Engineering revolution: CAD/CAE advancements changing vehicle development.

Automotive design and engineering could be completely paperless within three years if computer technology and the industry's collective mindset continue to evolve at their current pace.To get more news about cad computer aided design, you can visit shine news official website.

Advances in computer aided design and engineering (CAD/CAE) already have dramatically changed the way some components and systems are being designed and engineering but experts suggest that as much as 40% of development time for a complete vehicle can be slashed with wider application of CAD/CAE.
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Recent examples of time and cost savings generated by CAD/CAE technology include a Ford Explorer rear wiper motor cover designed in six weeks, saving 45% in design costs. A finite-element mesh rendering of a Volvo side mirror was made in two days, and simulated wind-tunnel testing accomplished in another 48 hours. And Ford saved 134 days designing a lightweight lower-suspension control arm with CAE instead of conventional engineering.

Combining the capabilities of surface and solid computer modeling, animation software and powerful computers, the industry can develop vehicles much more cost-effectively than in the past. With this technology designers can style and immediately view a concept in three dimensions, engineers can test every aspect of a vehicle's performance, and manufacturing types can run pre-production assembly and fit tests without building even a single prototype or clay model.Jeffery A. Rose, general manager of engineering design at Toyota Motor Corp.'s Ann Arbor, MI, technical center, is leery of completely computer-driven designs. Toyota remains flexible on fit tolerances throughout the design and pre-production process so it can make last-minute changes to compensate for variances. "Computer-driven designs will ultimately make cars have greater variations than fitted cars," he says, explaining that certain variables that would have to be factored in on a computer may not exist in reality. That could produce larger gaps on a final product, he believes.

The design process is changing," says John Baker, product manager for geometric modeling at EDS Unigraphics. "We're changing the critical path of vehicle development. We're removing from the critical path all steps that don't add value."

Among these non-value-added pieces of the current development puzzle are the numerous and costly prototypes built to test individual systems. With state-of-the-art CAD/CAE, each vehicle system can be tested individually and in unison. When a physical prototype is built after a thorough computer shakedown of the design, it will be much closer to the production model.

"The systems of the future will be able to comprehend the effects of multiple variables on the final vehicle," predicts John Howaniek, automotive segment manager at engineering software pioneer SDRC Inc. "Computers will be able to determine the best options in tradeoffs between cost and performance."

Most people involved in developing cutting edge CAD/CAE systems agree that a cultural revolution needs to occur in the industry before full benefits of the technology will be realized. Norman Ludtke knows this better than anyone else. After 45 years in the business, Mr. Ludtke, executive manager of advanced CAE at CDI Computer Services Inc., has seen design and engineering develop from pencil and paper to computer animation.

"Engineers are conservative by nature so they have a tough time being able to accept that something that looks like the real thing is really math data," says Mr. Ludtke. "The major drawback in exploiting this technology is training people how to apply it to solve business problems. It's like future shock." Mr. Baker agrees: "People have to move up the technology ladder as well."