Enhance Your CAD Software with Industry-Specific Tools for Seat Design

Today's increasingly competitive global market makes bringing a quality product to market quickly and on budget critical to your success. This is particularly true for transportation interiors and seating–especially seat covers.

Unfortunately, most seat makers and their suppliers still use outmoded methodologies based on the 2D development of seat trim covers. However, using new software and design methodologies it is now possible for manufacturers and their suppliers to work in a more efficient and productive manner.

Create a complete digital product definition

VISTAGY's Seat Design Environment™ (SDE), is the industry-specific engineering software that's fully integrated into commercial CAD systems, enabling engineers to design and manufacture innovative transportation seat systems and interior components. SDE allows engineers to capture a complete digital product definition of a seat system, accurately and efficiently sharing design detail, eliminating extensive physical prototyping and reducing time-to-market. SDE is the first-ever seat design software application that addresses the entire seat engineering process.

Using SDE, engineers accurately capture all aspects of the seat trim cover design including sew lines, materials, attachments and hardware data for airbags or heating systems into a single 3D CAD master model. The software also performs a conformance simulation that will assess producibility issues such as wrinkling long before a prototype is manufactured.  Accurate 2D flat patterns can also be generated from the CAD master model, as well as all data needed for a full assessment of material and labor cost.  If required, flat patterns can be exported for modification in 2D editing software, and then imported back into the 3D master model to maintain an up to date and accurate master model definition throughout the entire design and manufacturing engineering process.  Initially and as changes are made to the design, documentation such as engineering drawings and sew instructions can be automatically created, updated and shared across the enterprise. Now, with all information and detail together in one 3D model, engineers can make design changes quickly and early in the development process, and then efficiently share information with all engineering teams working concurrently on the seat system.

VISTAGY SDE supports the entire seat engineering process

• Complete Digital Product Definition - Digitally define seat styling and soft-good requirements­including trim cover surface, sew lines and hardware­and automatically share detail across all seat engineering teams
• Assess Design Producibility - Accurately design and digitally simulate how a seat cover fits over the seat based to identify producibility issues such as wrinkling based on deformation properties of the chosen material early in the design process without the need of a prototype
• Automatic Generation of Flat Patterns and Capture of Downstream Design Changes - Generate 2D patterns for prototyping and production, then easily and accurately capture all downstream alterations and design modifications back into the 3D master model regardless of format
• Generate Engineering Drawings and Data - Automatically create accurate engineering drawings, sewing instructions and bills of materials­at the click of a button­for design documentation, process planning and manufacturing
• Accurately Analyze Part Cost - Provide material and labor cost feedback data early in the design cycle to quickly assess the cost effectiveness of design alternatives
• Readily Access Material and Part Databases - Includes customizable materials, threads and standard parts databases as well as the ability to link to company PLM systems to quickly define all seat cover detailed design features
• Fully Compatible with Current Systems - Exports flat patterns to all major nesting and cutting systems for a more efficient transition to manufacturing.

Vistagy SDE lets engineers achieve their seat development goals by increasing efficiency and control of the seat engineering and manufacturing process from styling to production. With a single data source for all design and manufacturing information, engineers can now easily develop and verify designs based on customer requirements for style, safety and comfort, while efficiently reducing total engineering costs and prototyping time.

For more information, download the SDE brochure (.pdf - 1.3M)