Automotive firms sitting pretty with Seat Design Environment software

Today Siemens PLM Software announced that Futuris Automotive, a leading provider of automotive seating and interior trim, has selected the Seat Design Environment (SDE) portfolio of software for engineering transportation seating and interiors to develop seat trim covers for a number of premier automotive manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, Tesla, Chery and JAC (Jianghuai Automotive Company).

You might be surprised to learn that automotive seats represent the second highest cost component for a vehicle and the trim cover is one of the most complex and costly components of the seat, with over 5,000 pieces of attribute data required to define a typical seat cushion backrest and headrest.

Unfortunately, many auto makers and their suppliers are still using laborious and outdated methodologies for developing seat trim covers. The seat cover remains one of the few, if not the only, automobile component that is based on 2D manual design processes.

However, that has started to change. SDE, which provides a 3D CAD master model that accurately and efficiently captures a complete digital product definition of the seat trim cover, is gaining significant traction among manufacturers and suppliers.

Creating a 3D master model provides a seamless way to generate data needed for manufacturing or to share with suppliers and customers. In fact, by using this approach, one major automotive manufacturer found that they were able to decrease the time it took to design and develop the first set of flat patterns for proof of concept seat trim covers by 87 percent.

Ultimately, the key to developing a more efficient process is providing a CAD-integrated environment where geometric and non-geometric information can be captured and linked within a single master model, allowing engineers and other key stakeholders to efficiently create and modify trim cover product definitions and associated manufacturing and financial data.

Learn more about SDE.