Wednesday, April 4, 2001
Anaheim, CA--In his opening address at COE-the CATIA,
ENOVIA and DELMIA users Spring Conference-Bernard Charles, president of Dassault
Systemes S.A (www.dsweb.com), formally
announced Dassault's acquisition of Los Angeles-based FEA vendor Structural
Research & Analysis Corp. (SRAC; www.cosmosm.com), in a stock transaction of
$22 million (US).
SRAC primarily offers analysis programs for users of many CAD
programs, to enable them to perform analysis early in the design process. For
example, its COSMOS/DesignStar program analyzes solid models from most CAD
programs and is available in fully associative form for SolidWorks (another
Dassault subsidiary), Solid Edge, and Autodesk Inventor.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Dassault, SRAC will continue to
operate under its current name, and will continue to offer multi-CAD analysis
solutions. Barbara Weingarten-Guerra, formerly vice president of sales and
business development, is the new CEO. "In addition to continuing to develop
products in the design area, we will also create a separate sales and support
organization for IBM customers," she says. "We will continue to sell design
analysis software through our international VAR network of more than 370 VARs."
SRAC will also continue to support COSMOS/M, its general-purpose
FEA program, although Victor Weingarten, the company's founder, does not expect
future major upgrades to be made. "COSMOS/M's capabilities will eventually be
incorporated into COSMOS/DesignStar, and the acquisition will help SRAC continue
to improve the technology," Weingarten says.
Dassault Systemes has sophisticated FEA capabilities integrated
within CATIA, and works in close partnership with LMS (which sells solutions
from the former CADSI) and looser partnerships with FEA vendors MSC.Software and
ANSYS . Dassault does not rule out the addition of further FEA capabilities in
the future, according to Stephane Declee, director of Dassault Systemes'
R&D, Strategy & Research division.
"We want to be the 3D company," Declee says, "and we want
to offer complete product definition and lifecycle management."
The acquisition is subject to Dassault Systemes stockholder
approval. The company expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings within
12 months.
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