Earlier this year, ENGINEERING.com polled North American engineering educators to ask what they needed to help them in the classroom. These educators ranked online curriculum and technical support as important elements to assist them in teaching engineering using advanced product design technologies. ENGINEERING.com today announced that it has launched a new online community to meet the needs of these educators at www.catiastudent.com.

The online community is available to both students and instructors and includes; message forums, a CATIA Lesson Plan Exchange, support documentation and FAQ's, the ability to upload files to share with others, access to forms and online requests to smoothly manage CATIA installations, and the latest product news and announcements.

Bill Williams, Instructional Resources Consultant at Oakland Schools in Waterford Michigan commented, “This educators' community will serve as a venue in which instructors can share methodologies, best practices and build an instructional delivery system that will provide the highly qualified CATIA proficient designers and engineers that industries are demanding. We think an online community will be valuable and we plan to participate in it.”

CATIA V5 and ENOVIA SmarTeam are the world's leading 3D product-development applications. Since 1997, colleges and universities around the world have used IBM technology and curriculum content to implement CATIA V5 training in both graduate and undergraduate programs, thus helping their students become proficient in the 3D application that has designed almost 50 percent of the cars on the road today and practically every large aircraft in the last 10 years.

“This new community will help educators get the most out of teaching by offering them a comprehensive set of capabilities that are both easy to access and targeted to deliver a first-rate curriculum to students,” said Virginia Agee, Marketing Manager Americas, Product Lifecycle Management solutions, IBM. "This is a marvelous use of technology, and IBM is proud to be a part of it."

Xavier Fouger, director of Dassault Systèmes’ PLM Academy , added, “Engineering educators are increasingly expected to reinvent their jobs, as education systems adjust to profound challenges, such as attracting and retaining students or providing industries with globalization-ready talents. CATIA V5 provides the best foundation to help meet their challenges, and this new community promises to become the ideal source of practical information and innovative inspiration.”