Dassault, in May, opened a new showroom at Le Bourget airport, where the customer is now offered 5,400 sq ft not only to see Falcon cabin interior amenities in virtual reality but also to touch and feel veneer, carpets, tableware, seats, displays, sound systems and so forth. The company sees it as a major complement to the Falcon 5X cabin mockup and the three demonstration aircraft–one Falcon 7X, one Falcon 900LX and one Falcon 2000S–housed in a neighboring hangar.

The showroom is designed to help customers make informed decisions, as choosing the numerous components for the aircraft interior needs to be done right after signing the purchase contract. The complete specification has to be delivered to the completion center–usually Dassault’s Little Rock, Ark. facility–one year before aircraft delivery. It typically takes three meetings spanning three months to define a cabin interior in consultation a customer.

“We want to show the customer what he or she will get; we want him or her to understand the consequences of [their] choices,” explained Olivier Villa, senior v-p for Dassault’s civil aircraft.

In fact, feedback from Falcon-operator advisory board members prompted Dassault to design a new showroom. “They told us, ‘You need to do something about it,” said Rémi Bachelet, director of aircraft specifications and design. Formerly, the showroom in Le Bourget was a dedicated but more modest area, featuring previous-generation virtual reality and a smaller display. It was not as thoroughly organized as today’s suite of purpose-designed rooms.

In the new layout, a central conference room features a large display for walk-through cabin configuration and photograph-like renderings. The data the new “configurator” uses is extracted from the design engineers’ 3-D mockup, itself based on the Dassault Systèmes’ Catia PLM v6 software. Dassault’s entire digital process is now integrated from specifications to production, a spokesman emphasized. En-suite rooms dedicated to materials, tableware, galley equipment, seats and so forth surround the virtual reality area. The rooms offer a mostly grey-and-white, neutral background.

About 85 percent of customer choices are made from Dassault’s catalogs; more exotic options account for the remaining 15 percent, Bachelet said. “Sometimes we tell the customer that we can do what he wants but we make him aware of possibly undesirable consequences; for example, installing two sofas that convert into a bed in the aft lounge is doable but makes the aft lavatory less accessible,” he explained. A customer may come up with a solution that is actually “not going into the right direction,” as Bachelet put it. Dassault cabin designers then seek to understand his original need and devise a better solution. Therefore, direct contact with the customer–as opposed to dealing with his or her representative–is of utmost importance to ensure mutual understanding.

Simultaneously of major interest is avoiding confusion for a customer confronted with lots of choices. Hence the idea of always starting with the manufacturer’s suggestions. On a “meeting minutes” panel, samples of materials are pinned all along the process to recap choices at any time.

Dassault opened similar, slightly smaller show room in Teterboro, N.J., in September. As with its sister facility in Le Bourget, it should help with Falcon sales, too.