive turning designs for such operations as roughing, grooving, threading and finishing.

The new release also offers full integration across all of the CATIA Manufacturing product suite to enable mixing mill, drill and lathe operations in a seamless fashion.

Other enhancements in the manufacturing domain include a higher level of automation for prismatic machining and an extension of multi-axis capabilities for contouring and surfacing. Moreover, programming and machining productivity is significantly enhanced in the mould and die areas.

In any industry where analysis on assembly is critical, especially in fabrication and assembly, aerospace and automotive, Version 4 Release 2.0 introduces a new dedicated product, Assembly and Substructure Analysis, to analyse very large assemblies as well as individual components in the context of the assembly. This allows true concurrent engineering on large systems and rapid design-analysis iterations on a component in the context of an assembly. Dedicated functions are introduced for car body meshing in preparation for crash, noise and vibration simulations. For sheetmetal or plastic parts, another new meshing capability is the ability to generate a shell mesh directly from a thin solid.

Version 4 Release 2.0 simplifies further implementation of the digital mockup process. The definition and analysis of wire harnesses can now be performed in multi-model fashion, consistent with the way automotive and aerospace industries segment their design either spatially or functionally.

This gives much more flexibility in determining the most optimal design and placement for wire bundles. To perform quality engineering at any level of a product structure, customers can now assign 3D tolerances on assemblies within the digital mock-up.

Other enhancements include: the capability to generate the 3D solid representation of composite material parts and integrate it within a digital mock-up; and extension of CATIA 4D Navigator, the tool of choice for digital mock-up inspection and simulation, to become CAD independent in order to support access to any CAD systems. With 4D Navigator, users can also browse on ENOVIA information. This complete integration between the logical representation (BOM configuration) and the 3D physical representation of products gives a better understanding of the status of product development.

Bernard Charlès, president of Dassault Systèmes, says: "Dassault Systèmes and IBM continue to invest highly in Version 4 with ongoing developments in response to customers' evolving needs. This continued portfolio evolution is the best guarantee for Version 4 longevity and our commitment to bringing the most advanced technology to the CAD/CAM/CAE market to enable continued productivity increases by our customers".

"The announcement of the new products and enhancements contained in Release 2.0 in domains which are critical for our customers proves once again how no other CAD product remotely approaches the capabilities of CATIA", adds Frank Lerchenmueller, vice-president of IBM's Worldwide Engineering Technology Solutions Unit.

"Any industrial or manufacturing customer that combines the rich functionality of Version 4 with IBM's services, hardware and e-business transformation capabilities is getting an unbeatable combination."

Beyond core manufacturing, analysis and digital mock-up application enhancements, Release 2.0 increases coverage of highly specialised applications expanding productivity on industry specific processes. In the composite area, a new dedicated product, Generative Composite Manufacturing, integrates the laser projection process support as well as preparation for the nesting. Other mechanical and shape applications such as Body-in-White Templates, Generative Aerospace Sheet Metal Design, Generative Shape Modeling, and Covering are enhanced with specific features to capture know-how and enhance user productivity.

Also, for all industries, including fabrication and assembly, which heavily rely on CATIA drawing production capabilities, this new release of CATIA Version 4 increases the productivity of drawing creation through 2D view sketching, and ease of use features for automatic drawing layout, automated view positioning and faster annotation.

For further information contact IBM. Tel: +44 (0) 1926 465787. Or contact Dassault Systèmes. Tel: +33 1 40 99 42 18; E-mail: martine_vesco@ds-fr.com