"We look at it as a new industrial revolution," Dassault Falcon president and CEO John Rosanvallon says of the new Falcon 7X. Customers were treated last month to a tour of the assembly line in Biarritz, where the first aircraft was put together in just nine months once designs were finalized.
"The 7X is the first program in the world using these tools," Rosanvallon says of the "virtual plateau" environment used to design the new flagship aircraft—which with its new wing is to be the basis of a eventual new Falcon product line.
"The results are spectacular even to us," he told Show News.
Dassault touts PLM for the 7X— Product Lifecycle Management. PLM has halved the time it would otherwise have taken to assemble the new three-engine business jet.
"The Falcon 7X becomes the first aircraft in industry history to be entirely developed in a virtual environment, from design to manufacturing to maintenance," the company claims. The integrated PLM environment includes proprietary CATIA, ENOVIA, and DELMIA software, enabling Dassault and "27 partners in seven countries to work on a common, collaborative, 3-D virtual platform."
Each and every one of the new jet"s 30,000 parts was designed with CATIA, Dassault says. ENOVIA allows more than 1,000 engineers to collaborate in real-time on up-to-date designs, "including interface data for partner-designed sections.
"With DELMIA and its human modeling modules," Dassault continues, "specialists analyze and optimize the design of the Falcon 7X for crucially important aircraft maintenance and repair procedures."
The PLM technology is so accurate that "fittings, supports, and tubing developed virtually fit perfectly when 7X parts are assembled in the physical world . . . everything fits perfectly and complex rigs are not required anymore."
Dassault says PLM even eliminates the need for a prototype aircraft: "The first jet, scheduled for delivery in March 2005, will immediately be used for certification."
The virtual systems also allow Dassault to describe the new aircraft as "in production" when the roll-out remains months away.
