Beyond BIM with Dassault Systèmes The developer of Catia, a design tool in aerospace and automotive, has long held aspirations for the AEC sector. The move to offsite digital construction presents its best market opportunity, with Lendlease, Vinci and Bouygues now customers
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f you have ridden in a car or flown in stagnated and the original aims of mov- road is not that different, and the increasa plane, the chances are it was ing to a model-centric process are still ing use of digital fabrication in AEC designed in Catia, the flagship CAD stuck in the ancient constraint of draw- means products like Catia and SolidWorks system of French software firm ings-based contracts and deliverables. are being used with the industry. Dassault Systèmes (DS). Many of the conThe vast majority of architects are still Vinci and Lendlease have been worksumer goods you also buy are designed in modelling with the sole purpose of creat- ing with DS for a few years to create another market dominating CAD brand of ing drawings. The future of the industry is expert systems to create highly detailed, DS, Solidworks. to model to fabricate and save an incredi- construction-ready models and codify DS is an undisputed giant in engineer- ble amount of wasted time and effort in their internal processes. The latest firm ing and manufacturing, but when it generating resource hogging 2D drawings. to join the group is Bouygues comes to buildings and infrastructure, its BIM is also responsible for negatively Construction which has just signed a tools have really only been used in niche impacting design time, as buildings do new three-year deal to accelerate the projects, probably most famously cham- not require the level of detail or certainty research and development of new cloudpioned by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). that the ‘Lego-based’ systems of BIM based, mobile enabled approaches to In these processes, Catia was selected impose. Here Rhino is king and it’s all building construction ‘virtual twins’. because of its ability to model at 1:1 scale, about the geometry. It’s worth mentioning at this point that connect geometry to downstream fabricaThe bad news for architects is that the Digital Twins, which is currently all the tion, and provide a common tool that malaise of development in their toolsets rage in our industry, is woefully behind allows architect and manufacturer to talk comes with the fact that these products, the use of Digital Twins in manufacturing. the same language. In short, DS is developing a DS has long been watching tailored construction system the emergence of BIM. It was DS is fortunate that the AEC market is falling for Bouygues to increase its actually one of the investors ensure compliinto its way of thinking - the workflows it has productivity, in Revit before it was sold to ance of designs and produce perfected in the engineering space are Autodesk. At the time, 2002, predictable output. By using it was one of the reasons DS’ cloud-based design prodbecoming increasingly relevant Autodesk paid so much for ucts, the aim is to connect Revit ($133 million), which developers, architects, subhad no user-base, as it didn’t want DS to such as Revit, are mature and from a contractors, suppliers and operating comown a potential threat in the AEC space - sales perspective are highly penetrated panies within the same ecosystem, which having already lost out to acquiring and quite saturated. The software indus- DS terms its ‘3D Experience Platform’. Solidworks, which DS bought in 1997 and try is now looking for new gold seams to While construction is a horribly federatthen went on to dominate the mid-range mine, where they can add value and gen- ed process, Bouygues aims to use a single mechanical CAD (MCAD) market. erate additional revenue. environment to streamline the flow of In the mid 2000s, DS CEO Bernard Construction is where the action is at, data within projects. Charlès certainly had aspirations to com- whether that be connecting up supply This is the typical DS ‘playbook’ in pete in the volume modelling market chains, managing data or having models aerospace and automotive, to get all the within AEC but little transpired from this which are more aligned to fabrication players to work in the same system. This initiative. In the last five years, DS’s inter- than showing design intent. It’s here that is far easier to pull off in something like est and activity in the space has slowly DS appears to be focusing, because it has aerospace where the owner is Boeing and and steadily increased, although it has a manufacturing-ready ecosystem of can drive this level of software consistenfailed to gain any significant penetration products that could be shaped to better fit cy through its suppliers. In the AEC into the volume market with the portfolio the needs of large construction firms. space, finding a significant owner that of Catia-based tools it has developed. Aeroplanes, ships and cars are just large can drive that through disparate supply It’s pretty clear to anyone in architec- assemblies of geometry and manufactur- chains is frequently less straightforward. ture that the development of BIM has ing information. A building, a bridge or a As the industry moves to more design-
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