ASME Y14.41-2003 Standard Reinforces Dassault Systèmes’ Drive to Establish 3D as PLM Work Environment for Extended Enterprise

Norms strengthen existing capabilities in CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA that facilitate collaboration, enhance quality, and cut costs

Paris, France – March 8, 2004 – Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY, Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced that its integrated suite of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions natively supports the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standard Y14.41-2003. The standard establishes the requirements and guidelines for documenting product definition in 3D by mainly reusing annotation symbols (tolerances, dimensions and notes) previously only available in 2D drawings. It facilitates collaboration between original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and their suppliers.

As a pioneer in 3D annotation development, Dassault Systèmes began introducing annotation capabilities in CATIA in 1995, and has been actively involved in the development of the ASME Y14.41 standard since 1997. Beyond simply supporting the standard, CATIA, Dassault Systèmes’ PLM solution for collaborative product development, includes next-generation annotation capabilities that ensure semantic associativity between design geometry and 3D annotations. This means that not only does CATIA guide users with pop up annotations, it also helps them to correctly define standardized dimensions and tolerances with a specialized “assistant” tool, as well as warns them when, due to geometry or tolerance changes, the annotations are no longer valid.

Dassault Systèmes PLM solutions natively manage 3D annotations throughout the overall product life cycle. In addition to annotation creation and management functions, CATIA also includes tolerance analysis capabilities for assemblies. ENOVIA, Dassault Systèmes’ solution for product data and lifecycle management, includes 3D annotation review capabilities. DELMIA, for digital manufacturing includes tolerance analysis capabilities, as well as functions for determining optimal manufacturing processes and the programming of inspection machines.

"3-D tolerancing and annotation are the capabilities required for product design to move fully into the 3-D world, eliminating the ambiguity and inconsistency inherent in drawings as well as the cost of drawing creation," said Leland Wehland, Enterprise-Wide CATIA Support, Boeing. "Dassault Systèmes introduced 3D tolerancing and annotation products years ago to help solve this problem. The creation of the ASME standards solidifies the benefits by providing a common way of capturing all the needed information in a 3-D model."

“Dassault Systèmes 3D annotation capabilities increase product definition quality by enforcing consistency,” said Jacques Leveillé Nizerolle, vice president CATIA Research and Development, Dassault Systèmes. “Consistency reduces the chance of error that occurs when both 3D designs and 2D drawings are used to define the product. The annotation capabilities also guarantee contractual validity of the product definition since they are based on ASME standards. And finally, they extend across our entire PLM portfolio, including CAA V5 partner solutions, meaning companies can take advantage of these benefits as they develop their products from conception to manufacturing to maintenance.”

The ASME announced the standard in August, 2003. An active contributor to the development of Y14.41, Dassault Systèmes is now participating in the definition of a similar international annotation (ISO) standard for 3D.