Mentor Graphics and Dassault Systemes Form Strategic Alliance to Accelerate the Product Development Cycle of Complex Electro-Mechanical Systems.

Business & Technology Editors

PARIS & WILSONVILLE, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 2000

Dassault Systemes (NASDAQ: DASTY) and Mentor Graphics today announced a strategic alliance to develop an integrated V5 Electronic/Mechanical Design Solution (EMDA) that will accelerate the end-to-end development cycle of complex electro-mechanical systems. As leaders in electronic systems design, mechanical design and manufacturing automation, Mentor Graphics and Dassault Systemes will combine their strengths to extend the benefits of collaborative design and B2B design practices across the entire product development cycle and between multiple design disciplines. With this approach, manufacturers of complex electro-mechanical products within the consumer electronics, telecommunications, and transportation markets, will be able to simulate a true virtual prototype of their product design and streamline the entire product development process.

Said Dominique Florack, Executive Vice-President, Research & Development, Dassault Systemes, "Our objective, through this alliance with Mentor Graphics, is to help the electromechanical market to drastically enhance its collaborative design-to-order and build-to-order capabilities, through continuous deliveries of integrated EMDA solutions as part of V5 PLM initiative."

"It's come to the point where it's no longer efficient to design the electrical and mechanical portions of a product independently", said Henry Potts, Vice-President & General Manager, Mentor Graphics, "When 40% of an automobile's content is contributed by the car's electronics, or when the mechanical design of a consumer electronics product can make or break a product's market success- it is clear that we are now playing by new rules. The challenge is how to help our customers design, build and deploy complex electro-mechanical systems faster, cheaper, better. With Dassault Systemes, the world leading mechanical company as our partner, we're in a unique position to do just that."

Given the increasing complexity of electro-mechanical systems, customers are now requiring a fully integrated electro-mechanical design solution that minimizes needless redundancy; catches design errors early in the process, and manages the volumes of design data that are created. Also needed is a solution that delivers improved tool integration and interoperability, supports real-time collaboration between multiple disciplines, and enables close partnering and efficient communications between suppliers and the extended enterprise. The ability to create a true digital mock-up of their product design is also paramount.

"We are facing the following challenge today: space that has to be allocated for the electronics and electrical components is increasingly effecting the development of the car's body and structure. The diversity of variants and options offered for our various car types, combined with the short design cycles of electronics, raises the complexity to manage development data to a level we had not experienced up to now." described Dr.-Ing. Thomas Raith, Director Electric/Electronic System Integration Development Mercedes-Benz Passenger Car. "We expect to see a significant improvement for the communications between our engineers and those of our suppliers just by sharing consistent data during the early design phases. The integration of CAE and CAD in one consistent EMDA environment, superimposed by a consistent management of all data is a major milestone toward a digital mock-up (DMU)" continued Thomas Raith.

"This alliance will support our plan to implement a common integrated tool suite for electrical design across the entire Boeing enterprise," said Tim Fehr, Vice President, Phantom Works at the Boeing company. "The goal of this common tool is to dramatically reduce our costs, flowtime and rework."

The alliance between Mentor Graphics and Dassault Systemes stems from a long and successful relationship between the companies to provide customers with an integrated Cabling Design and Analysis solution. The result of their work resulted in a market leading solution that is currently in use by the world's leading Automotive and Aerospace companies.

The new strategic alliance will expand beyond cabling to integrate the complete electro-mechanical design process, including PCB, Simulation and Sub-system design. The strategic alliance will focus initially on improved tool interoperability, integrated team and concurrent design capabilities as well as integrated data management across multiple design disciplines. Mentor Graphics will integrate its PCB products, new Cabling Design and Analysis tools, the newly acquired Descon Design Data Management System, and System-Level Simulators with Dassault Systemes' V5 products (CATIA, DELMIA and ENOVIA). The goal is to provide significant optimization of the product design process and a major improvement in efficiency.

To support access to multi-discipline design data across the extended enterprise, the two companies will also work to integrate Mentor Graphics ViewWare product into the ENOVIA Portal. This effort will facilitate future work to extend data linkages from the electrical and mechanical design environments to enterprise manufacturing and supply chain management systems.

Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products and consulting services for the world' largest electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of more than $500 million and employs approximately 2,600 people worldwide. Company headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777.

Dassault Systemes S.A. is the premier global software developer for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM market, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product life cycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product life cycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and SmartSolutions, as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and TeamPDM software solutions based on Windows.

Information about Mentor Graphics Corporation is available at http://www.mentor.com Information about Dassault Systemes is available at http://www.dsweb.com

All company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.