During the conference, a Top Gun competition is held for CATIA professionals. The Top Gun competition allows CATIA engineers and designers to test their skills at developing the most accurate and correctly structured three-dimensional assembly in the least amount of time. Fifty-eight industry professionals competed, but NIAR's CAD/CAM instructors Nathan Shipley, Shawn Ehrstein and Brian Brown swept the awards by taking home first, second and third place.

The purpose of the Top Gun competition is to demonstrate variation in CATIA model quality and modeling techniques, and provide the opportunity for a COE attendee to earn the bragging rights to the "Best CATIA Modeler."

Shipley won a souvenir trophy and joins the ranks among previous winners from companies such as Airbus, Hyundai Motors, Cessna Aircraft and Delphi Automotive.

The COE conference, attended annually by more than one thousand industry professionals, provides the opportunity for broad-based education, networking, viewing new products in the TechniFair and voicing product needs for all Dassault Systemes and IBM-related technologies.

NIAR’s CAD/CAM Laboratory provides industry professionals and Wichita State University students with the latest in CATIA education and technical support for computer-aided design and manufacturing by offering classes on and off-site and writing textbooks for CATIA and ENOVIA courses. The lab offers courses five times a year, which carry engineering academic credit with the university. To learn more visit www.cadcamlab.org.