Strong third quarter for Dassault, but CATIA sales are lagging
Dassault Systemès CEO and President, Bernard Charlès has every reason to be happy about the company’s third quarter, but the relatively slower growth of the company’s largest product, CATIA, might make him lose some sleep.
PLM vendor Dassault Systemès reports a strong Q3, with a constant currencies (CC) revenue growth of 11 percent.
Revenues were EUR 675.7 million and the profit margin was 22 percent. Of that total, EUR 593.5 million were from software sales, while the remaining EUR 82.2 million were revenues related to services.
Looking at the different software brands, sales of the company’s flagship CAD software CATIA increased by a modest 3 percent, while the PLM/PDM solution ENOVIA went up by 8 percent for "the parts belonging to clients who are working on 3DEXPERIENCE (3DX) platform.".
This begs the question how revenue from customers who do not work with 3DX and are still on ENOVIA V5 (the majority) might look. This was not something that was disclosed in the report.
Other software revenue increased by 18 percent, including DELMIA and BIOVIA as the strongest sectors.
The CAE suite SIMULIA also pulled into good revenue growth, as did Quintic. As usual SolidWorks did well with a revenue growth of 9 percent
Verdi Ogewell will publish a deeper analysis of the PLM vendor reports during next week.
SAP talks future boardrooms at TechEd
ERP giant SAP has started work on concrete solutions for the digital “real-time” room to come.
During the SAP TechEd conference in Las Vegas, the company presented something called SAP Digital Boardroom, a solution that enables a business to get real-time reports of how the business is going.
The solution is already in use internally at SAP. It will provide boards, managers and other decision-makers a better perspective from which to make business decisions based on real data.
“Using SAP Digital Boardroom management can obtain real-time information about operations in all parts of the company. More and more businesses are now being adapted to the digital economy and need data-based tools that allow you to make the right business decisions,” says Magnus Khysing, responsible for business intelligence at SAP Nordics and Baltics.
It should be mentioned that this is not the first time SAP has talked about the boardroom of the future.
If you’re interested in learning more about it, don’t miss the article we wrote a while back which also includes a video report featuring interviews with Marc Bechet, Unilever, analyst Jason Anderson, IDC, SAP André Borchert and SAP’s Swedish country manager, Anders Schyllert.
Aras strikes PLM deal with Triangle Package Machinery
PLM developer Aras reports that it has struck a deal with Triangle Package Machinery Co., a global manufacturer of vertical form fill and seal bagging machines, in-line scales, and cartoner machines.
According to a press release, the manufacturer has selected the Aras PLM platform to streamline global product development, sales and aftermarket support.
The project includes integrating the PLM solution Aras Innovator with NX CAD and Microsoft Dynamics ERP, to get a unified view of product information across all departments within the enterprise.
Aras partner Razorleaf will be responsible for the implementation of the system, which will include support for manufacturing and supply chain collaboration via automated workflows, parts viewing and mark-up.
Additionally, specific Aras solutions will be implemented in support of product development, manufacturing, sales and support of in-market products, including things like Automated Revision Control for CAD, Sales Engineering Information Management, “Living BOM” Management and Engineering Change Management.
PLM is an important issue for the almost 100-year old manufacturer in order to manage the development, manufacture and customer support for products that incorporate over 300,000 components and 800,000 sales, engineering and manufacturing artifacts.
“Triangle Package Machinery has driven innovation in the bagging and packaging industry for nearly 100 years,” said Peter Schroer, CEO of Aras. “We’re excited to help them reinvent the entire product development and support cycle using Aras as the PLM backbone and product information source.”
50,000 part assemblies on a phone? It’s possible, claims KISTERS.
You would be hard pressed to find someone claiming that a mobile phone is an optimal platform for engineering work, but when it comes to viewing CAD models on the go, the platform’s usefulness spikes.
KISTERS, a company that specializes in this kind of technology, has released a WebGL version of their 3DViewStation solution, which means that the application can be run in the browser of any WebGL-enabled device.
According to KISTERS, mobile users will have the same performance, the same APIs and the same functionality as Desktop users. It also means that the WebViewer user can do things like section complex models, perform measurements, dimensioning, transformations and even draft angle analysis.
They also claim that the solution supports the viewing of 50,000+ parts assemblies on a smartphone in seconds using a mobile data connection.
Unlike a lot of viewing software on the market, this one is not free, but they do offer a free trial. Just be careful with that data bill.
VI-grade opens registration for Virtual Formula
Yesterday CAE developer VI-grade announced that registration for the 2016 edition of the Virtual Formula competition is now open.
Virtual Formula is built upon the rules and regulations of the popular Formula SAE and Formula Student competitions.
The twist is that the teams will be using VI-Motorsport, VI-grade’s interactive simulation environment for motorsport vehicle modeling and dynamic analysis, as well as Adams/Car, a multibody vehicle dynamics simulation solution from MSC Software, which is in use at nearly every automotive company in the world.
The participating teams will be challenged to optimize the performance of a virtual race car, minimizing the lap time on a given autocross track.
The competition winner will be the team that drives the vehicle with the shortest lap-time on the given circuit.
Extra points will be assigned to teams that demonstrate their ability to minimize fuel consumption, perform additional dynamic maneuvers and dimension the vehicle suspension according to the calculated loads.
The team results will be evaluated by a technical committee formed by vehicle dynamicists from VI-grade and MSC Software. All registered teams will be granted access to the simulation software to find the best set-up for their car.
For those who are interested in participating, the deadline for registration is November 15th, 2015.
Onshape gets simulation in the cloud
CAD-developer Onshape, the brainchild of SolidWorks founder Jon Hirschtick, has recently established a partnership with Swedish developer of simulation and CAE software, Algoryx.
As you may be aware, Onshape is an effort to establish 3D CAD as a pure cloud solution. The partnership with Algoryx is based on developing simulation in the cloud based on AgX Dynamics.
The basic idea behind Onshape is to deliver a 3D CAD solution that runs directly in the web browser and on any type of device anytime, from mobiles to tablets and desktops.
The system is based on the use of cloud created documents and so does not operate as desktop users are accustomed to regarding file usage.
Parts are created in Onshape’s Part Studio and a user can use as many as they need in a document. The parts can later be linked into assembly models in the same document environment.
The solution is built on real-time functionality so that things that need to be changed can be changed while collaborating with others.
Data management, ie: things traditionally handled within the PDM program, are managed through a built-in version control.
AgX Dynamics is a multi-purpose physics simulation engine for CAE, real-time simulators and cloud based simulation.
It is built upon a foundation of original scientific research, including discrete variational and physics-based time integration methods for constrained non-smooth systems, parallel high performance hybrid solvers and novel multi-physics models.
When integrated with 3D CAD, the company claims that it takes engineering simulation to a whole new level of interactivity, usability and creativity.
Features and benefits they tout include:
- Multibody dynamics for complex jointed systems with dry frictional contacts and automatic on-the-fly contact detection.
- Multiphysics capability for cables, wires, elastic beams, granulates, hydraulics, hydrodynamics, powerlines, tires and terrain.
- Interactive performance with high accuracy even for large systems, and scales to millions of degrees of freedom.
- Easily resolves extreme mass ratios, kinematic loops and ill conditioned systems.
- Simulate everything from machine mechanisms to complex robots, vehicles, ships, cranes and much more.
About the Author
Felix Nilsson is PLM editor at VerkstadsForum, who works with both printed and online media. He also works as a reporter for PLM TV News.