Catia V6 – Synchronous Technology on Steroids without the Hype

Ok, this’ll get tongues wagging. Now that I’ve learned a little, or think I’ve learned a little about Synchronous Technology, I learn that the only thing that’s really unprecedented about it is the amount of useless jaw movement it has caused.

Check out these Catia V6 youtube videos:

Huh. Well if that doesn’t look an awful lot like ST or SC, I don’t know what does. It seems to be called Catia Live Shape. I have exactly zero actual information about it other than what I can see in these videos, and the Martyn Day article I linked to in a previous post. The second video was posted in March, right before the Siemens media onslaught started. So who is it that is playing catch up? Neither product seems to be truly market ready yet, so it remains to be seen who delivers this first to paying customers.

But the geometry creation tools are only the tip of the V6 iceberg, and not even the tip that the Dassault marketing folks seem most interested in, either. Collaboration, PLM 2.0, Web techniques, virtual immersion, “experience” all seem to be more interesting to DS.

Here’s another one where Bernard Charles explains what PLM 2.0 is all about. I can’t really understand it, but that’s because Mr. Charles Franglish is further slurred by the low quality youtube audio. If anyone figures out what he’s saying, please leave a comment.

So, Catia seems to be more focussed on PLM 2.0, and really big picture stuff more than the small potatoes of making and changing geometry.

And finally, the above piece is I think the most powerful statement they make about V6. The virtual host, with her virtual hand and head gestures, right down to the virtual stretch of her blouse between her virtual breasts. This company believes in this virtual reality immersion in a way that wasn’t possible the first time the VR wave hit almost 10 years ago. The first wave led primarily to the proliferation of games. This wave may lead to the proliferation of industrial simulation.

Anyway, ST is not the only game in town. I think Siemens saw a window of opportunity, and it just happened that the window didn’t correspond to a time when they had a real product to sell. Siemens main hope was to strike first, even if it was just a virtual strike.