Application of virtual prototypes in the development of commercial vehicles

The lecture presents the results of a project on the use of digital mock-up in development of commercial vehicles. The project was implemented in cooperation with IBM Germany. The project aims at the optimisation of the development of commercial vehicle prototypes up to the pre-series vehicle. At the same time the transparency of the design engineering process is to be improved and production start-up costs reduced. In the lecture it will be shown how optimised development tools in the CAD environment can be used to reproduce complex component and assembly structures and geometrical descriptions of these (CAD models). The method of administration for the early stage of development is demonstrated using an example. The basis for realisation is the CAD system CATIA, with the Dassault products CDM, 4D-Navigator and the relational databank ORACLE.