Dassault Systèmes

Toulouse and Suresnes (France), 20 July 2000--Pursuant to this initial seven-year agreement, over 2500 seats will be deployed within Airbus to support the development of the A3XX. CATIA will be used for the product creation and simulation. ENOVIAVPM will be used to provide an integrated design through manufacturing solution and to establish the link with the PDM system used by Airbus. As far as digital factory software is concerned, Airbus is also considering the use of DELMIA software.

The use of IBM and Dassault Systemes software throughout the Airbus extended enterprise, will largely contribute to the complete integration of the digital aircraft development.

On June 23 Airbus started to offer the A3XX aircraft to airlines. The aircraft will be the largest aircraft ever built with 550 passengers. The first flight is scheduled in 2004. The A3XX will be designed and manufactured by the Airbus partners, in association with 10 risk sharing partners.

"The selection of the CATIA products to help design our aircraft shows our confidence into this system to support the A3XX development,"  says Alain GARCIA, Senior Vice President Engineering for the new AIRBUS Integrated Company. "CATIA will be a major tool in our virtual reality system, linking design and manufacture and maintenance of the aircraft, years before it actually exists."

"We are delighted to start this major partnership with Airbus and to contribute to the A3XX program," stated Etienne Droit, Executive Vice-President Sales and Marketing, Dassault Systemes. "This decision from Airbus demonstrates again the leadership of CATIA and ENOVIAVPM technologies in the support of collaborative work required within aircraft development processes. Our most advanced technologies, including CATIA Version 5 Knowledgeware, will contribute to perform the A3XX development within the time and cost objectives. "

"We are pleased that Airbus has also chosen our new Product Lifecycle Management e-business solutions area," stated Martin Jetter, General Manager IBM Product Lifecycle Management solutions. "We have a strong commitment to the aerospace industry worldwide, and the support of IBM Global Services as well as our major partners can assist Airbus in driving for innovation through engineering excellence in a highly competitive market."

Dassault Systèmes is the premier global software developer for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PDM II market, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product life cycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, ENOVIA and DENEB 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, DENEB provides solutions to define and simulate 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 life cycle Pipeline, supporting re-use of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and Smart Solutions, as Dassault Systèmes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and TeamPDM software solutions based on Windows. The Company's customer base comprises over 17,000 CATIA-CADAM and 15,000 SolidWorks customers and over 150,000 CATIA-CADAM and 48,000 SolidWorks seats. Information on Dassault Systèmes, including additional tables in Euros, is available on the Internet at:

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