Hyundai Selects CATIA V5 Solutions

    SEOUL, South Korea--March 21, 2001--Hyundai Motor announced today that it has selected CATIA V5 Solutions for the definition of the high quality exterior vehicle body surfaces for its future passenger vehicles. These surfaces, which are required to be of highest possible standard, are commonly referred to as `Class-A' surfaces.
    This decision underscores CATIA's position with HMC as the core system for critical-path process body and trim engineering. HMC's Digital Design Team has adopted an enhanced process extending from the first styling model to the final generation of vehicle body surfaces. It also incorporates reverse engineering techniques to ensure synchronization between the physical clay model and the digital outer shape definitions.
    In today's competitive environment, the lead time from styling to design must be reduced continuously. Following various competitive evaluations, HMC selected CATIA V5 to optimize its Class-A design process. CATIA V5 Free Style products offer designers the flexibility to combine two methodologies for Class-A design: the surface based approach and the curve based approach.
    By standardizing on CATIA within the body engineering process, HMC eliminates the need to convert data, which is expensive and time consuming. An additional benefit is the enabling of early collaboration across all Engineering Departments, thereby ensuring concurrent interaction based on the sharing of one unique master model.
    "Our future is digital, hence our Class-A Department is simply called the `Digital Design Team.' We are excited to have IBM and Dassault Systemes sharing and supporting our vision," commented Young-Chan Bang, manager of HMC Digital Design Team.
    "The functionality within CATIA V5 Shape Design and Styling Solutions is the result of several strong partnerships which we have established with market leading customers. In joining this innovative community, HMC sets a new milestone for its core development process. Dassault Systemes shares HMC's vision of `digital design,' and is proud to support its deployment," said Etienne Droit, executive vice president sales and marketing of Dassault Systemes.
    "IBM Product Lifecycle Management in Korea has been supporting many of HMC's innovative initiatives for several years. Its strategic decision illustrates the relevance of our solutions in making HMC more competitive in the marketplace, and our passionate commitment to achieving their objectives," added Klaus Schaefer, director of worldwide digital enterprise sales for IBM Product Lifecycle Management.