Although all eyes at Le Bourget will inevitably settle on the huge new Airbus A380 airliner, there will also be another civil debutante, at the opposite end of the size spectrum, the Dassault Falcon 7X. Both French-assembled products share a number of common features, such as the increased use of composite materials, advanced wing design, fly-by-wire and new-generation cockpit displays and systems. But there is another common feature that owes its existence to innovative genius and French strategic vision, and which now dictates the design and manufacturing practices of just about every global aerospace company. It is that revolutionary 21st century icon, the CATIA (computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application) family of computer-aided design tools, from Dassault Systemes.
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