This blog is intended to provide my observations from the COE conference held April 21 – 24, 2013 in Orlando FL. There were no major announcements made by Dassault or COE. It appears Dassault saves those for the 3D Experience Forum they hold in November. Despite the absence of breakthrough developments, there were some items of interest:

The Size of Dassault

Bruno Latchague, Executive Vice President, Global Sales and Operation, Dassault Systemes presented an overview of Dassault. In the overview he stated the following:

· Dassault has over 11,000 employees with 4,000 of them in R&D
· Dassault is investing the most in R&D versus its competitors
· Dassault has over 170,000 customers and 3,500 partners
· Last year is had $2.6 billion in revenue with a 31.6% operating margin
In closing Bruno mentioned that he would be relocating to the United States in order to be closer to the North American customer base.

The 3DS Compass Explained

As you may have noticed, Dassault has a new logo or what they call ‘Compass’ to describe how they see users will interact with and experience 3D data and how their brands are tied together

The Compass is broken into North, South, East and West quadrants. Each quadrant has the following meaning:

North – Social and Collaborative Apps which allow for internal and external connected communities. Powered by ENOVIA and 3DSYM
South – Content and Simulation apps such as conducting simulations and providing virtual augmentation. Powered by 3DVIA, DELMIA and SIMULIA
East – Information Intelligence apps allowing for creation of Dashboards, data mining, integrating internal and external input. Powered by EXALEAD and NETVIBES
West – 3D Modeling Apps. Powered by CATIA, GEOVIA and SOLIDWORKS

Dassault stated that they are planning on providing mobile (iPhone, iPad, Android) apps based on the 3DS compass. The initial 3D compass app should be available sometime next year. As they did not go into detail of exactly what functionality the app will provide or what platforms will be supported by it, I am guessing it will be a way to get access (search and view) to both meta and 3d data managed by Dassault products.

COE Discovery Panel

COE mentioned that it will be creating a virtual product design community to virtually create a product. This is purely experimental and initiated by Dassault. COE has gotten volunteers from the COE community. For each volunteer, they have assigned project roles such as Project Manager, Design Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer and Technical Publications. The goal of these members is to virtually design a ‘Nautical Wind Turbine’ making using of the Dassault V6 and V5 products of Enovia and Catia. With Enovia V6 allowing for such virtual development the experiment is to demonstrate how a virtual design team can design a new project. The underlying software will be based on Catia V5 and V6 and Enovia V6. The COE board plans to provide updates on the progress and experiences from the project.

Conclusion

In conclusion, though I was a little disappointed that Dassault had no major announcements, I did enjoy some very interesting presentations on V6 adoption at companies such as Parker Hannifin and Cessna. And as always it was a great opportunity to see old colleagues and network with customers, prospects and partners. I am looking forward to the conference next year in southern California (though no specific location has been selected).

Updates from COE

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