Elixir Takes Off With Cloud-based Design Tools

Where does an aerospace startup find a platform to take its two-seater aircraft design to new heights? To the cloud, of course, where it can channel all the promised flexibility and ease of collaboration to help get its small luxury plane ready for take off.

Elixir Aircraft, a French aviation startup, has selected Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, specifically its “Engineered to Fly” industry solution, as the primary design platform for its forthcoming plane. The Elixir aircraft, a two-seater plane aimed at enthusiasts, is leveraging lightweight composites, a unique low-wing profile, and use of single structure design in the wing and the fuselage to make an aircraft that is not only high-performance, but is safer to fly, according to Arthur Leopold-Leger, CEO of the firm.

Elixir’s design incorporates a unique wing structure to achieve gains in payload, safety, and costs. Image Courtesy of Elixir Aircraft

With no legacy systems in place and with no formal allegiance to any one design package, cloud-based CAD and PLM was a natural fit for Elixir, providing flexibility for deployment considering the startup was light on budget and lacked dedicated IT resources. “We don’t have an IT department and we didn’t need any big computer installation,” Leopold-Leger said. “From a money standpoint, [cloud-based software] was very interesting for us — we could just take what we needed when we needed it and not have to take care of anything.”

Take simulation, for example. Like any aerospace company deep in the weeds with a new aircraft design, simulation software — both CFD and FEA, is critical to testing everything from aerodynamics to structural integrity. However, at this point in time, Elixir, with about five on-staff employees, didn’t need to invest tens of thousands of dollars in dedicated CAE software licenses it would only use at very specific intervals. ” We didn’t want to have to buy all the software for a lifetime,” Leopold-Leger explained. “If we need simulation software for three or six months, we liked the idea of just being able to take it for the time we needed it.”

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE “Engineered to Fly” platform is also specifically tailored to small- and mid-sized companies in this space, providing cloud-based access to the latest engineering technologies to manage the design workflow as well as the documentation process. Elixir was also sold on the cloud’s ability to easily allow colleagues and suppliers to collaborate in a secure environment. “We work a lot with specialists outside of the company, some for structural analysis and others for fluid simulation,” he explained. “The collaboration aspect of the cloud has become very important to us — it wasn’t part of our initial expectations, but it’s a bonus and allows us to save a lot of time.”

Elixir Aircraft is banking on the cloud and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to get its first aircraft design into flight. Image Courtesy of Elixir Aircraft

Security, one of the primary concerns among companies contemplating cloud-based design tools, was not a major issue for Elixir once Dassault Systèmes walked the firm through the software’s set of capabilities. One of Elixir’s biggest concerns was who owned the IP once it was in the cloud. “Even though we put all our data on their cloud, it will remain our proprietary information,” said Leopold-Leger.

And given that Elixir has no formal IT staff, it is in much better hands from a security standpoint by leveraging Dassault Systèmes’ expertise. “They have far more expertise to secure a network than we do,” he said. “We don’t have an IT department as a startup — we just have computers connected to the Internet with no real security at all because we have no experience or knowledge in that area.”

The 3DEXPERIENCE industry approach was appealing given the startup’s small size and limited resources. “By going to an entire solution, we can take advantage of a bigger solution that allows us to do everything we need in the same place,” he said.

Elixir’s two-seater plane is set for its first flight in mid-2016.