BMW Will Use CATIA to Develop Its Engines

Dassault's CATIA will design BMW engines

All BMW's engine development efforts will rely on a single software platform, provided by Dassault Systemes, as the German manufacturer consolidated the use of the program in its research. BMW will use CATIA V5 computer aided design for gasoline, diesel and hybrid engines, according to Autonews.

"BMW can now streamline all its design and product development activities on a single platform that is easy to share with all its suppliers," Bruno Latchague, Dassault executive vice president said in a statement.

Using only one platform for designing the engines and not separate versions for each gasoline and diesel powerplant, as before, will allow BMW to better tie the supply chain with the manufacturing needs.

The integrated software will enable BMW to reuse product design knowledge and accelerate development cycles. CATIA V5 includes mechanical design, equipment and systems engineering, digital mock-up, machining, analysis, and simulation of the product's performance.

"This enables the sophisticated design of cylinder head parts, for example, which BMW has mastered on its diesel engines, to be transferred and reused in the gasoline engine domain." Nancy Lesinski, Dassault spokeswoman said.

The Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactove Application (CATIA) V5 software provides an integrated suite of Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) applications.

It is conceived to address the entire product development process, from design to manufacturing. The software can be customized through application programming interfaces, being already used by other car manufacturers, including BMW's rivals, Porsche and Daimler, both in engine development and body components design.