Tracing paper and set-squares are very much a thing of the past in Land Rover’s design department – it’s embracing the virtual reality age…
In the pre-computer days the main drawing office of an automotive design centre usually housed at least one car-size drawing board so that full-scale component drawings could be used to check for parts fitment. In addition, full-size and scale mock-ups would be used to view parts or even complete cars.
Last year Jaguar Land Rover opened their new Virtual Reality Centre at their Design and Engineering facility in Gaydon, Warwickshire. The highlight of the centre is a Computer Aided Virtual Environment, (CAVE) facility that draws on advanced audio-visual technologies to speed up product development.
The centre uses the world’s highest-resolution projectors to enable engineers and stylists to see and interact with life-size car bodies and individual components. The centre was built at a cost of £2 000 000, and reduces the need for physical prototypes, thus saving both time and money. The CAVE unit utilises four walls to simulate vehicle exteriors and interiors, either in solid and transparent mode, in near photo-realistic resolution. The viewer has to wear 3-D glasses to experience the virtually pixel-free view presented by the eight Sony ultra-high resolution projectors.
We visited the Centre last week and were able to see virtual vehicle bodies in different colours as well as components and even complete engines. The operator used a multipronged wand to transform from one image to another, as was even able to slice through an engine at different vertical or slanted planes to reveal the various components in different colours.
One of the most impressive aspects of the facility is the way it combines inputs from different engineering groups. As soon as any component has passed the initial design stage the images are loaded into the CAVE system, and becomes part of the vehicle assembly that can be viewed as required. This not only ensures that it will fit into the space allocated for the component but also allows other departments to view the proposed layout.
An example of the usefulness of the system occurred when the Service Department wanted to know if the starter motor on a prototype could be removed without removing any other component. The car only existed in virtual form, and this was easily checked on the CAVE.
The full story of this visit can be read in the June issue of CAR magazine
