GM uses UG V18 moving to NX2
Ford uses Ideas moving to NX3/4
Chrysler uses Catia V4 and some V5
Most of the related/owned by the big three use the same system as the parent.
Anybody else notice that no major automobile manufacturer uses Pro/E as their primary CAD design tool? I know some use Pro/E for sections of the design, like transmissions, chassis and engines, but none for body work.
"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
PTC Announces New Strategic Product Lifecycle Management and Process Improvement Solutions Deployment for Toyota’s Powertrain
Deployment Marks a Milestone of the Multi-Year Joint Research and Development Agreement between PTC and Toyota
New Powertrain Development Projects Leverage New Process and Design Improvements including Standardizing on Pro/ENGINEER® Wildfire™ 2.0
NEEDHAM, MA. – June 14, 2004 - PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC), the Product Development Company™, today announced the deployment of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0 at Toyota’s Powertrain Division. The solution rolls out PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0 as the powertrain development standard, incorporating dozens of improvements for powertrain development, which Toyota and PTC conceived and developed over the last 18 months. The deployment is a part of the multi- year, joint process redesign and development initiative PTC and Toyota signed in May 2003.
Since standardizing on Pro/ENGINEER for powertrain in 2002, Toyota has achieved improvements in design cycle time, introduced new lean product development techniques, and furthered its established leadership in the areas of continuous improvement, quality leadership and technical innovation. This phase builds on that success by introducing innovative new PLM technology into their process in the areas of 3D engineering, analysis, manufacturing planning, drawing creation and interoperability.
“PTC has been a skilled and experienced partner to us throughout this major undertaking to improve our processes throughout the Powertrain Division,” said Mr. Mikio Satoh, Toyota’s general manager of Corporate IT. “PTC’s comprehensive Product Development System clearly aligns with Toyota’s approach to product design and development and we anticipate significant benefits to our process through this deployment.”
“Toyota is renowned for its absolute focus on engineering and manufacturing excellence and PTC is proud to partner with them in this strategic use of PLM technology,” said Dick Harrison, president and CEO of PTC. “The ability of our solutions to support and enable this undertaking is a tremendous validation of our vision, our approach and our offerings. We are confident that PTC will continue to help Toyota lead the industry in continuous process improvement.”
Toyota’s standardization on Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0 reinforces PTC’s special focus on the powertrain segment of the transportation industry. Industry leaders such as VW, BMW, Hyundai, Fiat, Volvo Truck, Daihatsu, Hino Motors, Tata Motors, ZF, Mannesman AG, Visteon, Robert Bosch, Eaton, Dana, AVL and Cummins have selected PTC based on the business benefits provided by Pro/ENGINEER.
Pro/ENGINEER is the industry leader providing the power and performance required for delivering high performance products in the powertrain field while providing users with a simple, intuitive, and connected experience.
“The deployment of this phase is only the beginning of what Toyota and PTC envision for state-of-the-art design and process improvement,” said PTC Senior Vice President of Product Management, Brian Shepherd. “More joint work is already underway and promises to continue to improve the powertrain product development process even further.”
The question didn't ask for Class A modeling. That has been coved over and over in other threads. It seems like most of that is done with Alias not a cad package.
I've worked with a few industrial designers in the auto industry. They tell me that before it even gets to Alias (Which is still technically a "CAD" package), a lot of body styling is originally conceptualizaed with a lump of clay.
Pro/Concept by PTC may very well give Alias a run for its money.. It's still in its infancy as a program, but I believe that in the next few years it will gain further legitimacy in the ID world.
As far as body styling within Pro/E goes, I doubt the ID crowd would ever go for it. Alias (and clay) yield relatively instant feedback and visualization. That makes them good tools for putting an idea down on paper. The time required to set up a similar design in Pro/E defeats the purpose of conceptal design, because by he time you've figured out how to make it, you've forgotten what you're tryng to make!
Mind you- freeform surfacing has come a LONG way in Pro/E since 2000i2. Release 2001 saw the introdcution of ISDX. Wildfire saw improvements to the ISDX interface (dynamic updating, trace sketches).
Wildfire 2 has some significant improvements in the ISDX area as well:
1)Trace sketches on ANY plane,
2)Surfaces can be defined from 2 boundaries
3)Surfaces can "loft" through multiple sections
4)Boundary Swept surfaces (think freeform Variable Section Sweep)
5)Offset Curves on/from Surfaces (COS) within the Style enviroment.
6)New planar curve type- Radial point planar curve (Curve plane always normal to another curve).
7)New curve creation tools (Curve from Surface, Curve from datum, proportional curve copy)
+more
I heard Nike had a great demo at the conference on this.
Technically Alias considers itself a Computer Aided Industrial Design or CAID package. It still does the same thing as any other surface modeler. It is just aimed at a different audience.
At the moment, Pro/E is creeping more and more into the ID markets. A colleague of mine has recently returned to school at Carelton University in Ottawa, Ontario. He is enrolled in their Industrial Design program, and their primary CAD tool is now Pro/Engineer Wildfire. The ID department there is apparently partially integrated with their Mechanical Engineering department.
One thing that Alias can do that Pro/E cannot do DIRECTLY (it can still be accomplished, but it is a bit tricky) is the application of "higher level" surface continuity constraints.
Pro/E allows you to create Curvature continuous curves and surfaces (G2 continuity), in which the curvature along U or V lines is a continuous function, but it cannot regulate it beyond that.
Alias allows users to create G3 and G4 continuous curevs and surfaces. In a G3 continuous curve or surface, the derivative of the curvature is a constant function, and in a G4 continous curve or surface, the second derivative of the curvature is a constant function.
Pro/E *can* accomplish this using some advanced tools (curves from equations, BMX, etc.), however there is no explicit constraint in the surfacing tools that allows for this.
This is usually only an issue when it comes to photorendering, because G3 and G4 continous surfaces reflect light in a smoother, more appealing manner at their boundaries. I don't believe that PTC has recieved much of a demand for this and so they didn't include it.
Actually G4 is an issue with the large shiny "class A" surfaces of things like cars not just photo rendering. Most ID firms use Pro/E or Pro/E and Alias. Very few use other packages unless they have a customer requirement.
