Automotive Engineering - When can you use it?

Perceived Quality lifecycle

You can use aesthetica to support critical aesthetic assessment activities throughout the development process.

Project approval – feasibility studies at the start of the Concept stage, to identify the most appropriate concepts, by adding the ideal or nominal values against manufacturing tolerances to capture potential downstream problems that will influence the design.

aesthetica allows you to assess the impact of variation early in the process, at the point where change is rapid and when cost of change minimal.

Designers can take the variation into account, refining the design to reduce or eliminate sensitivities without compromising the visual character, and carry out ‘force fit’ what-if scenarios to set and refine targets.

Style freeze – manufacturing studies at the start of the Design stage, to establish assembly locator strategies against design targets early in the design process, visually reviewing the proposed measurement plans on A-class and extended A-class surfaces.

aesthetica allows you to assess effects of manufacturing processes on the product during early engineering development – before the design is finalized.

You can carry out multiple iterations of locator analysis to determine which scheme has the least effect on the appearance of the product and validate targets alongside the manufacturing assembly process.

Engineering release – flexible part and assembly behavior studies at the start of Validation, to gain insight into tolerance analysis, using advanced diagnostic capabilities: flexibility, distortion and pitting, misalignment and surface defects, and impacts of stress transmission.

aesthetica enables you to communicate and collaborate with manufacturing by visualizing full design and detail (not just at measurement points) to resolve conflicts between design aspirations and manufacturing reality.

You can train auditors before the physical properties are fully available.

Product release – finished vehicle and cosmetic audits at the start of Confirmation, to refine and improve the final product, visualizing gaps with extreme or test conditions and comparing it with nominal digital models.

aesthetica allows you to calibrate the audits and visualize limits of acceptable variation, giving you the ability to create pictures of ‘limit samples’.

Production – what-if studies at the start of Production improvement, to resolve known product issues and provide on-going quality assurance.

aesthetica allows you to review any concerns and issues as you move to full production. You can compare and contrast the actual vehicle with a definitive visualization of the digital model, to give insight to any variation issues and facilitate collaboration between your different teams.

You can then set parameters for quality assurance and feed them back to the next refresh/upgrade at the concept stage, improving the feasibility assessment and production capability of the next generation of products.

In addition, assessing potential running changes before they are introduced enables you to investigate supplier quality issues and carry out studies to improve the number of successful builds.

Icona aesthetica V3 Brochure 2008.pdf