IBM and Dassault Systemes recently announced the availability of CATIA Version 5 Release 9 (V5R9), a three-dimensional product life cycle management (3D PLM) solution for product design, creation, simulation and optimisation. As part of the global 3D PLM offering, CATIA V5R9 represents a major milestone in the PLM space by delivering the set of business practices for product morphing.

CATIA V5R9 delivers a total of 129 products. This includes 87 products for design and manufacturing process definition in areas such as cast, forged, and moulded parts, and automotive body-in-white, as well as 11 new applications providing expanded process coverage for the consumer goods, industrial machinery, aerospace, industrial equipment systems, and shipbuilding sectors, enhanced relational design methodology and support of collaborative multiCAD product development processes, and new product, process, resource (PPR) technologies to strengthen CATIA-ENOVIA integration.

This latest release also provides enhanced capabilities for working with multiCAD data, thereby facilitating collaboration within a heterogeneous environment. Other improvements include standard interfaces, consistent parts catalogue management with TeamPDM 1, the new Healing Assistant 1 product, and V4 integration enhancements. PPR New PPR reconciliation technologies make a company's PLM environment more flexible by permitting file-based CATIA projects to be integrated with ENOVIA at any time. CATIA V5R9 supports virtual product data management by reinforcing the combined use of CATIA and ENOVIA through standardised parts catalogues and integration of concurrent digital mock-up (DMU).

For more information: Igal Filipovski, CDC (CNC Design Consultants) 011 786 3516, igal@cdza.co.za