Cranfield and Dassault open centre of excellence to drive future aero sector skills

The so-called 3DExperience Edu Centre of Excellence aims to help develop the digital knowhow that will be key to accelerating the pace of innovation in the sector by giving learners and researchers at Cranfield University's unfettered access to Dassault’s 3DExperience platform.

3DExperience is a cloud-based platform that enables access to all of Dassault’s design, simulation, information intelligence and collaboration applications and which enables engineers to collaborate online when developing and validating products. 

3DExperience is also used when applying approaches to product development such as Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), which uses computer models of products as the primary means of information exchange instead of documents, to ease collaboration, increase efficiency and reduce development and testing time. 

First announced at the Paris Airshow in 2023, the partnership sees the university join a network of 16 similar centres of Excellence in France, Germany, Switzerland, the USA and Mexico. 

Speaking at the centre’s official opening Professor Dame Helen Atkinson, pro-vice chancellor of Cranfield's school of aerospace, transport and manufacturing, said: “It makes a difference in both teaching and research and in our relationships with industry. For us it’s incredibly important to be right at the forefront of MBSE, otherwise we’re not doing our job in preparing all these graduates to go out into industry and become leaders. It’s absolutely crucial to our identity.”