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It was made official on the first day of the Hannover Messe: Eplan and Dassaults Systèmes have entered into a technology partnership as part of the Eplan Partner Network, whereby both parties will be working on expanding the interface between Eplan and the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The goal is seamless integration of electrical engineering and fluid-power technology in the context of product development. Dassault Systèmes Managing Director Eurocentral Dominic Kurtaz and Eplan & Cideon CEO Sebastian Seitz signed the agreement in Hanover, Germany. The partners will beneficially be contributing their expertise in the interests of their shared clients, thereby enabling companies to set up end-to-end digital development processes.

Aiming for higher process efficiencies

Sebastian Seitz explains: “With the bidirectional interface between the Eplan Platform and the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we’re increasing the process efficiencies of our common clients. When all systems are bidirectionally connected – ECAD, ERP and PDM, for instance – users are workly in a truly interdisciplinary manner and thus much more efficiently.”

"With this partnership, we support our joint customers in achieving new dimensions of efficiency and productivity when it comes to holistic product development based on the creation and capitalization of virtual twins," adds Dominic Kurtaz, Managing Director EURCENTRAL, Dassault Systèmes. "The bidirectional interface simplifies numerous processes and creates new collaboration opportunities for our customers. We are therefore delighted to take this groundbreaking step together with Eplan."

The partnership will be expanded in the coming months. Both companies are working in tandem to further optimise the interface – the PLM 3DEXPERIENCE Connector – and provide new solutions for digital product development in the cloud environment. A joint demonstration environment is also planned as part of the Engineering Collaboration Network (www.ecn-online.com) with videos and sample data in the PLM cloud environment, as well as joint interaction on customer projects.

Bidirectional coupling of engineering and PLM

The interaction of Eplan and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows that the data management processes for electrical engineering and fluid-power engineering can be automatically controlled. What’s special about it is that access to the Dassault Systèmes cloud-based platform is available directly in Eplan Electric P8 and Eplan Fluid. For instance, components lists and bills of materials can be synchronised with just one click. For users of both platforms, automating routine processes makes everyday work even easier – common operations such as searching for, finding and creating projects, checking in or out of them, or exporting Eplan project pages into neutral formats are all carried out much more efficiently with the interface. Fast and easy document generation in particular will save users both time and effort, since all that is needed to output in neutral formats is a checkmark when checking in. The neutral formats are then automatically linked to the associated Eplan project.

Eplan and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform have bidirectional communication. Checking into projects from Eplan on the platform is automated, as is opening projects from the PLM system. Important descriptive PDM attributes, including information for the drawing header (as an example), can be added companywide in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and are automatically available during the next checkout of the Eplan project. Furthermore, the software supports traditional PDM functionality such as the approval or transfer of documentation to manufacturing.