Design Technology Leader Sponsors Key Events and Showcases European Automaker Success

A world leader in design innovation technologies, will make its debut appearance at the 2008 Paris Mondial de l'Automobile, one of the world's largest and most important auto shows, in Paris Porte de Versailles, France, from October 4-19, 2008.

Autodesk's participation reflects its focus on providing a solution for Digital Prototyping that helps automotive industry manufacturers to better concept, model and test designs before they are ever built, thereby reducing costs and accelerating time to market. Sponsored by the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, the Paris Mondial de l'Automobile has been the venue for the introduction of new production automobile and concept cars for more than a century.

As part of its presence at the show, Autodesk will be serving as a gold sponsor for several main events:

						 --  AutoDesignNight. Scheduled to take place on October 2, AutoDesignNight
						provides an unparalleled networking opportunity for the automotive
						industrial design community in a casual, but professional, atmosphere.
						For more information, visit http://www.autodesignnight.com/Paris.
						--  Interior Motives Design Awards. On October 3, this contest recognizes
						automotive industrial design achievements in categories ranging from
						Best Conceptual Interior, Best Use of Ambient Lighting, Best Safety
						Innovation and more. For additional information, visit
						http://www.interiormotivesawards.com/.
						

						"Historically, Autodesk has been a major partner of the global
						automobile industry, delivering integrated conceptual design,
						engineering, and manufacturing tools across all phases of product
						development," said Robert "Buzz" Kross, senior vice president of
						Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions. "Our attendance at the Paris Motor
						Show, and our sponsorship of AutoDesignNight and the Interior Motives
						Design Awards, is a natural extension of our commitment to meeting the
						needs of global automotive engineers and designers."
						

Digital Prototyping on Display

Autodesk customer Estech, a French design firm specializing in the industrial automotive field, will have a booth at the 2008 Paris Mondial de l'Automobile (Hall 3, Lane 5, Stand 524) displaying its full-scale show car, the Crysalys, which it developed using Autodesk Digital Prototyping tools.

Digital Prototyping brings together design data from all phases of the development process to create a single digital model. This digital model simulates the complete product and gives designers and engineers the ability to better visualize, optimize and manage designs before producing physical prototypes.

"The Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping helps us to better concept, model and test designs before they are ever built," said Herve Roman, chief executive officer of Estech. "A wide range of Autodesk products, from Autodesk AliasStudio to Autodesk Showcase, worked together seamlessly to create a digital workflow and speed the development of the Crysalys."

Venturi Automobiles, an ecologically minded French sports car manufacturer, will also have a booth at the show (Hall 5, Lane 1, stand 101) to display animations of its latest prototype vehicle, which was developed with Autodesk Opticore real-time raytracing visualization software, which produces highly interactive and realistic 3D digital product visualizations and presentations.

Gildo Pallanca Pastor, chief executive officer of Venturi Automobiles, said, "Autodesk 3D visualization software solutions enable us to implement a fully digital design process. Those tools reduce development costs of our future models; the choice of production is not based on expensive physical prototypes but on digital prototypes that are entirely explorable and modifiable anytime."

Autodesk in Automotive

Autodesk is the market leader in solutions for automotive design, styling and marketing development and is a major supplier of engineering and visualization software for the automotive industry. For more than 20 years, Autodesk has provided automotive original equipment manufacturers with innovative 2D and 3D applications to simplify the design-to-manufacturing process and provide creative professionals with photorealistic tools that transform imagination into reality. Many of the new vehicles presented by car manufacturers at the 2008 Paris Mondial de l'Automobile were designed with Autodesk solutions for Digital Prototyping.