Dassault Systemes delivers state-of-the-art modeling methodologies to AIT Digital Mock-Up Consortium

The members of the technology project AIT DMU-MM (Advanced Information Technology/Digital Mock-up Modeling Methodologies) have evaluated advanced modeling methodologies in the Digital Mock-Up context, and validated them in the CATIA and ENOVIA environments.

Paris, France, Micad, February 12, 1999--The 3-year development project, due to finish first quarter 1999, was financed by the European Union as part of AIT. It brought together manufacturers from the aerospace (Alenia, Aerospatiale, BMW-Rolls Royce) and automotive sectors (Volkswagen, Rover), as well as academics (Technical University of Berlin, Coventry University) and CAD/CAM software providers.

The aim of the DMU-MM project was to foster a strong spirit of cooperation between all of these players in order to define a competitive solution tailored to meet industrial expectations. The manufacturers took the opportunity to set out their needs, right from the definition stage of new methodologies, while Dassault Systemes’ development managers took these various specifications on board in defining a complete and global modeling offer (design and process) within the digital mock-up.

"Working in the DMU-MM Consortium has allowed us to influence the strategic direction of the development work at Dassault Systemes’. The result has been to bring to market products that more fully satisfy our needs, and to make the tools available much earlier than would otherwise have been the case. Collaboration with other user companies, software vendors and academia has contributed to the education of all those involved, and created effective working partnerships that will facilitate closer working in the future" , comments John Todd, Manager, CAx Research, Rover Group.

The CATIA digital mock-up enables users to design, in context, all the geometric and technological components which make up the industrial product and to navigate within the resulting virtual product to check for collisions and interferences.

"With DMU-MM, we offer a method for mastering the geometric variations of assemblies. This method is supported by a number of tools, of which the most outstanding – a Dassault Systemes prototype – provides a realistic simulation of the assembly of parts, especially distorting parts. This experience convinces us that rapidly new generation products and tools will be available to improve performances and the quality of our products while reducing manufacturing costs", explains Michel Dureigne, Product Research Manager for the Aerospatiale Group.

"We are extremely satisfied of the working together achieved throughout this project between the Consortium members", says Pascal Lecland, R&D Strategy and Research, Dassault Systemes. "This project, as well as the other AIT projects Dassault Systemes is contributing to, reflects our permanent strategy to better understand our customers’ processes and the associated requirements in order to better serve and support them with our products."

The fields covered by the AIT DMU-MM project involved surface definition and management, multiple views and management of incomplete models, space management and reservation, relationships between components and locations, as well as modeling of wiring and piping system layout.

These innovations, partly demonstrated at Micad on the digital mock-up of an automotive engine, will be introduced in the CATIA Version 5 and ENOVIA product ranges.