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September 2008 |
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| Nigel Fleming, Software Development Technical Specialist What trends are affecting the way users use your software? The software customer is increasingly being controlled by processes and procedures introduced in the desire to achieve quality standards. This can make it harder to introduce new software products to a customer because they are not ‘in the process’. How is this affecting the way you will design your next generation of your software? To encourage the transition from an ‘in process’ software product to a new product we add a client specific wrapper that embraces as much of the existing product functionality as possible and has supporting data file filters to retain legacy data. As an example this may be the addition of a command line mode to a graphical application.
How can engineers improve the intelligence of their development process? Speed and ease of use are two of the key advantages of using a software product like LSA and we are making continuous improvements on visual interaction which enhances these areas. The benefit of having such interactive software is the ability to identify trends in the suspension response very quickly. This gives the engineer time to think about the problems and use the software to answer their questions and try out ideas. What’s holding your software’s ability back? Not much! The great thing about this software is that it has the capacity to save the user so much basic work. The majority of the common suspension configurations are pre-programmed and all you have to do is supply your dimensions and loads and the system is ready for your analysis. In many cases, software packages have integrated too much technology which compromises the usability. It is important to keep focus on the user. If the user does not understand the process, then the capabilities of the package will not be fulfilled. What are you doing to make the software more useful for engineers? LSA is the encapsulation of our suspension know-how in software form. It was originally developed for our vehicle dynamics engineers. These very engineers have been responsible for the driving dynamics of many of the world’s class-leading passenger cars and were integral to the design and development of this software. It is continuously used by the vehicle dynamics engineers and as a world leading engineering consultancy, there is instant feedback from the engineers with an intuitive feel for successful software development. It is written by engineers for engineers! What is the next big step for your software? Whilst we are continuing to hone our chassis and suspension skills, aided and abetted by improving knowledge and software, we are also working heavily on new vehicle technology areas such as hybrid and electrics. We realise that for these technologies there is a lack of suitable software support and we are looking to provide tools to meet these areas. Some of these may ultimately find their way into the public arena as licensed products whilst others will remain exclusive to Lotus. How do you see the software industry evolving in the next five years? We anticipate that the major software players will continue the trend of merging products through joint ventures or acquisitions as the drive to integrate separate design/analysis tasks within a single product framework continues. This could lead to issues over greater cycle times between product releases as development team sizes grow to support increased product complexity, leaving emerging technologies not being fully supported by analysis tools. Opportunities will exist for smaller flexible software groups to produce niche software products to support these emerging technologies. This is particularly apparent in the Powertrain area as the combination of legislative and environmental pressures require vehicles with high fuel efficiency and ever reducing emissions levels. These changes will require radical and innovative solutions with design ideas being supported by focused software products, such as LSA. |
The Lotus Suspension Analysis (LSA) is used by a wide variety of manufacturers from global OEM’s right through to Tier two’s. Having produced outstanding handling road and race cars for over 50 years, we have made our chassis technology available in a simple-to-use software package that is in particular proving popular with Motorsport engineers through the reduced learning curve time. Our suspension system has also been used at over 100 world renowned academic institutions including Kingston University, London, University LeMans, France and Kookmin University, Korea. This gives the engineers of the future real world experience of using an advanced software package that they will be familiar with when tuning the next generation of cars. LINKS Ansys: multi-physics analysis pays off. Read more... Integrated: Electromagnetic CAE tools that combine FEA and simulation. Read more... Lotus: vehicle dynamics made quick and easy. Read more...
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