Dassault Systèmes

In the 1970s Dassault Aviation began building its own 3D drafting tool to design fighter aircraft. In 1981 the department became a separate company and the tool was named CATIA. The breakthrough came when Boeing designed the entire 777 digitally in CATIA in the early 1990s, without a single full-scale physical mock-up — proof that the drawing board could finally retire.

The 1997 acquisition of SolidWorks gave the company a cheaper entry point for smaller workshops. Since the 2000s the pitch has been the whole product lifecycle (PLM) rather than just the drawing, now packaged as the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The main rivals are Siemens, PTC and Autodesk, and customers rarely switch: an airframe designed in CATIA stays in CATIA.