National Steel Car Selects DELMIA IGRIP 3D Robotic Solution

Software to be used for off-line robotic programming for high-pressure steel-blasting process .

Auburn Hills, Mich., July 20, 2004 – Digital manufacturing supplier Delmia Corp., a Dassault Systèmes company (NASDAQ: DASTY; Euronext Paris: No. 13065, DSY.PA), announced today that National Steel Car Ltd., of Hamilton, Ontario, has selected its IGRIP 3D Robotic Programming Solution for offline robotic programming and simulation of their blast-cleaning robots. National Steel Car will use IGRIP 3D to eliminate tool collisions in a high-pressure abrasive blasting process that cleans freight cars for painting.

DELMIA IGRIP was recommended to National Steel Car by the manufacturer of their robot system. who has worked on previous robot programming projects with Delmia Corp.’s strategic business partner, Delfoi. To implement the solution, Delfoi will create a special abrasive blasting application on top of IGRIP, which helps the customer to quickly and easily create new blast-cleaning programs for their robots.

“Manual programming of robots inevitably leads to large amounts of non-productive robot time,” said Steve Kuzler, electrical engineer at National Steel Car. “The ability to program offline and simulate a robot path prior to production will save us an enormous amount of time and eliminate the potential for collisions between robots, parts, tools and fixtures. In addition, the paint option allows us to develop and simulate the right blast pattern for different applications, improving system cycle time.”