Dassault Systèmes’ On-Demand Manufacturing Service, 3DEXPERIENCE Make

Dassault Systèmes, leader in 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, has recently introduced its On-Demand Manufacturing service called 3DEXPERIENCE Make. This service, part of the company’s 3DEXPERIENCE Platform seeks to be a complete solution for companies that wish to adopt or integrate 3D printing into their activities. Usually, such companies would turn to 3D printing service providers to carry out their projects. Instead of creating yet another 3D printing service, 3DEXPERIENCE Make is a complete intermediation ecosystem that can connect a user to a 3D printing service by comparing the various providers’ offers. In order to learn more about the ecosystem and the benefits it seeks to bring to the additive manufacturing industry, we spoke to Guillaume Drapier, Product Manager at Dassault Systèmes.

3DN: Could you introduce yourself and tell us about your relationship with 3D printing technologies?

I was educated mostly in England at the Royal College of Art, where I received a master’s degree in industrial design engineering, and at Imperial College London, where I received a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and an MBA in innovation management. My first acquaintance with additive manufacturing was during my graduation project: High iteration rhythm was a key element during the curriculum, thus making mockup products by hand was simply not feasible, both in terms of speed and quality expected. In that sense, AM took industrial design education by storm, having both positive and negative effects on the understanding of traditional manufacturing techniques for students.

During my first jobs in China and in Europe as an Industrial Project Manager, AM was the go-to solution. AM allowed us, with a single process and single supplier, to produce functional prototypes, cosmetic prototypes and marketing assets for demos and tradeshows, in a matter of days. It also allowed us to produce tooling to run pre-production batches of injection molding parts. It was such a thrilling moment and all bureaus I worked with competed against each other to deliver the fastest and best AM solution possible. Bureaus were also modifying their machines and mixing AM with other techniques, pushed by orders from larger conglomerates in automotive and aerospace. You could see the field maturing on a monthly basis.