The increasing complexity and competition in the car market
pushes OEMs to simultaneously achieve both a lead-time reduction
and a higher development process productivity. Therefore, car
manufacturers are asked to significantly revise their development
and production procedures, together with their suppliers who are
co-designers vehicle-systems (seating, dashboard, lighting,
etc.).
Innovative CAD tools, such as parametric and associative (p/a),
may significantly increase efficiency and effectiveness of design
activities, through assisted procedures, automatic checking of
constraints, avoidance of repetitive handle operations. By this
way, p/a CAD tools may reduce the time requested for geometry
description and modification, leaving the designer more
opportunities for studying the design solution.
The design procedure for the front-seating system has been
redefined in order to make an effective verification of these
facilities, and some CV-CADDS 5 archetypes have been implemented in
coherence with car manufacturers' targets.
The first one contains the necessary parameters for an overall
seat-system description, in compliance with its ergonomics and
functional requirements. This is also referred, by means of the
logical system organization (system tree) to structure and cushion
components, style surfaces and other interior systems interfacing
the seat.
Parametric geometries of structure components are positioned
with reference to the overall seat parameters and by means of
associative relations between interface zones and to the structure
assembly constraints.
The designer, by using cushion archetypes, is able to generate
the free-cushion geometry along an automated and guided path,
starting from CAS surfaces of seat with and a CAD model of the
structure.
During the development phases, the use of a car-system tree
makes it possible to quickly verify the seat installability.
This finalized application of p/a CAD tools, which is
demonstrating significant benefits, will be more developed with
both the completion of geometry/relations and the integration of
virtual qualification to control the overall product target's
achievement