By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – Dassault Systèmes on Tuesday said that it has worked with Apple to integrate Apple’s Vision Pro into its 3D software, which is widely used in manufacturing, life sciences and urban planning.
France-based Dassault Systèmes has hundreds of thousands of customers who use its software to design cars, airplanes and factories, according to the company. It creates what are known as “digital twins” of real-world objects and places, recreating them with a high enough degree of accuracy that designers and engineers can make changes to the digital version and be confident that those changes will work in the real world.
Dassault Systèmes said that starting this summer, the company will release an app called “3DLive” that will allow engineers and designers to collaborate on a 3D model in real time and remotely.
Tom Acland, chief executive of the firm’s 3DEXCITE unit, said possible real-world uses could be helping find potential problems in accessing manufacturing machines for maintenance long before they are installed on a factory floor, after which rearranging them could be far more expensive.
“Those things tend to only get discovered very late in the process,” Acland told Reuters. “But if you could allow the maintenance engineer to walk into the line of equipment before it arrives, they can start to design those maintenance procedures before the equipment ever arrives.”
Dassault Systèmes’ app will require deep collaboration with Apple because it represents 3D models with the level of scientific accuracy required by tapping into the Vision Pro’s sensors and computing power, which comes from the same chips used in Apple’s Mac computers. Hashing out problems with, for example, aircraft designs requires more accuracy than other apps like video games.
“It’s not just a gimmick – it’s actually a very powerful tool for engineers and designers to make decisions,” Mike Rockwell, vice president of Apple’s vision products group, told Reuters. “You’re able to make these decisions earlier in the process, and that can save you huge amounts of money and time and rework.”
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Franciscon; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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