Matsushita Electric Works Brings CyberDome to Life with Dassault Systèmes Solutions

Tokyo, Paris – March 14, 2007 – Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, today announced that Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd. (MEW), a company providing city planning services in Asia-Pacific, enhanced its decision-making product, “VR System for Environmental Product Support”, with DS’s Virtools, a development and deployment platform for interactive 3D content. With this, MEW creates interactive, personalized city planning scenarios very rapidly, literally enabling communities to get a real-life perspective on planning projects and make the right project decisions from the start.   

Before deploying DS’s Virtools, it took us a tremendous amount of man-hours to produce the complex 3D content our customers require, like determining what impact potential changes will have on a neighborhood, such as adding new buildings, shopping centers, responding to current and future environmental needs.  We project these scenarios at our full-scaled display facility “CyberDome”, where viewers wear 3D glasses to perceive the complete effects and participate in real-time,” says Ryuichiro Nagahama, general manager, Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.  With Virtools, MEW has drastically reduced this scenario creation time, saving their clients money by moving their project timelines along at a faster pace. 

“MEW services the full-range of stakeholders involved in the city planning process:  developers, architects, designers, urban planners and even residents.  By collectively walking these stakeholders through plans in a realistic virtual environment, the group can make pertinent suggestions on how to improve all aspects of the project being reviewed, and to preserve the environment for the future.  This comes from a perspective that before was only possible when it was too late or costly to make changes.  All this thanks to the power of interactive real-time 3D,” explains Nikos Calfacacos, general manager, PLM Japan, Dassault Systèmes.  

Thanks to its intuitive user interface and building blocks, Virtools is easy to use for laypeople as well as developers. The Virtools rendering engine enables companies to manage huge amounts of content data. In addition to being a key solution for DS’s architecture and construction solutions, the Virtools product line is strategic for DS’s “3D For All” mission, whereby the general public’s daily lives will benefit from realistic 3D interactive experiences.