Dassault Snaps Up Seemage

It appears a strategic partnership wasn’t good enough. On the heels of announcing of a relationship with 3D product documentation provider Seemage Inc., Dassault Systemes snapped up the firm for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition was positioned as helping Dassault provide additional solutions in the “diversified area of product documentation.” “This marks another major step towards our mission to democratize 3D product-related data and exploit 3D as a universal media,” said Bernard Charles, Dassault president and CEO in the press release announcing the deal. “We are extending the usefulness of 3D Product Lifecycle Management to new communities, including customer service, technical training, marketing and sales by offering a new class of desktop-based content authoring tools.

Now dubbed 3DVIA Seemage, the product line will be fully integrated with Dassault’s CAD and PLM solutions. Chris Williams, CEO of Seemage, will stay on as General Manager, 3DVIA Enterprise Solutions.

Seemage’s XML-based architecture integrates with other enterprise systems and allows users to exploit 3D data from CAD platforms, so content can be created for any desired output in formats, including Microsoft Office documents, PDF and HTML.

Dassault is following in the footsteps of rival PTC, which acquired documentation vendor Arbortext in 2005.