manufacturing floor and in the inspection departments,” says Mr Goddard. “With the best will in the world it is very difficult to replace drawings in a manufacturing context. Sometimes you just have to get a very big drawing and spread it out on the bonnet. Drawings are also a fundamental part of the wiring harness lay-up process.” Beyond motorsport, Prodrive is now also developing into a world-beating general engineering services consultancy serving the wider automotive industry, so having industry standard software is vital. DTE identified the need to change, to move to a relationship with Dassault and support this software that was fast becoming standard in automotive and aerospace markets. It was inevitable that Prodrive then looked to DTE to help them with this new platform. Prodrive prep Although probably best known for its relationship with Subaru and WRC, Prodrive achieved prodigious success as a motorsport constructor and developer. The list of its achievements would fill pages, but suffice to say there aren’t many years over the last 27 that did not include wins and championships in WRC, BTCC, Sportscars and Endurance Racing in Europe, the USA, Australia and China. In developing a World Rally Car, to use just one example of its work, the Prodrive process is to take a standard production car bodyshell from the factory, strip it back to bare metal in an acid bath and reinforce it to take World 50 May 2017 Rally punishment. This involves modifying and strengthening the suspension turrets to take the specialist spring and damper assemblies that help the car grip the road and respond to the impacts that the rally stages impose on the car at speed. It also involves bracing the turrets and incorporating them into the custom roll cage that provides more overall stiffness and torsional rigidity to the rally car. Having access to 3D geometric data, accurate to fractions of a millimetre, is essential to this modification process, and having access to ‘native’ 3D data from the original car manufacturer is a vital component in streamlining the process to produce design modifications as fast as possible with zero defects - watchwords in the motorsport industry. Industry standard software is the only way Prodrive is able to do this. Custom build Alongside the stiffening of the body and the suspension turrets, there is extensive customisation required to turn a road car into a rally car. Custom location for the steering column and pedal box; custom pick-up points for the sequential transmission levers and hand brake; custom fuel tank location; provision of optimum location for the Mil-spec wiring harness, brake lines and fuel lines. All these processes rely heavily on accurate 3D data and fast and effective software. The design of the wiring harnesses needs the sophisticated spatial manipulation capabilities of modern 3D CAD software - there’s no point trying to get a bundle of 30 wires into a space too small to accommodate it - and feedback on bend radii, as harnesses, hydraulic and fuel lines are threaded through the virtual body structure, is vital. Engines, transmissions, suspensions and brakes tend to be outsourced, but to Prodrive’s design. Again having access to native CAD data that virtually all its suppliers and subcontractors use and generate is essential to meet the insanely short time-scales in motorsport. Considered change In motorsport, the last thing you need is for everything to keep changing constantly. As CAD/CAM and CAE are only tools, motorsport engineers need the fastest and most effective of each, but they don’t want them continuously upgraded or changed unless that upgrade shaves time off the process or improves accuracy. This is where DTE comes in. One of its most important roles is to supply the best solution in an appropriate manner for the team to do what it does most effectively. It’s DTE’s job to evaluate new trends and manage their introduction where and when appropriate. “Over the years we have had to make key decisions on which software developer to partner with,” says Mr Haines. “Always considering our existing customers and the relevance of the new software changes to their businesses. “It is significant that all this time Prodrive has listened and moved in the direction we headed. "Their loyalty and belief in our choices is an endorsement to their commitment to their suppliers - treating them as partners rather than just mere suppliers. During this period, we have moved through three major changes in technology - all of which Prodrive endorsed and implemented,” Mr Haines says. Prodrive, during the same period, has gone from a one-make rally car builder to a global general automotive consultancy and sportscar builder with Formula 1 interests. “We always look to our software suppliers as key to our advancement,” Mr Goddard says. “In this period of our company’s growth we have all faced many changes and challenges, and DTE’s leadership and support has always been second to none and hence our long relationship is a testament to these values.” 'Drawings are still used on the manufacturing floor and in the inspection departments'
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