Galorath & Dassault Advance the State of Practice on Composites

Galorath Inc. (Los Angeles, Calif., USA) reported on Feb. 25 that it has reached an agreement with Dassault Systèmes to integrate Galorath’s SEER for Manufacturing cost-estimating software with Dassault’s CATIA product design software. Galorath says the inclusion of SEER’s Cost Estimator in CATIA will allow manufacturers to initially model and test composite manufacturing processes and tradeoffs during the earliest and most preliminary stages of design.

Galorath’s SEER software has been assisting large-scale project estimation and planning for 25 years. Galorath says a key feature of SEER is that it is based on parametric modeling and incorporates industry data and best practices. Using analysis and simulation, SEER helps companies estimate and control project costs, risks, quality and duration.

“We know that many of our SEER for Manufacturing users, particularly in aerospace, use both CATIA and SEER,” says Dan Galorath, CEO of Galorath Inc. “With the creation of SEER’s Cost Estimator in CATIA, designers will be able to get a detailed cost estimate of a composite design. As the design changes shape, size, or materials, new estimates can be quickly rerun to understand the cost impact of those changes. Not only does it reduce duplicate effort of re-entering data into cost models, users will know in advance what it will cost to produce that part.”

“Dassault Systemes 3D EXPERIENCE platform connects data and people. Offering Galorath’s unparalleled, cost-estimating capabilities within CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE Composites processes helps users effectively predict the cost of composite use in product manufacturing and is another demonstration of the power of the 3D EXPERIENCE platform,” says Philippe Laufer, CEO CATIA, Dassault Systemes. “Using Galorath’s SEER for Manufacturing within CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE processes will help companies perform early trade-off analysis on the use of various materials and composites processes before manufacturing even takes place. This leads to finding out the most efficient way of manufacturing a product while meeting cost, performance, functionality and appearance requirements,” added Laufer.

This interface is being delivered initially for CATIA V5 and will allow users to create and save multiple estimate scenarios for each part to compare and trade options. It includes fully customizable knowledge base templates and rules to create detail composite part cost estimates for labor, material and tooling costs.

This article originally appeared in Composite World.