Mobi3 programme to use 3DVIA

3 June 2009

3DVIAShape and 3DVIA.com are to be used as 3D modeling tools for the French Mobi3 education programme during its second year.

The programme provides an innovative syllabus for middle school students and teachers, and involves hands-on team projects to discover the product design and development process of a mobile phone. Mobi3 is the result of a collaboration between IMS-Entreprendre pour la Cité, SFR, NOKIA, IBM, DLA Piper and Dassault Systèmes (DS), and the French Ministry of Education.

The Mobi3 programme highlights the role that each partner company plays in the mobile phone’s lifecycle, from design to sales and recycling. DS provides insight into 3D design, product lifecycle management (PLM) and how industrial processes are simulated – giving students a taste of what it is like to work as a 3D design engineer.

Student teams have started to create mobile phone designs and digital prototypes using DS’ 3DVIAShape and 3DVIA.com. 3DVIAShape is professional grade 3D publishing software that provides a free and easy way for the students to create their ideas in 3D and share them online. 3DVIA.com, a community and resource for 3D artists and enthusiasts, provides a place for the students to search, upload and share ideas. The students, as well as the teachers, are able to create and share 3D models of mobile phones, and of their schools, on a Mobi3 3DVIA.com group specially created for the project. The 3DVIA range is an important software partner to Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform.

At the end of the year-long programme in May, a selected team from each school will present their project to a jury of professionals from participating companies, who will then select the winning team. The winning team will visit the Nokia Design Lab in London.

“Dassault Systèmes being a world leader in PLM, provides a crucial perspective to this project. Its 3DVIA brand offers our students easy-to-use, collaborative tools that allow them to jump right into the product development process,” explained Stéphane Guérault, teacher at the Ariane middle school in the Paris region. “We’ve already seen how the 3D tools are empowering the students and anticipate a very exciting finish to this year-long competition.”