Intelligent Manufacturing € March € 1996 € Vol. 2 € No. 3
Intelligent Manufacturing € March € 1996 € Vol. 2
€ No. 3
Formula One racing team Red Bull-Sauber-Ford, based in Hinwil,
Switzerland, has installed 12 additional seats of CATIA from IBM
Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.) on Silicon Graphics systems to support the
design and construction of its 1996 season cars. In the space of
three months since CATIA version 4 was installed, the team has seen a
reduction in time spent on design and construction, and a greater
interaction between these two processes. The greatest benefit has
come from the ability to use 3-D digital mock-up to validate the
design of the car before any components are manufactured.
CATIA, as well as CADAM, are manufacturing solutions developed by
Dassault Systemes (Paris, France), and distributed worldwide by IBM.
Seamlessly embedded in the Silicon Graphics version of CATIA are
object-oriented applications with a next-generation user interface to
enhance ease-of-use. A new visualization tool, the 4-D Navigator,
allows users to virtually "fly through" and inspect in real time
digital mock-ups of large mechanical assemblies. This use of virtual
reality allows the designer to detect and correct design errors at an
early stage.
Red Bull-Sauber-Ford was founded by team principal Peter Sauber, who
began building racing cars in 1970. In 1984 the team began a
cooperative venture with Mercedes, whose twin turbocharged V8 engines
helped the Sauber sports cars to win consecutive World Championship
titles in 1989 and 1990, and a win in the Le Mans 24-hour race. The
team began entering Grand Prix racing in 1993.
CATIA's manufacturing infrastructure allows the modeling of a
company's specific manufacturing environment, which is stored in a
manufacturing technological database. Users have direct access from
CATIA to share common data relating to the technological environment
of a company's
workshop.