ImpactXoft Provides a Functional Edge to CATIA V5
By Stefano Malnati, Vice President, Product Management & Business Development, ImpactXoft

In September of 2002, ImpactXoft and Dassault Systemes announced a strategic partnership that promised to deliver advanced collaborative design and functional modeling solutions for 3D Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The alliance signified our commitment to help our partner make its CATIA V5 solution a groundbreaker in productivity by leveraging ImpactXoft’s awarding-winning IX SPeeD™ technology within their 3D PLM portfolio. To succeed in this goal, we immediately began building the ImpactXoft functional modeling technology into the V5 architecture.

ImpactXoft is now thrilled that the first phase of this technology integration has come to fruition with R12 of CATIA V5. The add-on module, called Functional Molded Part Design, is based on ImpactXoft’s functional modeling technology and represents a new standard in the design of molded parts. Besides offering an impressive toolset for building quality products, this new module also introduces users to several benefits they can expect as the result of a functional approach to design. CATIA users can now focus more on the design itself (and less on the requirements of the design tool) by applying a number of features with self-contained behaviors. The fact that these features can be applied at any stage in a design’s lifecycle, in any order, means that users can easily deal with changes without compromising the integrity of the design. Overall, they will see that their functional designs are easier to understand, which is an essential requirement when working with cross-functional teams in a low-margin market.

While R12 of CATIA V5 will provide companies a tremendous opportunity to improve their productivity and capture more intelligence in their designs, ImpactXoft is even more excited about the ongoing development of their technology within the product. Future development plans for upcoming releases include more functional modeling tools as well as support for the unique collaborative design capabilities for which ImpactXoft has become known. The final objective is to reinforce CATIA V5 as an all-in one development environment that enables the sharing and merging of intelligent design changes by team members working in parallel from around the world.

As our technology becomes further embedded in CATIA V5, ImpactXoft looks forward to nurturing our partnership with Dassault Systemes and continuing to be part of the team that provides their world-class customers with a world-class 3D PLM solution.