This past summer our CEO Bernard Charles and I had the pleasure of seeing our technology in action in New York City. Formerly known as The Beekman Tower, 8 Spruce Street was designed by the world-renowned architect Frank Gehry and is being developed by Forest City Ratner Corporation or FCRC (see the picture of us with the developer, Bruce Ratner). It is a 76 story skyscraper in lower Manhattan.

When 8 Spruce Street opens next year it will be the tallest residential structure in Manhattan, with sweeping 360 degree views of the city and the harbor. The project includes a public school on the lower floors plus offices and residential space above. The luxury apartments in this building will be some of the most exclusive in New York City.

A few weekends ago The New York Times ran an article on the front page of the Real Estate section entitle “New Gehry Tower Prepares for Renters”.

Gehry Technologies’ functional enhancements to CATIA have been used in its design and construction. The dramatic design of Frank Gehry could never had been realized without Dassault Systemes products.

Don’t take my word for it. Hear Frank Gehry talk about it for yourself  here.

The panels, each one unique, were built by Permasteelisa Group using SolidWorks. You can see in one picture that each panel is laid out in sequence to be put in place. Each is bar-coded to ensure its proper placement in the construction. CATIA was also used to place supports in place (see picture) during the construction. Each support must go from the external supporting structure through only windows and not interfere with the on-going structural construction.

At the end of our visit we stood inside a yet unfinished apartment on the 55th floor and talked with Bruce Ratner about our company and what we do. I demoed 3DVIA Mobile and placed a virtual table on the floor. The result is that FCRC is considering the possibly of using 3DVIA to help them market their apartments.

It made me very proud to experience this example of our products in action. This building will be well known by New Yorkers over time for its unique design and  amazing location in lower Manhattan, just a short walk from Wall Street. This was an exciting experience for me, and a living example of the difference that our products make!

If you’d like more details, here’s a good story on the engineering of the building. It includes references to CATIA and to Solidworks. Also discover Digital Project from CATIA.

What do you think?

Best,

Al

Al Bunshaft is managing director for Dassault Systèmes Americas.

Verney Yachts are well on their way to a robust and speedy 3D design of their yacht V39-Albatross, but what happens once it’s built? Well then is when the fun really gets going! With their innovative wing-sail and usage of composite materials, the V39-Albatross will glide along on a cushion of air above the water’s surface, and will be piloted like an airplane.

Why are they going to all this effort you may ask?

The main reason the Verney team is approaching the boat’s design and virtual testing  with the detailed professionalism of an F1 team is because they’re aiming to break a world record. They’ve publically set themselves the goal – on their website homepage it reads:

“Our Challenge: Set a new world outright sailing speed record at 60 to 65 knots (70 to 75 mph, 110 to 120 km/h)”

As always a world record doesn’t come easily. They have to sail the boat on two timed runs between 500m markers and take the average of the two runs’  speed as the record attempt. Also, as this is a sailing record, no power other  wind power may be used. Even the control systems on the boat must be manual.

None of these challenges have put the team off the record attempt, if anything it’s spurred them on! This dedication shows a real Passion for Innovation and I hope that my blog mini-series has given you an insight into the world of Verney Yachts. The work that Verney has done really projects their thoughts and imagination for everyone to see. Cheesy as it is it’s really helped me to understand the phrase “See What You Mean” that we use here at DS.

That’s all for now folks, I’ll keep you updated on the project as it progresses and you can follow them too: www.verneyyachts.com

Best,
Tom
@tombianchi

P.S. Part one and two if you missed them.

Hello Everyone!

One of the things that interest me most about Verney Yachts is the amount of business acumen and collaboration skills that you must have to be able to drive a project forward. It’s impossible to get a project like this down the slipway without collaborating with other people and organisations.

To that end, Verney Yachts are working with Capvidia, a partner of Dassault Systèmes and now Verney Yachts. Tim has used FlowVision CFD coupled with Abaqus to perform a Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation.

The FSI analysis simulates the above surface aerodynamics of the boat, and is critical to V39-Albatross’ success.  It establishes overall aerodynamic forces and moments acting on the boat with different control inputs. Multiple analyses are conducted all with different boat velocities. This process helps the Verney team tune the control system to minimise control cross coupling and to maximise forward thrust, whilst maintaining roll balance of the overall boat.

Also part of Dassault Systèmes’ Passion for Innovation programme, the Verney Yachts team is using SolidWorks for the structural 3D design and Abaqus for realistic virtual testing. These tools are critical to the on time, low cost design and build of the boat.

As Tim Clarke, lead engineer and founder of Verney Yachts mentions:

“One of the side effects of building a keel for such high speed sailing is that it becomes very sensitive to twisting under load. We’re using Abaqus to tune the carbon fibre composite keel to minimise twisting across the speed range.”

It’s this perfect example of working collaboratively with multiple partners that drives projects like V39-Albatross on to break world records!  Do you agree?

Tune in next week for more on Verney Yachts. I’ll be looking at the project goals and what breaking a world record for speed sailing actually involves!

Cheers,
Tom

@tombianchi