Over the past year there has been a lot of communication around the new 3DEXPERIENCE platform made available in the R2014x release. Some ENOVIA customers may wonder how this impacts their past investments with Dassault Systèmes. While the R2014x release offers many new benefits to Dassault Systèmes’ customers and upgrading is very similar to past ENOVIA V6 upgrades. The reasons are:

1. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is an extension to the ENOVIA platform used in previous releases – in other words, both have the same technology foundation.
2. All V6 commercial licenses from past releases are migrated to R2014x at no charge and in many cases the new licenses have expanded functionality.
3. As with past releases, a customer can upgrade with the same functional scope or choose to expand their implementation’s scope with new processes for new user roles.

1. 3DEXPERIENCE Platform Technology

The same data model and business process rules that power the 3DEXPERIENCE platform also powered the ENOVIA platform. In fact, the same basic approach also powered the MatrixOne platform. This is why so many of ENOVIA’s current customers have been able to successfully upgrade since their first implementation in the mid to late 1990’s. This evolution of platform technology is best conveyed in the following figure:

The evolution of platform technology

While the “engine” of all 3 evolutions of the platform is very similar, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s spans a much broader scope of functionality. In addition to the formal control of product development processes, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform also provides social collaboration and data federation capabilities to either enterprise or public data sources. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform also delivers the latest IT technologies including cloud support and a modern user experience for desktop and mobile devices.

2. License Upgrades

All licenses from past V6 releases are upgraded to R2014x at zero charge as part of the standard V6 maintenance policy. In many cases these upgrades will provide more standard capabilities than customers previously received. For example, the license for Engineering Bill-of-Material Management now includes standard capabilities for managing an approved vendor list, which was previously licensed separately. Another example of the added standard value provided with R2014x is all licenses for managing CAD data now include standard library classification and reuse capabilities. Of course, the best way to learn of the added value of R2014s is to contact a 3DS Sales Executive to arrange a presentation of all the standard benefits in R2014x.

3. Expand and Transform an ENOVIA Implementation w/ R2014x

A customer may choose to upgrade to R2014x just to get the new functionality described in the previous sections. However, over the past few years, ENOVIA has added business processes for many roles beyond PLM’s traditional roots in Engineering and Design departments. Additionally, many of these roles and processes are now uniquely tailored to specific industry needs as delivered in the 3DS Industry Solution Experiences.   The R2014x upgrade is an excellent opportunity to also assess your company’s business goals and determine if there are new processes and user roles that need to be included in the ENOVIA implementation.

Summary

Hopefully, this quick introduction to upgrading to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform has answered many questions, and provides assurance that this upgrade will be similar to all past V6 upgrades. Remember:

1. The 3DEXPERIENCE represents an evolution of the technology rooted in ENOVIA V6 and the Matrix One platform
2. Your licenses will migrate to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform – often with additional functionality.
3. Take advantage of the new technology available in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to solve new business challenges.

We look forward to working with you to help you get the most out of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Be sure to contact one of our solutions experts at enovia.ux.ww@3ds.com for more information.  Additionally, please feel free to comment or ask you questions in the comment section below.

Matthew Hall is the ENOVIA User Advocacy & Social EXPERIENCE Specialist.You can find him on Twitter at @mjhall. Connect with ENOVIA at @3DSENOVIA