SolidWorks Corp, a privately owned specialist in three dimensional engineering design applications, has been gobbled up by French CAD/CAM specialist Dassault Systemes SA in a paper based acquisition worth around $310m to SolidWorks’ shareholders. Dassault will issue 4.85 million shares of its common stock in exchange for 100% of the Concord, Massachusetts-based firm, who have an estimated annualized turnover of $25m. Dassault, whose products are marketed world-wide by IBM, is a big player in the high end, Unix-based computer aided design and manufacturing world. It recently announced a record multi-million dollar deal with the Boeing Company for an 8,000 seat five-year license to operate Dassault’s Catia CAD/CAM software. This latest acquisition ties in with rumors of a Windows NT-based version of Catia to be launched early next year (CI 3,179). SolidWorks has designed all its software to run on Windows-based operating systems for the smaller user, hence Dassault is aiming to build a product range which covers all levels of complexity in the CAD/CAM market.
DASSAULT LOOKS FOR MOVE TO NT WITH $310M SOLIDWORKS BUY
