Software cuts out prototypes for Lotus
An
ICEM product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Sep 29, 2003
The ICEM Surf software suite enabled Lotus Engineering to achieve a "first" during the development of its Elise II sports car.
The ICEM Surf software suite enabled Lotus Engineering to achieve a "first" during the development of its Elise II sports car.
ICEM eliminated the time and expense required to develop a physical verification model stack.
ICEM software enabled the developers to move straight from a final digital surface model to a production tooling design for the vehicle's body.
The result was a valuable saving in man-hours, far fewer physical prototypes and a consequent reduction in development costs.
ICEM Surf was used throughout the Elise II body design development process from concept development, through surface engineering and Class A surfaces development, to final production tooling design.
The software's real-time rendering and visualisation facilities were used as the design progressed and particularly in the latter stages, to verify the design on the screen.
Once the final design was agreed and signed off, surface data was released to engineering for use directly in the production tooling design process.
"It's all about having confidence in the integrity of your digital model", said Phil Hayden, Surface Development Manager, Lotus Engineering.
"With ICEM Surf, what you see on the computer screen is what you will get in reality.
Unlike the usual solid modelling CAD systems, ICEM Surf enables you to develop and view components in their correct proportion to each other, as if you had a physical model.
It also enables you to dynamically 'tweak' and refine the model with great accuracy and to immediately see the results of your actions.
It's these capabilities that gave us the confidence that our final surface model of the Elise II was correct, enabling us to bypass the usual physical stacking model verification process".
ICEM Surf enabled Lotus to adopt a concurrent engineering approach to the development of the Elise II.
The design development of the car's 'customer visible' surfaces and the detailed engineering design of the vehicle's underlying structure were accomplished in parallel.
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