Dassault Systèmes

Paris (France), 20 March 2001 – IBM and Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) announced today the launch of Version 5 Release 6 (V5R6) of CATIA, the world’s leading business process automation solution for product creation and product lifecycle management (PLM). Introduced only four months after V5R5, CATIA V5R6 is available worldwide on 23 March 2001 on both the Windows and UNIX platforms. CATIA V5R6 incorporates major improvements to existing products, and introduces 17 new products, bringing to 78 the total number of CATIA V5 products. <br/>

With its unique specification and knowledge-driven approach, CATIA V5R6 enables easy integration of multiple engineering disciplines through its expanded process coverage. In V5R6, users have integrated capabilities to address all product development processes, to improve product quality, reduce development time and costs, and increase competitiveness. <br/>

CATIA V5R6 provides companies of all sizes with a full range of product lifecycle management solutions to facilitate innovation and continuously increase design productivity across the collaborative digital enterprise. V5R6 delivers unique functionality in such domains as product synthesis and analysis, including assessing man-machine interaction in the design process, validating a design for manufacture, and defining and validating a manufacturing process. <br/>

CATIA V5R6 improves significantly every development step of the product, irrespective of the design methods involved, while simplifying knowledge-sharing between manufacturers and subcontractors working together in real time. Users can develop products while taking into account their specific design environments. CATIA V5R6, with its generative modeling and controlled associativity capabilities, streamlines the design modification process across the entire product development cycle. <br/>

CATIA’s new human modeling capabilities (integrating Safework technology) enable users to create a digital manikin for such ergonomic analysis as simulating the driver of a vehicle, evaluating his field of vision, predicting his comfort and checking accessibility to various controls. This next generation DMU technology promotes innovation in design and facilitates assessment of man-machine interaction for maximizing comfort and productivity, and for creating optimal conditions for manufacture and maintenance. <br/>

With CATIA V5R6, IBM and Dassault Systemes deliver the new Component Application Architecture (CAA), an open architecture which, when combined with extensive Application Programming Interface (API) libraries, allows users to integrate their own know-how into specialized CATIA applications. This robust and flexible tool set enables users and technology partners to expand the CATIA application portfolio by developing new extensions to existing applications and new applications within the CATIA V5 framework   In CAA V5R6, companies benefit from an unprecedented openness that they can leverage across their PLM systems to their competitive advantage. <br/>

"In CATIA V5 Release 6, Dassault Systemes delivers formidable capabilities to the market with such improvements as human modeling, 5-axis machining, and tolerance analysis of deformable models. The company's aggressive release schedule continues to broaden the appeal of the full CATIA V5 product suite across all industry segments," said Ken Versprille, Ph.d., research director, D.H. Brown Associates, Inc. <br/>

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM Sales & Distribution, which supports more than a dozen key industries worldwide, works with companies of all sizes around the world to deploy the full range of IBM technologies.

Information about IBM is available at - http://www.ibm.com

Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) is the premier global software developer of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product lifecycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, DELMIA and ENOVIA solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product lifecycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and Smart Solutions, as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and TeamPDM software solutions based on Windows.

Information about Dassault Systemes is available at - http://www.3ds.com

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