Paris, France-based Dassault Aviation SA’s Dassault Systemes SA unit has released Catia Solutions version 4 for IBM Corp’s RS/6000s – including its new PowerPC models. The computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering software enables users to perform various functions concurrently, such as designing three-dimensional engineering drawings, analysing a product and visualising it as a rendered image. All version 3 data is upgrad to and compatible with version 4. The product costs between $6,000 and $37,500 and will be marketed and supported worldwide by IBM. Meanwhile, according to IBM’s Russian marketing representative, Alexie Gurevich, Catia has been installed at more than 100 Russian enterprises – IBM started distributing the system there in 1992. The main sites are AvtoVAZ, Togliatti, and Gorkovskij Automobile Plant, Nizhnij Novgorod, the aviation enterprise Saratovskij Aviatsionnyj Zavod, in Saratov; and IBM business partner SEPT has also bought two Catia systems. Gurevich says a contract with another company for 14 Catia systems was signed last month and is due to be installed this month. It should be operational by the year-end.
