The mere fact you’re here at HorsePowerKings.com – means you love cars. Right? Do you also love spending hours sketching up super race cars? Have you ever had that inner dream of designing your own race car? Well personally I have, and I’ve been sketching cars since I was a kid. I was always intrigued by how these brilliant Car designers do it. How the heck do they come up with those perfect beautiful monster vehicles? I then found out that a lot of it boils down to CAD Software, which stands for Computer Aided Design. CAD is used in a very wide range of fields, by architects, engineers, product designers, film makers, shipbuilders, and also by car designers.

We all know how pencil and paper have nearly became history in the last 20 years or so, while Computers are used for practically everything. Modern Car designers employ various types of CAD software – which are extremely sophisticated programs that help bring creative ideas to life, easily, quickly and in a stunning manner.

One of the pioneers of using CAD in the cars industry was Dr. Patrick J. Hanratty, who in the mid-60’s developed a revolutionary computer software for GM. This software automated almost all of the repetitive drafting tasks of engineers, making their work many times more efficient. It was the beginning of CAD…

As technology evolved and computer costs went down, the use of CAD programs in the cars industry grew bigger and bigger. Today, probably all car manufacturers on the planet employ 3D CAD software such as AutoCAD, Solidworks, Catia or others in their never-ending process of design, engineering and manufacturing of new car models.

A very powerful example is Aston Martin.

Almost every year, Aston Martin’s racing cars win lots of races in competitions around the world. Their engineers believe that the CAD programs they employ have a lot to do with it. In their case, they use PTC’s Creo CAD software for the model design process, as well as PTC’s Product Lifecycle Management system to control and improve the process.

“We used Creo Parametric, along with its Advanced Assembly, Simulation, and Mechanism Analysis Extensions, to design three cars all with very different requirements.”, said Dan Sayers, Aston Martin Racing’s chief engineer. “It cuts design time significantly as you don’t load the detailed geometry of parts you’re not working on.”, he added. The CAD systems helped Aston Martin to build the GTE, which is considered to be one of the best GT cars on the planet, winning both the Le Mans 24 Hours and the World Endurance Championship (Source: PTC site)

Another example, for those of you who love French Cars, is RENAULT, one of the biggest car manufacturers in France.

Back in 1998, Renault and Dassault Systems – the maker of Catia CAD software, signed a strategic agreement – under which Catia would be used on all of Renault’s new car programs. “RENAULT has always placed emphasis on the indispensable integration of its CAD/CAM/CAE infrastructure and on its strategic nature for the reengineering of its processes. With CATIA, RENAULT will be able to implement digital mock-up on all its future programs,” said Renault’s executive Vice-President and Head of Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Divison, Mr. Detourbet, 20 years ago… (Source: IBM site)

Computer Aided Design tools allow car manufacturers to draft their new models quicker than ever before. Engineers can simulate real performance of models and collaborate with other engineers or colleagues. They can share their designs easily and quickly with other teams, enabling an efficient and productive team-work. CAD drawing software even allows designers or engineers to create beautiful visual prototypes of cars for marketing or consumer research. CAD programs make the whole development process extremely fast and efficient, allowing car manufacturers to produce and roll out new car models in a much faster rate.

However, efficiency and quickness are not the only benefits of CAD softwares. These programs can also aid in identifying design errors. Most CAD programs used in the Car industry include computer simulations that “insert” the newly designed car (model) into real life scenarios such as accidents, bad weather, high speed driving and many more. These simulations aid engineers in determining if a car model is ready for the roads, or if it requires some more design work to make it safer. CAD software provides the ability to design better vehicle control, improve the brakes, test the air bags or seat belts, and more.

Will the entire car design process be run by AI computers in the near future? Well, we will probably always need a creative mind of a car designer to come up with beautiful smart models. All the other design work however, which brings the designer’s idea to life – will be done by ever improving CAD programs.

The Development Process of a Race Car: Where does CAD Come in?

The Race cars world is nothing less than ultra exciting, but its extremely demanding as well. Specially the engineer’s development work on a race car during the season. New technical updates must be developed for each race in no time. The team needs to constantly follow the competitor’s technical improvements, and come up with even better solutions for their own cars.

Here’s a short description of the development process of a Race Car, and where CAD comes in:

• Stage 1: Coming up with a New Concept – Following the last race, the team holds a briefing with the race engineers regarding the needed changes. The design team comes up with a new concept, or significant modifications to existing features.
• Stage 2: CAD Drafting – In this stage, the designers draft a CAD model for the new concept or modified feature. They use CAD software to design the new concept or tweak existing components.
• Stage 3: CFD Analysis – Now, the new concept (or modified feature) has to be analyzed using CFD to evaluate its potential benefits.
•  Stage 4: Composite Design – In this stage, the composites department has to design tooling, moldings and fixtures that are needed for assembly.
• Stage 5: Manufacturing – The new concept (or modified component) is ready to roll out. Manufacturing is sometimes done in-house by the Race Car company, or it may be outsourced to external suppliers.
• Stage 6: Design Verification Process – In this last stage, the new concept (or modified component) is tested in all fronts, including structural verification of the component including fatigue testing, legality checks, etc.

So now that you have a basic understanding of how a Race Car is developed, you can go ahead and do it on your own. Not build a race car, but design one…If you have a creative mind, basic computer and design skills, you can easily download a free CAD software, get a good CAD Workstation – and go bring your car design dreams into reality!