CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

29 May 2007

Implementation Investments

The GERG Group Selects VISTAGY's FiberSIM® Software to Engineer Advanced Composites for Motor Sports Industry

VISTAGY, Inc. announced that The GERG Group , a German manufacturer of products made of advanced composite materials, has selected VISTAGY's FiberSIM® suite of software to improve the engineering process for developing complex composite racing car parts for its customers in the motor sports and Formula One industries. GERG engineers plan to automate and streamline the entire end-to-end development process for composite products-from conceptual design to manufacturing and quality assurance.

With the recent deployment of FiberSIM software, powered by VISTAGY's EnCapta® technology, GERG is creating complex racing car parts made of advanced composites, including the wings and struts. These parts are comprised of hundreds of plies of composite material, and exhibit very complex curvature that cannot be easily or quickly defined with commercial CAD software systems alone. With FiberSIM operating inside GERG's existing 3D CAD system, engineers are able to avoid the potential risk for errors and delays that would negatively impact stringent delivery deadlines imposed by Formula One.

FiberSIM will enable engineers to capture all non-geometric design detail, such as engineering annotations or materials tables which are critical to the accurate development of a quality product, and quickly associate that data to the CAD model geometry. And it will efficiently share the data across manufacturing and quality teams to verify final products meet all durability, safety and delivery specifications. The firm has initially used FiberSIM to create consistently-accurate flat patterns for composite parts and will automatically generate detailed documentation such as plybooks to streamline manufacturing. FiberSIM will also directly export the flat patterns from the 3D CAD model to automated cutting machines and laser projectors to assist in quickly and accurately laying up composite materials on tool surfaces. GERG plans to quickly expand its use of the software for all future design and manufacturing projects in order to reduce cycle times and costs.

"The GERG Group is growing quickly and is an influential composites manufacturing partner in the Formula One industry, so we needed more sophisticated model-based design software specialized for composites," said Benno Haerdl, head of composites at The GERG Group. "Our skilled engineers evaluated several solutions, but we feel that FiberSIM is the best and most complete set of tools for developing composite parts. We will also tap into VISTAGY's years of expertise and knowledge in the Formula One industry to streamline our development processes and reduce cycle times - giving us an advantage over the competition."

For more information about FiberSIM software, please visit the VISTAGY Web site .

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