Wouldn’t you like to see how your new product – long before it has been produced – looks like in a real-life ambiance?

As an architect you’d be able to expose your fabulous apartment building in 3D to natural light conditions – thus demonstrating how the evening sun would illuminate the veranda and rays would beam through the windows of the living room. As a mobile device manufacturer, you could virtually look at your product at night and test the visibility of your backlit control panel. As a civil engineer you could test and optimize the ideal orientation of solar panels mounted on the roof of the supermarket which is now equipped with solar energy.

Optis, a software company with headquarters in the south of France, subsidiaries in Japan, the US and Germany, does exactly this! Optis has pioneered their methods for scientific light simulation and human vision since 1989 to help their customers optimize their design processes. Have a look at the video clip below to see how this works:

The benefits of this approach go beyond aesthetic optimization of product design. It has a very powerful “green” dimension with respect to minimizing energy consumption (remember physics class: light = energy). Here are some examples of how this can be used:

• Optimizing energy efficiency of lighting systems
• Optimizing material usage in products while even improving light performance
• Facilitating the design of most efficient solar sensors

Last week Optis was invited with Dassault Systèmes to join the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2009 where the world leaders of “green thinking” met and discussed ideas and concepts to answer the ecological challenges that the world faces. Virtual design in 3D with enabled light simulation may be just one contribution to succeed towards reaching the goal of sustainable and environmental conscious development of products, material usage and energy consumption.

Dassault Systèmes has a long standing relationship with Optis, who joined our Software Community Partner program in 2002. This partner program hosts over 165 leading companies to develop their applications integrated with Dassault Systèmes portfolio across our brands CATIA, SIMULIA, ENOVIA, DELMIA and 3DVIA. In addition Optis is also a partner in the SolidWorks community.

Our partners offer around 500 software solutions “on top” of DS’ offering in specialized industry applications. Our joint customers can tap into this vast source to find the right solution to solve their industry challenges in design, simulation, and manufacturing or for experiencing their product in a virtual world.

Hey, it’s nice to be part of this blog team and to have the opportunity to chat about what our solution partners bring to the party.

@++
Michael

P.S. Sometimes I think that our Software Partner program is one of the best kept secrets at DS … and it’s my mission to change that ! Many more examples of interesting solutions can be cited. Please let me know what types of application domains interests you the most and I’ll try to blog about them.