3D software suits seat design

Vistagy's SDE provides a complete engineering environment integrated directly into popular commercial 3D CAD systems for efficiently managing all aspects of seat trim development.

Vistagy has released Seat Design Environment (SDE) 2.0 , the latest version of its proven 3D development environment that is tailored specifically to the design and manufacture of seats for the transportation interiors industry.

The SDE provides the industry's only complete engineering environment integrated directly into popular commercial 3D CAD systems for more efficiently managing all aspects of seat trim development - from conception, design and cost modelling to document generation and manufacturing.

Vistagy will showcase the new software at the IQPC Innovations in Automotive Seating conference in Dearborn, Michigan USA (Booth 4) on 25th - 27th June as well as at the 7th International CTI Forum in Munich, Germany on 27th - 28th June.

In light of constant competitive pressure to deliver inexpensive transportation seats more quickly and accurately, engineers strive to obtain design feedback and manufacturing cost information very early in development to ensure final seats meet specifications and deadlines.

The SDE addresses this need by enabling engineers working within their familiar CAD system to easily create a single, complete 3D virtual product definition of the seat architecture and cover, including all nongeometric data associated with the model, like material specifications, stitch types and sewing instructions.

This single master CAD model helps engineers more efficiently share design detail across teams, obtain instant feedback on constantly-changing design and cost data, and automatically generate critical manufacturing documentation at the click of a mouse.

As a result, OEMs and suppliers accelerate seat delivery time from months to days while eliminating physical prototyping, improving manufacturing accuracy, and assessing how the trim interacts with the seat architecture - and ultimately the entire interior.

"The SDE helps customers answer questions early in development about whether a seat can be manufactured as designed, how it will look or perform, and how much it will cost".

"This is a powerful value proposition that dramatically changes how companies create transportation seats and manage design changes", said Ed Bernardon, Vice President of Business Development at Vistagy.

"Instead of constructing manual drawings and physical prototypes, engineers can now create complete 3D virtual product definitions using a comprehensive engineering environment specialised for transportation seat development, eliminating previously tedious, time-consuming and error-prone tasks".

New capabilities in the SDE enable engineers to be more efficient and productive, freeing up time to concentrate on developing new innovations.

Engineers can now obtain immediate feedback on seat manufacturing cost data by automatically exporting product definition detail contained in the master CAD file to cost model documents.

As a result, engineers can make more informed decisions early in design about critical design-to-cost drivers such as material types and quantities, seam placement, sewing instructions, assembly sequencing, and hardware quantities.

The SDE contains a variety of "out of the box" design databases relevant to the seat development process, and integrates them into the CAD system.

These databases, which are launched from the CAD environment and instantly available to engineers, contain lists of cover materials, seam types, needles, threads, standardised parts, and notes and specifications that are used to define a seat.

As a result, searching for this data takes far less time.

Organisations can customise these databases to coincide with their particular manufacturing requirements, or the SDE can be integrated with existing databases for additional flexibility.

The SDE enables engineers to automatically export and format detailed product data from the master model to a wide variety of documents, including engineering drawings, bills of materials, spreadsheets, web pages, quality planning forms, and other formats.

As a result, the SDE saves time and helps eliminate the tedious, error-prone tasks of manually creating documentation, especially when frequent changes occur.

"With these new features and capabilities, the SDE makes it easy to create complete virtual seat design definitions directly in the CAD model with little or no CAD experience", said Olivier Guillermin, Director of Product and Market Strategy at Vistagy.

"Our customers generally get up-to-speed on the SDE within a day, and do not require extensive training because the software works within the current development environment".

"SDE allows engineers to work how they think with familiar seat engineering terminology and development processes, while providing an important competitive advantage over hard-to-manage point solutions or general CAD software programs".

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