Case study: Holden Special Vehicles
Virtual reality has had a significant impact in the automotive industry, simplifying international collaboration and reducing the need to construct clay models. Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) produces a range of performance cars based on models such as the Commodore and Statesman. Styling is carried out in the UK by parent company TWR's chief designer Neil Simpson. (TWR also styles entire cars for a variety of manufacturers.)
When Simpson is happy with his work, the TWR VR centre in Worthing is linked to a similar SGI-equipped facility in Melbourne at either Holden or RMIT to give the HSV product group a virtual tour of the car and an opportunity to comment on the styling.
-We'll go through a couple of design iterations," says Brad Dunstan, executive in charge of advanced engineering at HSV. When everyone is satisfied, a traditional clay model of the affected parts of the car will be made. -Virtual reality is good, but it's possible to get hiccups in the digital model that you don't notice," says Dunstan.
The bumper bar for the Monaro-based HSV Coupé was only rendered in clay at the very end of the design process: -It was almost completely digital," he said. Traditional methods involve two or three clay models to get close to an acceptable design, but now a stylist can present seven or eight iterations at the first review. It only takes a matter of days to blend the best parts of each, -and we can look at it full size in the VR centre," he says.
Previously, work on a new car took two years, but that has been slashed to 18 months. -We're able to deliver new variants such as the Monaro in record time," says Dunstan.
Once the design is finalised, the digital models are transferred to a CAD system where a team of typically six operators convert them into finished designs that can be turned over to the toolmakers.
Speedy development is essential to HSV, as it can't start work on a new product until Holden has frozen the design of the base model. And those models now have a two-year production life rather than three, increasing the time pressure on HSV.
The process saves the company money as well as time. The combination of VR and digital engineering saved HSV over $1 million on the Monaro project alone, Dunstan says.
