AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING The Prodrive and Desktop Engineering (DTE) relationship has spanned almost the whole lifetime of both companies, and also a turbulent development period in CAD, CAM and CAE disciplines, in terms of both hardware and software. Twenty-five years ago we were emerging from the UNIX era when the cost of hardware and hardware support reduced by at least a factor of four. Many lament the passing of the UNIX age, as ‘mean time between failure’ also went down by a factor of 10 (at least) and the Windows BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) crept into common technical parlance. There has then been much change and evolution in the computing world, with significant shifts in technology and innovation every five years or so. DTE, which is based in Witney in the UK, in the heart of the British motorsport business community, has ridden these changes, retooling and training its staff to accommodate evolving trends. “I founded the business in 1986, with the aim of providing engineering software on personal computers,” says DTE managing director, Geoffrey Haines. “The IBM PC was becoming available at the time and software was being written in the US for this platform. We started out securing distribution rights to these applications here in the UK and we began with just two of us selling and supporting them. We had started at the early adopter phase of this new market, and quickly grew to be a dozen or so engineers.” DTE was first approached by Prodrive in 1988, which then became a customer of its 3D surface modelling application, called Personal Designer which proved to be ahead of the market at that time. “We’ve always had a soft spot for Prodrive because they were one of our early customers,” says Mr Haines. Rapid Evolution The early days of the PC CAD market were very dynamic. With the rapid developments in software technology, new products arrived and existing ones faced challenges almost on a monthly basis. Major upgrades every six months were not unusual. DTE had to keep abreast of these changes ensuring it always had the best, most suitable solutions for its customers. In software the partnership has witnessed CFD come of age as a meaningful design application. CAD has gone from 2D to 3D, through parametric solid modelling, history based modelling, dynamic modelling, direct modelling and now, The Cloud. Personal Designer was the first application purchased by Prodrive. It was a 3D surface modelling and drafting package, developed by Computervision as the ‘little brother’ to its high end CADDS software, used by most of the automotive industry at the time. Although it ran on PCs, it enabled designers to truly visualise their designs. It was this that influenced Prodrive’s decision to use it. Prodrive's quarter of a century in business has encapsulated huge changes in the way computers are used in motorsport. But one thing has remained constant - its strong bond with tech wizard DTE. 46 May 2017
EN-May17-eMag
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