In meeting the needs of the automotive sector which must be quicker to market than before, a solution called CATIA from Dassault Systmes helped American Specialty Cars (ASC) reduce the development time of its InfiniVu open air roof system development from weeks to hours, it announced at the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress being held this week in Detroit.
"We believe the automotive industry is headed for a "micro-niche" environment that focuses on bringing vehicles to market much faster than before and moving to replace existing designs sooner," says Chris Theodore, American Specialty Cars (ASC) vice chairman. "DS's CATIA will be critical in helping us achieve the flexibility and speed we need to satisfy this growing industry trend." ASC is a full-service specialty-vehicle partner for automotive manufacturers, specializing in vehicle design, body engineering, composite body packages and open-air roof systems.
CATIA captures the know-how and best practices gained through the product design process. This knowledge enables the creation of intelligent components, which are able to adapt to a new context, in a process known as component morphing. Whereas traditional product development techniques would require significant engineering time for each new InfiniVu system, with CATIA users simply change the requirements, such as roof hole size or curvature, and a new design can be provided in hours versus weeks.
