DEVELOP3D October / November 2023 by X3DMEDIA

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WELCOME EDITORIAL Editor Stephen Holmes stephen@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3384 5297 Managing Editor Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312 Consulting Editor Jessica Twentyman jtwentyman@gmail.com Consulting Editor Martyn Day martyn@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 542

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ABOUT DEVELOP3D is published by

here’s nothing like driving a brand-new car to make you aware of how far the automotive industry has come since your 2015 VW Golf rolled off the factory line. The electronics for every function, the plush little details, the in-car entertainment, the ability to identify where the lanes are in low-visibility torrential rain, not to mention traction control that keeps you chugging ahead while others aquaplane into an embankment. And that’s just my experience of driving the hire-car back home from DEVELOP3D LIVE! We’ve spoken to a lot of companies with a vested interest in mobility this month, and the message is the same from all quarters: change is happening, and it’s all being enabled by digital design and engineering tools. I was privileged to get a snoop around Nissan’s London design studio, an amazing place with a team of crack personnel I’d gauge as more versatile than those to be found at your average hypercar company. They’re turning their hand to everything, from school run-friendly SUVs to snarling GT-Rs. I was impressed to see how much they packed into their design process, as well as their headquarters. I also got a good view of what’s driving software development, thanks to members of Autodesk’s automotive product line team. We talked Alias and VRED, of course — tools synonymous with car styling. The arrival — and success — of several start-ups has given the digital design process a sense of urgency for more established market incumbents. Learning how Autodesk is turbocharging its software to enable those companies to slash design processes from seven years to just two years was intriguing stuff. Elsewhere, Shay Moradi of Vital Auto considers how AI is set to impact design. There could be few people better placed than him to answer that question. And SJ goes behind the scenes of the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, to see how researchers at the innovation hub are tackling all sorts of areas of automotive engineering and manufacturing. And Laurence Marks sets out why explicit solvers are key to simulating fast-moving issues in transport. So with any luck, we’ve managed to pack into this issue almost as much as you’d expect to find in a new car — except the smell. You’ll have to imagine that for yourself.

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CONTENTS OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2023 ISSUE NO. 142

12 14 16 18 26 28 31 33 35 36 39 40

NEWS Solid Edge 24 gets a boost for handling large assemblies, Wacom launches new Cintiq Pro models, and Autodesk celebrates Fusion 360 milestone FEATURES Comment: Shay Moradi on shaping AI’s role in automotive Comment: SJ visits the Manufacturing Technology Centre Visual Design Guide: Jabra Evolve2 65 Flex headset COVER STORY Nissan designers go future-tripping Laurence Marks gets explicit about a multisolver world Merging lanes: Autodesk’s strategy for Alias and VRED New order: Chropynska reengineers internal processes BMW turns to 3D-printed sand casting for engine cores Full steam ahead: New interfaces for train drivers at SPII International velvet: 3D printing interiors fabric at Peugeot Future pipeline: MMM takes additive approach to tubing In living colour: DEVELOP3D’s guide to colour 3D printers

REVIEWS 44 Xencelabs Pen Display 24 46 AMD Threadripper Pro 7000 WX / Threadripper 7000 50 THE LAST WORD When it comes to automotive design, a new generation of companies is driving uptake of radically different tools and approaches, writes Stephen Holmes

The wood used to produce this magazine comes from Forest Stewardship Council certified well-managed forests, controlled sources and/or recycled material

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NEWS NEWS

SOLID EDGE 2024 ADDS AI AND MAINTAINS ITS FOCUS ON HANDLING LARGE ASSEMBLIES » With new pace added to its engine, Solid Edge 2024 enables users to instantly pan, zoom and rotate large assemblies up to nine times faster than the previous release

he release of Solid Edge 2024 sees Siemens’ software continue its focus on large assembly performance, while introducing new functionalities and enhancements to automate and speed design as well as collaboration. Part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, Solid Edge 2024 has added pace, enabling users to instantly visualise, pan, zoom and rotate large assemblies up to nine times faster than the previous release. Better model view performance reduces lags, stutters and buffering, while new Immersive View Styles put models in a real-world environment that automatically updates with model movement for more contextual realism while designing. AI gets a run out in 2024, helping predict and offer valid alternatives for parts in an assembly based on relationships with other parts, while AI is used in the user interface to learn behaviour, showing users relevant commands in the right context to help speed up their workflow.

AI is also found in Solid Edge CAM Pro, helping produce faster, more accurate, programming with a prediction node to guide users through the operation editing process, with suggestions based on the machining application and their individual programming styles. The Cloud Connect Tool Library is a cloud-based tool manager that allows users to edit and define tools before using them. Faster and more efficient material removal is automatically provided by 3D Adaptive Roughing. To better convey design intent for downstream manufacturing, new Model Based Definition (MBD) capabilities have been added, including automated assistance to reduce ambiguity while proposing consistent model dimensioning and annotations. Improved publishing tools support delivery design information through customisable templates. Siemens’ Synchronous technology’s intelligent modelling capabilities recognise and maintain design intent in real time,

even on models from other systems. Generative design capabilities add machine intelligence to concept design, automatically computing geometric solutions from defined constraints. As part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, 2024 sees enhanced interoperability between Solid Edge and NX, Teamcenter and Teamcenter Share. Solid Edge SaaS subscriptions include cloud collaboration with Teamcenter Share. Connected to products across the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, Share offers users cloud-based capabilities for collaboration anywhere. The integration with Teamcenter adds traceability of characteristics information to Solid Edge Inspector and supports both integration between Solid Edge Inspector, Siemens Opcenter and Teamcenter Quality and import of 3D data from JT files into Solid Edge 3D Publishing. NX Interoperability enhancements allow Solid Edge files to look the same when opened in NX, improve PMI associativity, and provide support for stacked annotations, centre marks, centreline of bolt hole circle and more. Teamcenter Product Configurator is now fully embedded in the Solid Edge environment. Value-Based Licensing takes the approach of bundling license tokens that can be spent to access Solid Edge add-on products on demand, giving instant access to advanced functionality that can be shared across product development teams on an as-needed basis. Used in combination with Solid Edge, the token bundle allows access to products including Generative Design Pro, Point Cloud Visualization, Electrical Routing, PCB Collaboration, Advanced PMI, Simulation and Solid Edge XpresRoute. www.sw.siemens.com

Better model view performance in Solid Edge 2024 should reduce lags, stutters and buffering

Wacom adds two new Cintiq Pro displays to its product line-up

acom has announced the launch of the Cintiq Pro 17 and Cintiq Pro 22, two new additions to its product line-up that share the same technology as the recently introduced Cintiq Pro 27. With colour-accurate displays capable of producing 1.07 billion colours, 4K resolution and a refresh rate of 120Hz, both display come with the customisable Wacom Pro Pen 3 included. The Cintiq Pro 22 features a 21.5-inch screen for those users who need more

screen real estate, while the Cintiq Pro 17 offers a more compact 17.3-inch display. Both displays offer eight Express Keys along their back edges, which users can customise according to their preferred shortcuts. Additional customisation can be found with the multi-touch gesture support, allowing the programming of specific gestures as shortcuts or virtual buttons for added workflow efficiency. Colour coverage includes 100% Rec.709, and 99% DCI-P3 coverage — the colour gamuts used most frequently in video, film and broadcast production.

The Cintiq Pro 17 is available now and is priced at £2,349.99. The Cintiq Pro 22 will be priced at £2,849.99 and is scheduled for availability from December 2023, according to the company. www.wacom.com

The Cintiq Pro family is designed with the needs of artists, game creators and video producers in mind

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NEWS

AUTODESK EXECS CELEBRATE FUSION 360'S 10TH BIRTHDAY

utodesk is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its launch of Fusion 360, a product that now supports a community of 1.3 million users, according to the company. The event has been marked by the arrival of a bumper crop of software updates for October, covering everything from faster start-up times to injection moulding simulation — a reflection of the breadth of capabilities that Fusion has taken on over the past decade. October updates include various performance improvements, including a 70% to 80% reduction in wait times. Frame rates when orbiting components in selection are improved by up to 1.5 times. Regular users may also notice reduced lag when opening, navigating between and closing document tabs. Upload performance has been improved up to 20 times. This speed-up also applies to assemblies, with design file opening now up to 193% faster than before, and the performance of finish Edit in place for

large assemblies has been enhanced to “within 3 seconds”, says the company. A perhaps more visible improvement is the new Fasteners icon, located in the Insert dropdown menu. This launches a new, searchable cloud library of nuts, bolts and washers. Once a user has identified the fastener they want, they can select multiple holes or let the tool automatically fill similar size holes on the part. There are also improvements to the Configuration capabilities first seen in the September update, which enable users to reuse parametric logic to create variations of a design in Fusion 360. As of the October release, they can also add and configure properties for internal components within a design. “We’re only scratching the surface of what’s to come,” said Autodesk community manager Keqing Song. “Thank you for being with us for the past ten years. You’re not done designing and making a better future, and neither are we.” www.autodesk.com

Now ten years old, Fusion 360 offers integrated, cloud-based CAD, CAM, CAE and PCB tools in a single platform

arkforged has announced Digital Source, its new on-demand parts platform, that will enable manufacturer-certified parts to be licensed and printed at the point of need. The new platform aims to solve supply chain challenges by enabling vendors to upload digital part designs that can be securely licensed to customers, distributors and contract manufacturers. Once uploaded, Digital Source end-users will have the ability to license the right to print parts onsite or through a growing network of approved print service providers. www.markforged.com

Campfire opens up to Meta Quest

ampfire continues to open up its 3D collaboration platform to new devices, with the introduction of its offering for the Meta Quest 3 HMD. Focused on holographic collaboration for design and engineering workflows, Campfire builds XR hardware and software that enables globally distributed teams to work with 3D models as if sharing a central holographic projector. Using the app, technical content creators can hold design reviews, assess systems for assembly at 1:1 scale and compose scenes from CAD and 3D files. www.campfire3d.com

Cura update boosts Ultimaker print speeds

ltimaker has doubled 3D printing speeds for its Ultimaker S printers, while maintaining print success rates of “95% or more”, according to company executives, who attribute these improvements to updates made to its Cura software. With the latest Cura 5.5 release, the S series now includes a range of optimised speed profiles, standardised across various line types and further fine-tuned when printing with various print profiles and Ultimaker-branded materials, including PLA, Tough PLA, PETG, and ABS. Other improvements include optimised handling of material flow rates and nozzle pressures when switching between line types; smooth internal wall pathing, reducing print time and irregular movement; and reduced erratic infill

New platform from Markforged

Altair acquires Omniquest

A motions, which smooth the movement of the print head. The S series is UltiMaker’s bestselling line of professional 3D printers, compatible with over 280 materials and an expanding selection of print profiles in the UltiMaker Marketplace. www.ultimaker.com

The Cura 5.5 software update focuses on both speed and reliability of 3D printing

ltair has announced it is buying Omniquest, in a bid to boost its simulation optimisation capabilities. Omniquest’s flagship product Genesis is an advanced structural analysis and optimisation software, which uses the finite element analysis (FEA) method in order to solve the kinds of problems that involve many variables and constraints, such as crash simulations or minimising frame and body weight in order to meet CAFÉ standards. Genesis also supports the equivalent static load method (ESLM) for highly nonlinear structural behaviours, interfacing with a range of popular thirdparty FEA solvers. www.altair.com

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RICOH AND SIEMENS JOIN UP ON ALUMINIUM 3D PRINTING

icoh and Siemens have announced that they are to develop a solution for mass production aluminium 3D printing using binder jetting technology, given the opportunity to create new value in areas such as electric vehicle (EV) development. As a first step, Ricoh has implemented Siemens’ Additive Manufacturing Network, in order to optimise its own internal process and machine management for aluminum binder jetting technology, including print job preparation, manufacture and component delivery. Ricoh’s proprietary binder jetting 3D printing technology uses the company’s 2D inkjet printing technology and expertise, which it says enables the production of metal parts with “more complex shapes that would not be possible with conventional metal processing methods such as machining and casting”. Ricoh says it has also implemented Siemens’ Brownfield Connectivity solution and is collecting and storing information on each process necessary for quality stabilisation and production control, with both companies aiming for the early commercialisation of these technologies. “The production of aluminum parts is

a holy grail for the additive industry and we’re delighted that Ricoh has chosen Siemens’ Additive Manufacturing Network capabilities from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry software to help them commercialise a much soughtafter process,” said Zvi Feuer, senior vice president of digital manufacturing software at Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Our collaboration with Ricoh will apply its expertise in additive manufacturing with our knowledge and experience in delivering additivespecific operations management technology across a wide spectrum of industries — from order capture, production planning and manufacturing, to part delivery transaction closure.” Tokutaro Fukushima, general manager for Ricoh’s Additive Manufacturing Business Centre, added: “By combining Siemens’ powerful solutions and knowledge with Ricoh’s aluminum BJT, we will be able to provide customers with highly reliable and practical systems for mass production. We hope to promote electrification together with our customers and contribute to solving social issues such as realising a zero-carbon society.” www.sw.siemens.com www.ricoh.com

ROUND UP

The Siemens/Ricoh partnership could open the doors to more complex metal parts production

Carbon has unveiled EPX 150, the company's fastest-printing, chemically resistant, high-temperature resin, purpose-built for 3D printing complex parts and features. It's targeted at products such as electrical connectors, spray nozzles and medical devices www.carbon3d.com

NTI, one of Europe’s largest Autodesk resellers, is entering the UK and Ireland market with its acquisition of Autodesk Gold Partner Blue Graphics and Blue Graphics (Europe). The latter is a specialist in the media and entertainment industries, serving customers in visual effects, animation and gaming www.nti-europe.com

Makerbot has been relaunched as an Ultimaker sub-brand that is now purely focused on the education sector, providing tools and resources for teachers and their students, including technical support, lesson plans, project ideas and curriculum development guides www.ultimaker.com

Intel launches 14th Generation processors

ntel has launched its 14th Gen Intel Core processors, a refreshed version of the 13th Gen ‘Raptor Lake’ processors launched last year, but boasting slightly higher clock speeds. While not strictly intended for workstations, the new family of Intel chips is likely to find its way into entry-level desktop workstations and looks set to perform well in largely single-threaded applications, based on the findings in our 13th Gen Intel Core versus AMD Ryzen 7000 testing last year. Intel is offering a total of six new desktop processors at launch (three of them with integrated graphics, and three without). The 14th Gen Intel Core product line is led by the Intel Core i9-14900K with 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16- E-cores) and frequencies up to 6.0 GHz.

There’s support for dual channel DDR4 or DDR5 memory up to 192 GB, integrated Wi-Fi 6/6E and Bluetooth 5.3, as well as discrete support for new Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless technologies. Support for Thunderbolt 5.0 is coming soon, according to company executives. www.intel.com

Maxon One has added preconfigured, renderready starter scenes and significant performance improvements to its October update of Cinema 4D, in a bid to make the toolset as impactful as possible for new users, and introduce faster rendering workflows from the start www.maxon.net

Aimed primarily at enthusiasts, it's likely these processors will also find their way into professional workstations

The Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) conference takes place in Chicago on 10-14 March 2024 and will feature keynotes from Jason Lopes, AM director of visual effects studio Gentle Giant, and Olaf Diegel, an AM professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand www.amug.com

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COMMENT

In automotive design, generative AI is at its earliest stages. Designers and engineers face a unique opportunity to shape AI’s development, rather than passively allowing it to shape their work, writes Shay Moradi

ur attitudes towards emerging technology matter, but I think we are still very much in the early stages of implementing any meaningful introduction of generative AI in automotive design. At Vital Auto, we have a reputation as people who experiment with and implement emerging technologies in prototyping and design. Our calculated bet on 3D printing paid off, and has since become a staple of our prototype manufacturing work. We were among the first to be asked by OEM clients how generative AI should be approached in early-stage product development, for image synthesis in particular. In a sense, we de-risked their use of this technology, by explaining its limitations and issues. We accelerated their inhouse capabilities, by showing them a series of workflows that deliver fantastic, controllable results. We couldn’t have done that without experimenting with purpose. From experience, we know an optimal path forward involves a great deal of curiosity and a balanced, pragmatic approach. We should not blindly adopt any technology such as AI, just because it is novel or computationally powerful. Instead, we should ask targeted questions about its suitability for specific design tasks. And we should think about where it may end up taking us. Are we outsourcing our actual thinking or complementing it, being inspired by the possibility space? To explain the business case, we also want to look for some form of evidence that it can provide value beyond human expertise alone. Can it boost creativity or hinder it? Is it actually more efficient? Answering these questions can help shape internal attitudes and policies in a more mature way. At Vital, we think AI should complement the work of designers and engineers in a nuanced way — a synergistic relationship where human creativity and computational capabilities enrich each other.

UNIQUE COMPLEXITIES Automotive design has its own unique complexities, as does any branch of design, really — but there’s this sense that automotive is very engineering-led, very exclusive, very specialised. A programme must integrate performance considerations, mechanical and material constraints, aerodynamics, efficiency, safety and more. As a multi-objective task, this is challenging for any experienced human or team, let alone a generative AI system. And this is why AI, right now, is only affecting small portions of development. Its function is still quite singular and its behaviour still a little ‘black box’-like. I see one of the biggest challenges in automotive design to be maintaining the emotional resonance and desirability of automotive aesthetics and function. In some product areas, we’ve definitely seen a homogenisation or ‘blandification’ effect, because we’re trying to make things that are guaranteed to function a certain way. As our use of AI develops, and the technology matures to perhaps encompass and be aware of engineering constraints, I figure it could go one of two ways. First, it could absolutely risk overoptimising to increase utility — but without their beautiful imperfections and quirks, our designs may lack charm and fail to generate interest. Second, generative AI’s ability to endlessly remix at scale may actually level the playing field and allow in some outsiders, bringing out the best designs that fit diverse tastes and functions.

SHAPING AI LIKE A TREE Although not everyone has the bandwidth or capability to do this, I think we can shape things more when they are just forming, like nurturing a sapling as it grows into a tree. Early adopters also have a commercial first-mover advantage. Experimenting extensively with AI tools to understand how they work and customise



AI should complement the work of designers and engineers in a nuanced way — a synergistic relationship where human creativity and computational capabilities enrich each other

 them using existing tool kits for your needs is advised before trying to build something custom. The more hands-on experience you get, the better. Plus, the likelihood is higher of finding something that gets you 90% of the way to where you want to go. If you really want to commission or get involved in making something new, get intimate with technical details like model architectures, the quality of source training data, ways of fine tuning. In order to shape it, you have to understand how the AI system arrives at its outputs. Have an attitude of combining outputs from different systems with your own unique human perspective and creativity. Ultimately this should be the purpose: to catalyse and supercharge human design intent. This leads to using AI more imaginatively than prescriptively. Consider open-sourcing and sharing your augmented workflows, so that other designers can build on your contributions. The key principles are taking an active role through extensive customisation, retaining human creativity, pursuing AI expertise and advocating for transparency. This should empower you to shape AI to your purposes, rather than be passively shaped by it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shay Moradi is VP of innovation & experiential technology at Vital Auto, where he’s applying his expertise in the implementation of emerging technologies in digital product design to the mobility sector. On X (formerly Twitter), he’s @organised at @vital_auto

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COMMENT

As the automotive industry gears up to go fully electric, our columnist SJ visited the MTC, a UK research facility experimenting with tech that gives them a license to thrill car engineers and enthusiasts alike

ave you ever visited somewhere that made all your crazy movie fantasies feel just that little bit more realistic? Working in metal 3D printing, I thought I was already pushing the boundaries of reality. But my post-DEVELOP3D LIVE trip across Coventry to the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) broke the proverbial third wall. My favourite engineer in all of cinema history is Q, the quartermaster from James Bond. Q was a crafty genius, able to give critical equipment the appearance of simple, everyday objects. This was very much the vibe at the MTC, too. It’s a place in the business of creating high-tech applications that look likely to have huge real-world impact within the current decade and beyond. Established in 2010 as an independent technology research facility, with the goal of bridging the gap between academia and industry, the MTC’s brief today covers advanced manufacturing, factory design and training. It’s also home to the UK’s National Centre of Additive Manufacturing. This range of interests and specialisms allows MTC researchers to piece together the latest technologies to build brilliant advanced solutions for industries like aerospace, manufacturing and automotive.

CAR CHASE While there was no Aston Martin on hand, complete with bulletproof windshields, passenger ejector seat and revolving number plates, what my visit made clear is that researchers at MTC are doing a ton of equally innovative work across automotive. The MTC aims to have a positive impact on the success of the UK’s zero-emission vehicle mandate — an ambitious plan for 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans sold in the UK to be electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030. And by 2035, the total is expected to rise to 100%. The massive overhaul required to shift

from manufacturing vehicles based on the internal combustion engine (ICE) to those powered by electricity is forcing the industry to navigate a challenging journey. We’re in an economic period where many companies would prefer to pursue short-term growth and profits rather than chase longer term rewards, but the changes required to restructure automotive manufacturing will demand at least 10 to 15 years of hard work and investment. Fortunately, the MTC’s Electrification Steering Committee is ready to step in with a plan to more rapidly overhaul engine architecture. One element of its proposals is an additively manufactured electric motor. Benefiting from increased power density, manufacturing efficiency and reduced part count, the casing for the motor uses liquid cooling channels to produce more power without overheating. This idea would also support weight savings of 10% and a size reduction of 30%, leaving more space and weight available for other architectures such as the EV battery, controls, sensors and powertrain.

TI(TANIUM) ANOTHER DAY Part of me dies a little every time a customer says they want a large, bulky part printed in titanium on our laser powder bed fusion system. Sure, titanium is one of the sexier, more exotic alloys, but it’s incredibly difficult to print. Fortunately, the MTC has been busy developing solutions and workflows for this very purpose. Using a GE Arcam 3D printer, a smallscale particle accelerator fires electrons at the powder bed under vacuum, in order to melt metal material, instead of using a direct laser weld. Cost-effective, this approach produces parts with a coarser surface finish, but ones that are less prone to warping and thermal stress. Using their fancy machine, the Qs in the MTC lab were able to print parts for the Oxford Brookes Formula Student racing team. The uprights that were printed delivered a 50% weight savings and

enabled the gearbox to produce more than 300Nm of torque per wheel. 3D printing parts is great, but it’s sometimes only half the battle when better fixtures are needed to hold these new age parts during post processing. Enter the MTC’s large-format 3D printer for thermoplastics and composites. A hybrid additive and subtractive machine, its name makes it sound like a Bond villain’s henchman: the Ambit Xtrude. The Ambit Xtrude, from US company Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies, takes a standard CNC machine tool and converts it into a hybrid machine with plug-and-play printheads for rapid additive layering. Due to some hush-hush, MI6-style security, I can only tell you about a fraction of the incredible initiatives going on inside the MTC. I met brilliant engineers who, even from behind their safety glasses, made clear their sense of purpose and passion for technology and potential applications. Even after a single visit, I’m fairly certain the MTC is well on its way to helping the UK achieve its EV goals for 2030 — bulletproof glass windows and machine gun nests not included, unless of course you have access to a Q of your own.

The Manufacturing Technology Centre based at Ansty Park in Coventry, UK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: SJ is a metal additive engineer aka THEE Hottie of Metal Printing. SJ’s work involves providing additive manufacturing solutions and 3D printing of metal parts to help create a decarbonised world.

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VISUAL DESIGN GUIDE JABRA EVOLVE2 65 FLEX

CLEAR AS A BELL Jabra’s ClearVoice tech blocks out background noise, but in addition to this, the microphone boom arm flips up, enabling the user to mute the mic during calls or to listen to music in downtime without looking like they’re about to launch into a presentation

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Designed for hybrid working, Jabra’s most portable professional headset yet offers a wide range of flexible, work-friendly features KEEPING FOCUSED When turned on, a ‘busy light’ glows red, letting everyone around you know that you’re on an important call or needing distraction-free focus

PERFECTLY PORTABLE The hinged headband folds flat, so it’s easy to take the headphones with you wherever you’re headed

COMFORTABLE WEAR Layers of ultra-soft perforated foam inside the headband give a gentle cushioning effect, while flexible ear cups rotate to move with the wearer, adding to their comfort, no matter how long the headset is worn

GOOD SOUNDS In each ear cup, 28mm speakers offer a 20Hz20000Hz range, while also benefiting from active noise cancelling

READY TO MEET Certified for all major virtual meeting platforms, the headset also boasts a dedicated Microsoft Teams button, which takes users directly to their next call

PRICE & AVAILABILITY The Jabra Evolve2 65 Flex is available now and costs £265 www.jabra.com

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UNDER TH » This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Nissan Design Europe studio, a facility hidden in plain sight in the heart of London. As the studio team celebrated the launch of the Nissan 20-23 concept car, Stephen Holmes paid a visit and discovered more going on at this location than passers-by would ever suspect

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COVER STORY

THE HOOD

The Nissan 20-23 concept car, an EV designed in London for urban driving

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COVER STORY

t is two decades now since Japanese automaker Nissan opened a dedicated London design studio, housed inside an old train shed that played an important role a century earlier in the modernisation of the city’s transport network. The Nissan Design Europe (NDE) site is a short walk north of the London Paddington rail station and lies on the footpath of another Victorian London engineering marvel, the Grand Union Canal. Every day, joggers, office workers and tourists pass by, and most of them don’t have any idea of what goes on inside this Grade II-listed, low-rise concrete structure. Once through its sliding glass doors and zen-like garden reception, the space opens up like something from a James Bond movie. Light, open areas occupy three levels, often overlooking one another and teeming with scale models, display walls and full-size clay prototypes. With its better access to natural light, the top floor is occupied by the interiors team. The mid-level, meanwhile, is assigned to exteriors designers. The lower floor – the former rail repair bay that runs in a loop through the building – is devoted to physical prototyping and clay modelling. Today, huge graphics of a new concept car, the 20-23, are emblazoned on digital screens and wall art surrounding the design team’s desks. An all-new vision for urban electric transport, the 20-23 began life as a fun project intended to reinvigorate the design team, explains Nissan Design Europe vice president Matthew Weaver, fresh back from picking up the car’s first award in Paris the night before. “Nothing too serious, it’s just for fun – for us,” is how he characterises the initial thinking behind the project. “This was definitely just our ‘therapy’ present to ourselves,” he continues. “But it’s interesting seeing the traction within the company. It’s funny: to make people enthusiastic, it’s a lot easier when you put something like that in front of them, and that was the purpose of it: to get people reacting. At the moment in the company, there’s

1 1 Assessing the quite a lot of noise around it. So most of the studying of ● design of the Nissan this as a commercial viability still has to be done.” 20-23 concept car in It’s easy to see why the Nissan 20-23 concept car has Autodesk Alias attracted so much interest. As a package, it appeals to multiple demographics. It’s squat, chunky, sporty, yet not overly aggressive, with softer lines and clever light placement that gives it a friendly face. “What would you like to see driving around the city?” That was the brief presented to the team of designers, with the focus firmly on electrification and teasing out what the ‘new desirable’ might look like in an EV for urban driving. “Ironically, the footprint didn’t start by growing. It started by reducing in size, because of nimbleness, even though it’s pretty wide,” says Weaver. That set the proportions, he says, and the games-mad team also took some inspiration from gaming. From there, the aesthetics started coming together. But as it was developing as a 1:1 clay model, older team members began congregating around it, he says, talking about World Rally Championship cars. It was a meeting of minds and ideas from different generations, it seems. Says Weaver: “The car’s easygoing, with the priorities on different things rather than, you know, the ‘old formula’. But we wanted to appeal to and, if you like, convert the petrolhead.”

SWIFT DEVELOPMENT The process of developing the 20-23 was swift, with the whole team offering up ideas, and eschewing pen and paper sketching in order to jump straight into digital tools. The proposal was refined in Autodesk Alias, using the Wacom Cintiq Pro displays on every desk. Even the earliest 3D models benefited from swift connection to Autodesk VRED, giving enhanced render quality and direct integration for virtual reality. “It’s got full collaboration built into it, so it’s like an allencompassing tool for visualisation and design review,” says Mike Jupp, manager for design realisation & technology

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‘‘ To make

people enthusiastic, it’s a lot easier when you put something like that in front of them, and that was the purpose of it — to get people reacting Matthew Weaver, Nissan Design Europe vice president

’’

at NDE. “So you can do the quick design, imaging for your high end marketing stuff, the VR and your collaboration.” The team narrows down its ideas, with one key designer focusing on either interior or exterior, before Jupp’s realisation team approaches the design, working digitally and in clay. Weaver suggests that the studio is unique in its balance and blend of both digital tools and clay modelling, circulating iterations through clay back into the digital realm via 3D scan data, and then adding any changes back to the clay. “That’s the hybrid way. We do full digital or full clay sometimes, depending on form or who’s actually available, because we’ve got some great craftsmen down there [working on clay]. We’ve got some great minds up here as well [in digital surfacing]. And actually, the output is quite interesting – it’s quite different.” Weaver says that an experienced eye can often spot a design that’s more influenced by digital versus a clay model. Both mediums offer benefits: shapes and surface treatments can work better in digital, while sculptural elements or tricky volumes can be better balanced in the physical realm. There are strong points to both. VRED is invaluable when it comes to showing the car in different contexts: environment, lighting, colour. Clay provides a different means of fine-tuning highlights. The lower floor workspace, with its three plates for positioning clay

models and its open plan visibility to all design team members as they move through the building, acts as a constant reminder of where a project is in its development and how far is left to go. Nissan models including the Qashqai and Juke – designs that spawned new market segments – were modelled here on the plates of the NDE, with the studio’s influence touching on global designs like the Patrol, GT-R and the electric Ariya. In the early days of the NDE, a clay model would be wheeled onto an aeroplane and flown to Tokyo for review at head office. These days, in terms of sustainability, it’s a lot better for that process to take place as a virtual reality (VR) call, says Weaver. And it takes up a lot less time, too. Today, in the time it would previously have taken to accompany a clay model on a round trip to Tokyo, he points out, “we’ve already done three or four iterations digitally and shared it.” The journey from sketch to production line is speeding up thanks to technology, but what has also improved is the ability to work closer with colleagues in engineering or marketing, wherever they are in the world. “[In VR] they can see immediately what the car is. Whereas actually showing them an undressed clay model doesn’t serve the same purpose. So already it helps the minds further down the process understand what the product is, let alone speeding things up.”

IMPACT OF NEW TOOLS “Any technology is still a tool to do the job, but things are definitely changing,” says Weaver, who has led NDE for three years as its vice president. Prior to that, he was design director, and before that, he spent ten years in Japan as a design project lead on the global design team. “The thing we’re already noticing in particular is AI, for example. It’s easy for things to converge – iterations of iterations – but actually, when we look at how we design cars, we’re trying to diverge. So, it’s fine if AI gives you stuff that we don’t even know yet. That’s a great bonus,” he says. Nissan is already making plans to run broader trials of AI software like Vizcom, which turns sketches into concept renderings in seconds and can be reiterated by the designer. “We don’t mind how ideas come along. The way that they’re generated, it’s kind of strange, because the discipline of sketching is such a fine art, but sketching takes so long to master. Now it’s quicker.” Weaver is intrigued by the idea of AI one day producing car surface language as a pure aerodynamic form, as opposed to CFD simulation analyses offering up results, helping designers to ‘look for the cracks’ and dig deeper into their design work. “That’s where you get little breakthrough moments, as you know – form and function. Something that really works. A eureka moment.”

2 ● 3 ● 4 Digital sketching ●

was used for the initial concept and ideation workflow for the Nissan 2023, using the latest Wacom Cintiq Pro displays

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‘‘ We always

found doing it the old way with a VR headset was hit and miss. This system takes all that out of the way Mike Jupp, manager for design realisation & technology

’’

He explains an accidental example that was found on the C-pillar of the Nissan R35 GT-R, where a styling element generated a vortex that had an unexpectedly positive effect on the rear wing. “So, not only does the style feature, it became functionally aerodynamic. You kind of have lucky moments like that.” With the 20-23 being an EV, the importance of aerodynamics can’t be overstated. When engine cooling is no longer a necessity, various scoops and vents look to make the form as invisible to air as possible. The three-door, hatchback body style features extreme aerodynamic addenda front and rear, with deep skirts to direct the airflow away from the front of the car, through apertures to cool the brakes and out through vents just behind the front wheels. “We’re learning so much about aero,” says Weaver. “It was always a bit of a dark art. You’d think that as a car designer you’d know everything, but we’re actually still learning, and interestingly, the aero guys are learning about exterior design, because what they’re saying has a massive impact on the proportions.” The evolution of car design has come a long way. In the past, stylists would ‘car dance’ around a model, pronouncing their inspirations. Today, the Nissan team works closely with colleagues in the company’s head office in Tokyo, Japan; its R&D engineering team in Bedford, UK; and with global production lines. In short, designers now take a keen interest in build, cost of part, cost of tools, production line quality assurance – all the things that help develop a better end product.

GOOD SENSE OF DIRECTION In the winding corridors of the NDE, it’s easy to lose your sense of direction. Small staircases at sharp angles lead to dimly lit design areas or down to the lower floor where the realisation team works on physical models. A sizable milling machine for rough passes sits idle, but recently used, while its plate has been wheeled over to a spot underneath strip lighting for the first stages of manual sculpting.

5 ● 6 Autodesk VRED was used to assess ●

and collaborate on the design at 1:1 scale 7 NDE vice president Matthew Weaver ●

(L) and Nissan senior vice president for global design Alfonso Albaisa (R) at the 20-23’s London debut

8 The cult classic Nissan Figaro, a car ●

designed “almost for people who don’t like cars”

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COVER STORY 9 Members of the NDE ●

Around the bend stands a GOM ATOS 5 3D scanner, recently brought in as an update to the Triple Scan variant that NDE previously used. “The quality is better, it’s quicker” says Jupp, adding that speed is its purpose: to quickly get point cloud data from clay back into digital, so a surface model can be digitised, even if just for some quick visuals. If that is taking physical into the digital, then the Nviz compact driving simulator set up next to it supports the process in reverse, putting the wearer of a Varjo XR-3 HMD into a physical seat to review interior designs. “We always found that doing it the old way, with a VR headset and trying to get somebody in the seat in the correct position every time, was hit and miss. This system takes all that out of the way because you punch in all of the package information for that interior,” says Jupp. “Nviz put it together for us. They develop their own Python plug-in for VRED, so it talks to all of the actuators and the controllers on the back, and it’s all moved within VR to match VRED to what’s going on physically.” While the team is not necessarily interested in precision when it comes to the ergonomics involved, the designer in the driving seat still assumes the proper driving position with all viewpoints, touchpoints and instruments in the right place. A colleague, meanwhile, can jump into the passenger seat, to get that particular perspective and to collaborate. Moving further around the bend of the building is an Aladdin’s cave of prototyping and machining. A Stratasys Fortus, a Stratasys J750 and a Formlabs Form 3 are used for quickly 3D printing parts that are either added to 1:1 scale models or used as scaled-down versions for internal reviews. A display cabinet in the public-facing window at the main entrance is regularly updated with a perfect scale model, as a declaration of what actually happens in the building. A woodshop with a 5-axis Belloti mill takes up a generous amount of floor space in what Weaver suggests must be one of the world’s most expensive workshops in real estate terms. “We’re quite unique, socially,” he says. Directly across the canal, on desirable Warwick Avenue, an apartment with a similar square footage would cost its buyer millions of pounds.

clay modelling team hard at work on a fullscale prototype

Most automotive design studios are located next to R&D centres, often on huge out-of-town complexes or campuses. The NDE building, by contrast, nestles among the new office towers of Paddington Basin and the leafy pathways, ducks and canal barges of Little Venice. It’s very much part of urban London. Staff have the option to drive to work, but there’s also ample public transport and of course the chance to get out after work and socialise with colleagues. “Influences are coming in, problems are solved around a table with a beer or something. It all goes into the melting pot,” says Weaver. With the idea of what a car represents as a product, and opinions about the positive impact of cars being debated, these viewpoints and chance sparks of creativity among the design team can be hugely influential. Weaver notes that Nissan, in common with almost all automakers, is doing a lot of work around sustainability and zero emissions, but the goal is to keep the positive connotations of cars – the freedom, the self-expression – and take away the negative ones. “I think it’s just morphing,” he says of the public perception of cars, before referencing a perfect scale model of a Nissan Figaro sat in a glass case. The car only saw a single year of production in Japan, based on a Nissan Micra platform, but built a lasting cult following with several thousand imported into the UK. “The Figaro was all about that: approachable, a car that is not threatening in any way. It’s like a pet, a friend, something like that. Almost for people who don’t like cars,” he says. “So I’m really interested in that topic. Nissan, of all companies, plays with that quite well because of the Japanese image. So, the Kei cars that we’ve got, the Pike cars – the S-Cargo and Figaro were those. They kind of pushed the boundaries of moving cars towards that of a character or pet,” explains Weaver. “I think it’s a super cool kind of area for automotive.” With its short wheel-base, smiling eyes and city smarts, the 20-23 is a vision of mass-appeal, modern-city driving and an exciting launchpad for the next two decades of creative work at Nissan Design Europe. www.nissan-global.com

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TECHNOLOGY

EXPLICIT STUFF » Explicit solvers are critical in automotive simulation, saving car companies millions in testing and countless driver and passenger lives. Laurence Marks looks at the development of explicit solvers and asks, in a world of multi-solvers, what are the sweet spots for today’s explicit users and workflows?

t one time, solvers were like religion. There were people who used traditional implicit methods to solve problems, and there were people with more radical outlooks, who used explicit techniques. And that, pretty much, was that. There were implicit people and explicit people, and meetings of minds weren’t common. Implicit solvers are the non-linear extensions to everyday solvers that people are accustomed to using in finite element packages. Choose non-linear options in most commercial codes and the solver used will be implicit. It’s the same ‘applied force (F) equals a constant (k), times the displacement or change in length (x)’, or F=kx solution approach, extended to handle the fact that, in the real world, when you double the load, you generally don’t get double the displacement. 1 (In lots of cases, you nearly do, and in the world of simulation, that is often enough to provide the necessary confidence and design insight.)

EXPLICIT SOLVERS AT WORK Explicit solvers, by contrast, are different. I’m in the last throes of putting together a course on explicit solvers for NAFEMS, the international association for

the engineering modelling, analysis and simulation community. In the process of building this course, I’ve been researching the early history of the technology, which predominantly centres on two main sectors where the explicit people have typically plied their trade: defence and automotive. It’s rare that you can say definitively that somebody was the first to do something, but the YouTube video of John Hallquist talking about writing the first version of Dyna3D for a project pretty much puts a stake in the ground. While employed in the weapons lab at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for 15 years, Hallquist worked on a massive finite element programme called LLNL DYNA 3D, which modelled collisions and explosions. I love that sort of thing: a project, a need with no obvious solution, and then the invention of a new technology to drive the project forward. And this technology unlocked the simulation of high-speed events where the F=Ma bit dominates the F=Kx stuff. While defence provided the motivation and incubator for explicits, automotive was the poster child. I guess that’s because motor manufacturers are more marketingsavvy than the military-industrial complex, and there are

Laurence Marks built his first FEA model in the mid-1980s and his first CFD model in the early 1990s. Since then, he’s worked in the simulation industry, in technical, support and management roles. He is currently a visiting research fellow at Oxford Brookes University, involved in a wide range of simulation projects, some of which are focused on his two main areas of interest: life sciences and motorsports

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few areas where simulation can be said to have been such an intrinsic contributor to people’s safety and wellbeing. Full vehicle crash impact models are large, complex and, as a result, require serious model build and solve resources. In fact, these complete car and occupant models prove an interesting point about simulation workflows. They take a lot of making. Even in this age of streamlined automated process, it would undoubtedly be cheaper to crash a real car than build a simulation model. But the second real test costs about as much as the first, whilst for another run of the car simulation model with slight modifications, the additional costs are negligible.

A MULTI-SOLVER WORLD The automotive and defence sectors were, for years, the only place you encountered this technology, with the systems, packages, approaches and knowledge so domain-specific they rarely escaped into the wider world. Yet we now live in a multi-solver world. If you understand the basic physics and essential mathematics of implicit solvers (and if you are using them, you really should!), you can understand the basic physics and essential mathematics of an explicit solver. In some senses it’s easier. Everything you learned about traditional solvers is still relevant in this new and oddly nuanced world. But how did this multi-solver world come to be? Well, in many respects, we can thank the acquisitive nature of the engineering software world, though in the first instance, it didn’t happen that way. Abaqus was probably

the first code that offered users the chance to switch from one type of solver to another. They’d developed both themselves, but since then, the rest of the market has caught up. Today, you’ll find that most of the simulation mega corps offer both implicit and explicit solver options, often based on the same pre- and post-processing environments. It’s even possible in mainstream CAD workspaces like Solidworks Simulation, though the solvers aren’t named as such. So you can now choose the best solver for your creative workflow without the need for some form of Damascene conversion. So, in a ‘normal’ workflow, where are the solver sweet spots? Traditional implicit solvers suffer where events are rapid and responses extreme. And by “extreme”, I mean complex contact interactions, permanent deformations and materials working at the very outer limits of their capabilities. Generally speaking, you recognise it when you see it. As we said, car and plane crashes qualify as use-case scenarios where explicit solvers work well, but so do processes like installing and operating medical devices and forming metal parts in manufacturing. If the event being modelled takes more than a second or two, then implicit solving is probably the right answer. However, given that we now live in a multi-solver age, it’s increasingly clear that the ability to experiment with both implicit and explicit solvers on the same application is critical to developing the creative workflows that drive product development. And that’s true, even if you aren’t part of the military-industrial complex.

1 Vehicle crash ●

impact models provide explicit solvers with a chance to shine 2 Traditional ●

implicit solvers suffer in situations where events are rapid and responses extreme

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FEATURE

VIEWING THINGS DIFFERENTLY A-class surfacing mainstay Autodesk Alias remains the leading design software in automotive styling. Stephen Holmes sat down with its developers to get their perspectives on the evolution of automotive design and how software is adjusting to a faster, leaner, digital workflow

he automotive industry is at a pivot point right now. The old guard is facing its strongest challenge in decades. Customer perceptions of value in a new car are changing. And after years of products looking much the same, brands are beginning to break the mould with their styling. “I think the OEMs have to put themselves out to differentiate,” says Thomas Heermann, Autodesk’s vice president for product design and manufacturing solutions and someone with a very keen focus on automotive. “If you look back over the last few years, things have been very similar in style and language. But I think if you want to differentiate, you have to be seen differently, you have to look different, you have to be a little bit different, too.” He cites BMW as one brand pushing the envelope with styling as a means to stand out from the crowd. In his role at Autodesk, Heermann has a front-row seat from which to observe how the industry is evolving. And it’s not just the products that are changing, but also OEM workflows and even Autodesk’s role as a key software provider to these companies. While there are marques that have been building cars for well over a century, and others, many from Asia, that have been in the business for several decades, there are some that have only been building cars for a handful of

years. For Autodesk, he says, “it’s amazing to deal with all these customers and see what’s important to them.”

CHANGING LANES New automotive brands present Autodesk with very different requirements as compared to legacy brands, he says. In the past, the latter might take seven years to build a new model. Not any more. Today, speed of development is the name of the game. “These guys have to get innovation into the market as soon as possible.” Changing dynamics mean Autodesk is shaping its products differently in response. Adding a new surfacing feature here, or a new shader there, is no longer going to cut it in an industry striving to slash development time down from seven years to two years. “We had to rethink how we approached this,” he says. Bringing surface modelling product Alias and visualisation toolset VRED closer together has helped customers “to inch out all these additional loops.” The new EV brands are developing new models quickly, and the legacy companies want to catch up as fast as they can. It’s with the former group that Heermann says Autodesk is having the most exciting discussions. “We talk about collaboration more; we talk about workflows and processing process optimisations. And these are areas where the industry is changing as well.”

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‘‘

It isn’t about using this application or that application. It’s about using capabilities that allow us to get tasks done. And they should all feel the same, behave the same

’’

Autodesk is working on closer links between Alias and VRED to create more seamless workflows for auto designers

In terms of styling, Heermann is seeing a more digitally focused workflow as one of the key drivers of faster car development. EV start-ups that initially focused on the engineering of batteries and powertrains are now intent on developing their own design language, “because appeal and design are the biggest decision makers for customers now.” The importance of interiors, with textiles, material finishes and “everything that makes you feel at home in your vehicle”, is also a driving factor for new workflows. It’s certainly increasing the importance of extended reality, or XR, according to Marek Trawny, Autodesk’s director for product management in its automotive group. “You can’t build twenty different interiors, ship them around the world to ask people how they like them,” he points out. But in the digital world, that’s possible and it’s faster and more cost-efficient, too. “Colour, Material, Finish – that’s going to be huge moving forwards. I’m having lots of conversations with customers around that.”

PICTURE THIS At the same time, automotive designers want more from tools like VRED than something that delivers visualisations at the end of the design process. They want something they use throughout, from checking early concepts to making decisions on colour trims.

The ability to watch a visualisation play out on a large video wall or to pop on a headset and look at the model in 1:1 scale is incredibly useful. Even the assessment of materials, always a tactile process, is getting streamlined now that accurate views of samples can be delivered digitally before physical samples are sent out. Digital models, meanwhile, have grown vastly in importance – another trend driven by start-ups – and given the size and security of the data sets involved, the cloud has a big role to play here. “As we know, traditionally, the cloud and design studios were like two magnets pushing away from each other,” laughs Trawny. Now, studios are eager to learn more. “That’s really interesting to see. And I think it’s this kind of peer pressure at work, which is currently building up, and everyone forcing everyone else to innovate, to remain competitive.” Heermann adds: “I think customers also understand what extra capabilities they’re getting as well. In order to collaborate, you need a cloud. Computational design or machine learning only work if you have cloud access, as well. So certain things, customers understand, and that helps them to accelerate. Cloud makes it really easy to scale up bigger, and have more people participate in the design process too.” DEVELOP3D.COM OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2023 29

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FEATURE With this in mind, VRED is playing a greater part in the workflow traditionally headed up by Alias, and this is definitely a key factor behind both 2023 versions receiving a refreshed user interface that adds consistency and makes transitioning between the two products easier. “It isn’t about using this application or that application. It’s about using capabilities that allow us to get tasks done. And they should all feel the same, behave the same. But for us, under the hood, it’s a great way to get innovation out even faster as well,” says Heermann. Even the most die-hard Alias users understand the change and how it can help them to be faster. Plus, new users, some emerging from universities, some accustomed to using all types of tools, look up to Alias and VRED, says Trawny. “They want to learn them, because they know if they learn these tools, they can make a living out of it.” Autodesk is aware that the company’s products are often part of a wider ecosystem of tools used by customers, but as Heermann puts it, it wants the Alias-VRED combination to be their backbone for innovation. Hence the need for greater familiarity in UI and interoperability between all tools, allowing designers to pick the best tool for a respective job and pass the data on to the next person in the workflow. Alias still holds key abilities, explains Heermann, that give it an edge. “What you can do in Alias doesn’t exist elsewhere. You can do sub-D modelling together with NURBS modelling and it’s connected. I think we have opportunities to innovate where others maybe cannot go and that gives us a unique advantage.”

ROLLING ONWARDS It’s the pipeline that’s key, says Trawny. How do people collaborate? How can we automate the process in the background? How does data move through the entire workflow? For this last element, the automotive team is advocating ShotGrid. Plucked from the Autodesk Media & Entertainment suite of software, the project management toolset is more typically used in animation and special effects workflows. “Something like ShotGrid is way more natural to a designer than a PDM system, which is very dry and technical,” continues Trawny. “That was really the starting point.” He explains that giving customers the power to create a pipeline that they think is perfect for them, while drawing on Autodesk’s decades of industry experience, is key to enabling the creativity end of the process. “That’s where the magic of being an Autodesk customer kind of comes into play,” he says. “Everyone designs a vehicle at the end of the day. It’s just the way they get there that differs.” www.autodesk.com

1 ● 2 The user interfaces of Alias and ● VRED now have more commonalities, making it easier for users to learn both and use them in tandem 3 ● 4 Extended reality, or XR, is ● increasingly playing a more meaningful role at various different stages in automotive design

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PROFILE

SILVER LININGS » With its state-of-the-art robotic production lines, Chropynska accelerates build and assembly times in car factories worldwide, but needed to bring the same kind of slick efficiency to its own quotation and purchasing processes

ver a century ago, Henry Ford’s adoption of assembly lines transformed the automotive industry, reducing the time to build a car from 12 hours to just one hour and 33 minutes. Today, when automation is king, robotic handlers, welders and transport lines are critical in enabling automotive manufacturers to deliver a car every 60 seconds. The time pressures involved make the design and optimisation of assembly lines critical for OEMS. Chropynska Group has worked on this issue on behalf of some of the biggest industry names out there, including Audi, BMW, Opel, Porsche, Skoda and Volkswagen. Established in the Czech Republic in 1992, the company begins each project by taking a 3D model of the body of a car from its manufacturer. Chropynska’s team of experts then sets about developing a customised production line for its various parts and components – a mammoth task, given the average car requires around 4,000 welding points alone. Optimising the layout of the assembly line, selecting appropriate components, integrating automation technology, testing the line and then delivering the final set-up takes around 8 months. Sourcing the various robots and other equipment needed can eat up much of this time, since only 15% of what’s necessary is manufactured by Chropynska itself. Other supplies are either purchased from third parties or manufactured to bespoke requirements by specialist suppliers.

CENTRALISED BOMS Chropynska has grown significantly and now has eight facilities globally. Associates from these sites are all bidding for new business on a daily basis, so consistent processes and procedures are a must-have if teams are to avoid duplication of effort and the risk of two different teams from within the company bidding for the same work. Company executives they needed to standardise on a connected system that would give their employees access to accurate information and a centralised BOM. A prolific user of Dassault Systèmes’ Catia V5, Chropynska turned to the company’s 3DExperience platform as its logical next step. Immediately, the Power’By function helped connect Chropynska’s existing Catia V5 files to the platform, while the software acted as a central source of information. The addition of Delmia Ortems for planning and collaboration also helps Chropynska to use its machine tooling capabilities more efficiently, with the company less likely to have unforeseen production requirements and face costly uplift payments from suppliers as a result. A unified BOM, accessible to all subcontractors, helps facilitate the standardisation of naming conventions for various parts, while also enabling a customer view that will show the OEM’s naming preference in parallel. These features, teamed with improved collaboration, support a more precise quoting process and more strategic purchasing, helping to save at least 2% on material costs each year (totalling some €1 million) and lining it up for a more profitable future in automotive. www.chropynska.cz

Chropynska delivers optimised production lines to automakers worldwide

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PROFILE

SAND AND DELIVER 1

» BMW has built a new automated factory line that allows the company to take full advantage of 3D-printed sand casting for cores, producing thousands every week and benefiting designers, manufacturers and end customers

rom origins that date back thousands of years, through the industrial age and now with the addition of 3D printing and inorganic forms, sand casting has been through several periods of radical transformation in its long history. At BMW Group’s largest component plant in Landshut, Germany, the world’s first fully automated additive serial 3D production line for sand cores has been built. Developed with the knowhow of experts at BMW, Loramendi and Voxeljet, the Industrialisation of Core Printing (ICP) cooperation project looks set to inject this ancient art with added speed, sustainability and design freedom and set a new industry standard at the same time. As a company, Loramendi has a long history in developing solutions that keep foundries at the cutting edge of production, with expertise in inorganic casting methods. Joined by Voxeljet’s 3D-printed sand casting technology, the two companies have developed a system for the automatic large-scale production of sand cores used in casting cylinder heads for high-efficiency engines. The ICP line is currently producing thousands of 3D-printed cores each week to support the mass production of the latest generation of BMW Group engines at Landshut, which supplies all of BMW’s vehicle and engine plants worldwide. These are

used for almost all BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles, as well as for motorcycles from the company’s BMW Motorrad brand.

ONE-PIECE SAND CORES The production of inorganic 3D-printed cores has enabled BMW Group to advance the design of its engine components. For example, the cylinder head for BMW’s B48 engine has been significantly improved by using 3D printing to produce water jacket outlet combi cores. Additionally, 3D printing allows BMW to produce sand cores in one piece, reducing the complex design of engine components while optimising engine efficiency and fuel consumption. The custom, low-emissions production line significantly reduces foundry emissions, as only water steam is produced during the casting process. The automated line integrates Voxeljet’s latest highspeed VJET-X 3D printers into a fully automated preand post-processing workflow, which also includes Loramendi’s industrial microwave curing units. A print head selectively bonds layers of sand to create the cores, which are then unpacked, microwave-cured, cleaned and inspected before being fed into BMW’s established casting process. The printing rates of the Voxeljet VX1300-X have been increased by a factor of ten over previous models, and the toolless design of the sand cores allows BMW to make variant changes at unprecedented speed without time-consuming tool changes and production downtime. Unused material from 3D printers is recycled and reused in the production process. www.voxeljet.com

1 Thousands of cores ●

are 3D-printed each week to support the production of BMW engines 2 A print head ●

bonds layers of sand to create cores that are then microwavecured and cleaned 3 3D printing ●

enables BMW to produce sand cores in one piece, reducing complexity 4 The ICP project ●

is a collaboration between BMW, Loramendi and Voxeljet

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FROM ROAD TO RAIL

» Automotive design technologies are filtering through to other transportation sectors. We learn how SPII is helping to design better human machine interfaces for rail, using a VR set-up built with automotive expert Italdesign

aking sure that everything a driver needs is in clear view and easy reach is a key element of automotive interiors design. But the goals of good ergonomics, unimpeded viewpoints and easy-to-navigate layouts are just as applicable to other forms of transport. Industrial engineering firm SPII has worked alongside automotive expert Italdesign to create the V-Desk, a customisable and adjustable console. Along with a virtual reality (VR) headset and markers, this is designed to help designers of trains to create optimal layouts for driver cabs. The product is an evolution of the mock-ups already used by automotive interior designers, where a physical seat, dash and door shells combine with overlaid VR graphics. Based in Turin, Italy, Italdesign is well placed to help with the development, since not only has it been responsible for some incredible designs for brands such as Alfa Romeo and Caterham, but also enjoys a solid track record in public transportation projects. A self-professed user of immersive virtual and mixed reality (VR/MR) from the very beginning of its styling workflow, Italdesign collaborated with human machine interface (HMI) experts at SPII to lend its experience and help style the V-Desk package for fast deployment times. Saronno, Italy- based SPII, meanwhile, is part of the railway engineering company Schaltbau Group. Looking for HMI innovations based on technology, ergonomics and style, its goal is to build better driver cabins and controls for the latest trains. The underlying philosophy for V-Desk is user-centred

design, explains SPII technical manager Francesco Colombo. Helping designers identify specific usability goals at each stage of the design process involves the study of user attributes and habits, the working environment, and the specific tasks they need to perform. What’s key is that the V-Desk tries to optimise around how users can, want or need to use it, explains Colombo. “In this way, the operators are not forced to change their behaviour and expectations to accommodate the product.”

CRITICAL COMPONENTS The most critical components in a cab – the machine controller, levers, keyboard and display – can be positioned, evaluated and moved in real time by experienced ‘test drivers’. Dummy levers and controls are highlighted, with markers that display them in the virtual space, while the driver can also wear gloves that monitor the exact movements of fingers when interacting with virtual switches or buttons. Setting up the experience takes significantly less time than building a physical mock-up, enabling design teams to switch between multiple scenarios and set-ups in a few clicks, while allowing project stakeholders to enter the same virtual environment from anywhere in the world. As the VR utilises existing CAD data, streamed through a HTC Vive Pro head-mounted display, the set-up reportedly reduces development times drastically – from nearly four months down to four to five weeks. And, in the process, it keeps even the most ambitious rail projects running on time. www.spii.eu

1 Testing a proposed ●

layout to ensure a good fit with train drivers’ tasks and habits

2 The V-Desk virtual ●

working environment provides a testbed for better train cabins and controls

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PROFILE

HOT SEAT Heralding a new era for electric vehicles at Peugeot, the brand’s Inception concept car boasts 3D-printed textural patterns applied to its interior fabrics and seats, in order to enhance the form and function of this futuristic vision

concept car exists not just to present a vision of exterior design intent, but also to showcase creative ideas for interiors. That is certainly the case with Peugeot’s Inception concept model, launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The interior of the car uses a velvet material that extends from the seats to the floor and features stunning 3D patterns created using Stratasys’ 3DFashion technology. With Stellantis-owned Peugeot’s design for electric vehicles (EVs), a minimalist, angular interior supports the overall objective of reinventing the driver experience. Integral to this experience are these fantastic velvetcovered seats made from 100% recycled polyester. “At Peugeot, we always like to combine function with aesthetics,” says Maud Rondot, Peugeot’s head of CMF design, the department responsible for the future vision of the Peugeot brand. “Our objective with the Inception concept’s seating area was to modernise the velvet material used and decompartmentalise the design by extending it to also serve as a visually impactful floor mat,” she explained.

1 Peugeot’s ●

Inception concept car was unveiled at the CES 2023 show 2 Inception brings ●

“a new, simpler and more refined design language” to the brand 3 Interior fabrics ●

are 3D-printed with ‘micro architectures’ across seats and floor 4 The metallic velvet ●

plays with light and accepts direct-totextile printing

A fundamental theme of the Inception concept was to capture the relationship between materials and light, which required the Peugeot Advanced Design team to use materials that were in keeping with the car’s specific look and would embody the brand’s vision for future EVs. Peugeot worked with single material effects, selecting a metallic shade for the velvet, which is designed to look futuristic while playing with light, before adding the semi-transparent ‘micro-architectures’ across the seats and floor. “Instead of covering the whole stretch of material, it was really advantageous that we could leave the velvet visible,” says Rondot. “3D printing gave us the ability to modify and reprint the files very easily, but also important is its durability

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AT and efficiency. Indeed, as a technology, it doesn’t require moulds, which is revolutionary in terms of industrialisation.” Produced using the TechStyle edition of Stratasys’ J850 3D printer, the process is capable of full-colour, multi-material 3D designs that can print seven different materials directly onto fabric at the same time, along with transparencies and detailed textures. Rondot explains that with current embellishment methods, it is not possible to build thickness and height to the extent that Stratasys’ 3DFashion technology allows. Where the floor area space would typically need to be treated with a protective overlay, the Inception concept instead leverages direct-to-textile 3D printing. Says Rondot: “Often, there is a delta between what we imagine and what we can obtain, so it was quite magical to see our idea arrive precisely as envisaged and with a remarkable quality of execution.”

www.peugeot.com | www.stratasys.com

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PROFILE

FUTURE PIPELINE

» Precision production has been essential at Manufactura Moderna de Metales since it first started supplying the transport industry in last century. Today, its additive manufacturing capability is an invaluable tool for developing new products for the future of automotive

key supplier to the transport industry since its foundation in 1944, each generation of management at Manufactura Moderna de Metales (MMM) has looked to progress the company’s production capabilities in order to keep pace with the very latest developments in automotive systems. Headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, with facilities in Romania and Mexico, MMM has built a reputation for designing and manufacturing advanced fluid conducting products. Currently, it provides cooling, air recirculation, vacuum, fuel and brake systems in steel, stainless steel, aluminium and its alloys for brands like Audi, BMW and Toyota. In 2019, the company added 3D printing technology to its production processes, initially with the aim of producing fixtures and shims to mount precision tubing. “These tubes have different diameters and are expensive, so when you can print the tube and validate the shims, and get the right diameters and fixtures to simulate assembly and mounting during production, then you have a fantastic advantage to offer your customers,” says MMM’s Borja Batlle, business development manager of the company’s 3D printing division, Addival. “We have managed to design and produce fixtures that are 100% printed in three weeks and ready to validate the whole process.” The team realised it could create precision metal tube bending tools for the development stage as well as new shims and other control tools for use in both production and development stages with deviations of 0.05 mm. “Over the last five years, we have cut down component delivery time from an average of 58 days to just two to

three weeks, even taking as little as three days in some cases. A complete success story!” says Batlle.

PRODUCTION FLOWS

1 MMM designs ●

and manufactures advanced fluid conducting products for brands including BMW and Toyota

At its Romanian factory, MMM has designed a fixture for 2 Advanced fixtures ● checking rubber sleeves, creating an internal mechanism and shims are a inside the fixture with a worm gear. “Thanks to the highprerequisite for precision build, the fixture could be used to check the producing accurate maximum deviation of 1.0 mm at the tube ends,” says Batlle. tubing “This play, which determines the precision for finding a part’s tolerance, has saved 60% of the total time for the cycle. These sorts of mechanisms cannot be incorporated using traditional methods, so it’s only with composite fixtures that we can create solutions like this.” To complement its machining processes, MMM acquired a Markforged X7 3D Printer, primarily for its ability to print parts reinforced with continuous fibreglass and carbon fibre composites. Initially used for prototypes, the X7 is now used to design and produce final components directly in the 2 factory, thanks to its balance of ease of use, precision and versatility, says Batlle. Buoyed by this success, the next step saw MMM introduce a Markforged Metal X 3D printer, allowing the company to combine its output with the polymers from the X7 to create high-strength, light-weight hybrid fixtures. “We have used 17-4PH stainless steel and H13 tool steel in the Metal printer, although we specialise in pure copper components for high-conductivity parts,” continues Batlle, explaining that some printed copper parts are used as welding electrodes. In a sector demanding specialised parts, it’s the precision that MMM is achieving with 3D printing that is driving results and the next generation of the company’s evolution. www.mmm.es

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FEATURE

IN LIVING » A visit to Mimaki has rekindled Stephen Holmes’ appreciation of colour in 3D-printed prototypes. But, as he reports, recent advancements make colour worth considering for engineering models as well as for CMF workflows ew locations showcase an abundance of colour like the city of Amsterdam during its annual Pride Weekend. Once through Schiphol airport, filled with Dutch orange football shirts heading off on vacation, and a riot of rainbow flags arriving in time for the party, we headed to printer manufacturer Mimaki’s European headquarters, where we found the Japanese company putting on an equally colourful display. Mimaki-s UV-cured inkjet printing is an evolution of

the brand’s 2D large format printers, which fill most of the demo space at its European base. On show are the company’s most creative innovations for printing designs directly onto materials such cotton fabrics, clear polymers for window displays, and even 3D objects such as pens and water bottles. Mimaki’s 2.5D technology is built to operate in high turnover production environments and shares much of the same mechanical design DNA as its 3D printing brethren. Mimaki’s two 3D printers, the 3DUJ-553 and smaller 3DUJ-2207, occupy their own segment of the building,

STRATASYS J850 PRIME

The flagship of Stratasys’ Polyjet UV-cured resin 3D printers, the J850 Prime comes with Pantonevalidated colours and multi-material abilities that give flexibility for prototyping a wide range of products. With high accuracy, textures can be added to parts to enhance the realism, or simply add fine text or detail to a print – like digital displays, woodgrain or stitching – bringing even more options, in addition to the halfmillion colours it can output. A wide material selection offers impressively translucent and rubber-like options, while a range of biocompatible materials and digital ABS for highimpact strength and heat resistance offer functional prototyping ability. If it’s colour that you’re looking to bring in-house, Stratasys says it can produce full-colour models straight from your Keyshot render in 20% of the time it takes to produce a traditional painted model. Once you fill up the 490 x 390 x 200 mm build platform with options, then this new ability for design review only takes on more promise. www.stratasys.com

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FEATURE

G COLOUR surrounded by an array of fantastical 3D models, from medical guides to magical statues, and from pairs of sneakers to architectural models. The company offers no ‘functional’ materials for stronger or elasticated parts. Instead, the focus is on reproducing over 10 million colours in extreme detail. What you can do with those colours is impressive but comes with some limitations. While fast post-processing of Mimaki parts makes them more robust than you might expect, they’re not designed to stand up to high temperatures, for example, and elements such as hinges will show signs of wear after time. However, where this technology excels is in putting across an idea, selling a concept or explaining a process as a tangible part.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES Colour 3D printing has been around for over a decade, yet uptake has been restricted by two factors. First, there’s the faff involved in digitally colouring a CAD model and This colour 3D print from Autodesk shows simulation results in the context of a part

HP MJF 580

Killed off after only four years in production, HP’s colour 3D printer can still be found hard at work in some service bureaux, and with good reason. The parts it produces, when post-processed, are tougher than the competition and the process is relatively fast. This allows for customised, functional end-use parts (such as prosthetics) to be built and to complement or stylise a product to the individual user’s tastes. Parts are high density and low porosity PA 12 Nylon, which itself is pretty robust, but is further enhanced by post-processing. The ability to work with colour at the voxel level means smooth gradients and 1,200 dpi crisp details right across the 332 x 190 x 248 mm build area. A range of post-processing techniques can be applied to get the most from the parts, most of which can be automated, from primary blast cleaning through to vapour smoothing that enhances colours and increases mechanical properties.

STRATASYS J55 PRIME

At the other end of Stratasys’ J-Series product line is the J55, a scaled-down, design studio-friendly version of the J850, designed to pop off colour models at will. Its rotating, circular build platform manages to squeeze in more than expected for a printer of this footprint, while the J55 has been developed to sit alongside designers with minimal noise and odour, and offers simple water-soluble supports. The wide colour range is still here, as are digital materials such as VeroUltraClearS, which can simulate glass and plastic in a range of colour tints, and Stratasys’ Elastico flexible photopolymer, which in clear or black versions has high elongation to give it breakand tear-resistance. The only thing that might slow you down if using this machine at full capacity is regularly changing the single litre material cartridges, compared to the 16-litre units found on the J850. www.stratasys.com

www.hp.com

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FEATURE

getting that to work. Second, there’s the quality of what comes off the printer. There have been significant improvements in both respects. Output from today’s machines is far more realistic. The availability of colours, the ability to create natural hues and the introduction of clear materials all represent significant steps forward from the washed-out, powdery finishes of older generation Z-Corp machines. Software workflows have improved, too. Early efforts typically involved enormous file sizes and a lot of manual involvement. In pursuit of a more seamless Colour Material Finish (CMF) prototyping workflow, for example, Stratasys has worked alongside visualisation expert Luxion to develop

a simple, full-colour export from Keyshot renders for its J-Series 3D printers. This print data comes packaged in a 3MF file format, superior to STL files and capable of containing the colour and texture data for realistic prints. Since the Stratasys-Keyshot launch, more workflow options making use of the 3MF file format have become available, such as via Autodesk’s Netfabb. Using this process, Autodesk’s Boston technology centre has been experimenting with colour prototypes, using models designed in Fusion 360 and using Netfabb to apply and export colour data to its in-house Mimaki 3D printer to produce the final models. Scale models are still valuable tools for explaining designs and getting buy-in from stakeholders, and for

MIMAKI 3DUJ-553

The name and appearance of the 3D printer might seem industrial, but that’s squarely the point when you see the 3DUJ operate alongside other products from the Japanese brand. What the unit forgoes in memorable titles and soft angles, it makes up for in eye-popping 10 million colour output, which thanks to Mimaki’s industrial printing heritage, uses ICC colour profiling for consistent and repeatable results. The 2D printing heritage shows in smooth colour gradations, as the printer looks to minimise granularity across its 508 x 508 x 305 mm build volume, while Mimaki has also developed a clear resin, allowing full transparency and semi-transparent colour to be realised. Able to print in 19, 32 or 42µm layers, super-fine text detail and smooth surfaces can be achieved, while water-soluble supports preserve edges and delicate elements. www.mimaki.com

3D SYSTEMS PROJET CJP 660PRO

The grand old dame of colour 3D printing, the ProJet CJP is showing its age. It’s a ZCorp 3D printer with a facelift and some mild upgrades along the way since the company was acquired by 3D Systems over a decade ago. But as ever, age is just another way of measuring experience, and while nobody will be fooled into thinking parts produced via 4-channel CMYK output that maxes out at 100µm layers is the real thing, it can print full-colour models at a speed of an inch an hour, making it both the fastest and cheapest 3D printer on this list. This frugality also applies to materials, with the base powder comparatively cheap compared to resin. What’s more, unused powder can be reused. With a build area of 254 x 381 x 203mm and no supports necessary, you can see why these machines continue to run in workshops where ‘quick and dirty’ prototypes from simple OBJ files are needed. www.3dsystems.com

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FEATURE

‘‘ A journey into colour can also be a better

parts with complex lattice infills or electronic layouts, or for displaying the results of flow simulations, a colour 3D printer really brings a proposal to life. After all, tasks such as explaining the effects of a mould flow simulation or the efficiencies of an internal lattice cooling structure are a lot easier when a model that illustrates the advantages in full colour can be laid on a table, passed around and inspected. On a less complex level, colour can be really useful for labelling a model or distinguishing different elements in a prototype. In this way, a journey into colour can also be a better way to lay out the facts in black and white, so that everyone can see and understand what’s going on. Easy on the eye and easy on the brain.

way to lay out the facts in black and white, so that everyone can see and understand what’s going on

’’

DYEMANSION DYED SLS, SAF AND MJF PARTS

White Nylon parts, built via SLS or HP’s MJF process, can be post-processed to take on block colours. A rudimentary colour bath can do the job, but for scale and colour accuracy, you’re best looking at an automated solution like Dyemansion’s DM60 series, which also fits as part of a full post-processing cleanup and finishing set-up with cloud monitoring. Clean parts go in, and 150 minutes later, colour parts come out. Simple.

BLOCK COLOUR

www.dyemansion.com

BLOCK COLOUR

CARBON ALL M- AND L-SERIES

If single-colour, end-use elastomer parts are what you’re about, then Carbon’s recently announced EPU 46 material, which supports direct resin colourisation, should certainly be on your radar. Users can mix their colours with opaque and transparent variants, creating bold colours in a rainbow of different shades. With a shore-hardness between 55 and 78, users can also finetune the material stiffness of the elastomer. www.carbon3d.com

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Xencelabs Pen Display 24 » With its first foray into display tablets, Xencelabs hasn’t just tackled the issues that users report with current products. Instead, it’s moving the whole sector forwards — and by some significant distance, writes Stephen Holmes Product » Xencelabs Pen Display 24 Specifications » 23.8-inch OLED display with antiglare etched glass » 3,840 x 2,160 (UHD) display resolution » 1.07 billion colours (99% Adobe RGB / 93% DCI-P3) » USB-C port with DisplayPort Alternate Mode (UHD), or DisplayPort (UHD) and USB-C/USB-A, or HDMI 2.0 (UHD) and USB-C/USB-A » PC: Windows 7 or later | Mac: OS X 10.11 or later | Linux » 6.0kg weight » 618 x 388 x 35 mm » Xencelabs Tilt Stand, adjustable from 16 to 72 degrees » 3-Button Pen v2 + eraser, Thin Pen v2 + eraser (EMR, pressure-sensitive, cordless, batteryfree with 8,192 pen pressure levels) £1,542 (Ex VAT) www.xencelabs.com

hile pen on paper holds a special appeal for many designers, it’s often the case these days that they go digital right from the start of their project, with a stylus and screen. Scratchy desk graphics tablets went some way to capturing the natural flow and movement of sketching, but it took the Wacom Cintiq to really change the game, by allowing creators to draw directly in pixels on the display. Twenty years on, few companies have been able to mount a credible challenge to Wacom. Many, in fact, have gone down the path of licensing Wacom technologies for their own products. Enter Xencelabs, pronounced ‘Sense Labs’, which broke with this tradition when it launched in 2019. (In fact, many of the earliest employees of the company previously worked at Wacom.) Xencelabs has already impressed the DEVELOP3D team with its graphics tablets, the Media Pen Tablet and the Medium Tablet. So it makes sense that the next logical step for the company would be to address the space dominated by Wacom Cintiq. While that might seem a daunting task, Xencelabs has pulled out all the stops with its debut effort, the Pen Display 24.

BOXING CLEVER From the get-go, you realise that this is a product that is not only going punch for

punch with the competition, but also is willing to go that extra round. Even before we’ve unboxed it, the packaging lists the extensive list of kit inside. If one of the big gripes about Wacom has been its stinginess with peripherals (and the mark-up these incur), then the Pen Display 24 is like a giddy aunt on Christmas morning, unloading presents left, right and centre.

Aside from a wealth of connectors, there’s a case containing two different styluses. The chunky three-button pen has a nice heft and hand-feel, plus an eraser on its other end. A neater, twobutton Thin Pen, much like you’d use on a mobile device, offers a lightweight option. The pens offer individually customised settings, meaning that with just a few clicks, you could use one pen for detail work and another for broad strokes – or a whole wealth of options at your disposal. Also included is a pack of two different types of nibs, and a set of pen clips to attach at any of the eight points around the screen. The clip system has been designed by Xencelabs to allow users to produce their own peripherals. With CAD models available for the attachments, users can design and 3D print their own mounts — for a phone, iPad, or whatever they choose (or likely buy, from some enterprising folks online). It’s a niche point, but one that speaks to the creatives that Xencelabs knows will be using its product. And it’s these little touches that make this product as customisable as the user wishes it to be. On that topic, the box also contains the Xencelabs Quick Keys device. The sheer

abundance of hot-key customisation that this offers up is quite staggering. Up to 40 unique short-cut keys can be assigned, per application, using the eight programmable keys and five key sets. It’s a lovely, tactile little companion that you can squirrel away on your workspace however you please, clipping it via the included holster onto the display frame, or plonking it on your desktop. An OLED display lists functions, and a pleasing jog wheel makes selecting options a breeze. And then there’s the stand. Built into the device is a carry handle that seamlessly flips into an adjustable tilt stand with one hand. With a range from 16 degrees to 72 degrees, it’s a big improvement on the stumpy popout legs that come as standard on Wacom’s 24-inch Cintiq Pro, and offers ergonomic angles that let you get straight to work. To add extra inclines, you can attach any mount to its inbuilt standard VESA mount. It’s here that Xencelabs is keen to assert its value. The stand won’t suit everyone, but with Wacom’s own-brand stands charged as optional extras priced anywhere from over £300, and a VESA mount costing £70, this is an easy win for the new kid on the block.

SCREEN TIME So far, so cost efficient. You’d imagine that piling the kit high and selling it cheap would be a worthwhile tactic to pick up traction in this market, but I can assure you that you’ll stay for the performance. The device’s unbroken surface, from edge to edge, is a beautifully smooth workspace to glide across. The ‘active’ area size is 527 × 296mm, which gives a healthy bezel. Meanwhile, its 3,840 x 2,160 pixels at 60Hz is the 4K UHD resolution that most people would expect from a flagship product like this, but less expected is the Pen Display 24’s ability to reduce glare from even the harshest of lighting. Trademarked Super-AG etching means we were able to use it with lights on overhead, or to the side. It even served up excellent, unimpeded results when I was sat next to a window. It’s that good.

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The etching offers little impedance to the over 1.07 billion colours the display can output, which, without reeling off all the stats and validations awarded to it, are every colour, tone and shade that even the most serious of visualisation artists will ever need. Having watched so many designers using tablets in low light conditions for so long, this ability alone would be worth seeking out a demo. The surface offers a paper-like quality for nib movements, and tracking is excellent — a quality its makers put down to the way the surface has been optically bonded to reduce visual gap between pen nib and cursor. With no discernible lag, and being able to sense 8,192 levels of pen pressure, it is instantaneous to use, reacting to even the slightest change in stroke.

created to optimise how a user wants to work with a tablet. Even down to its Virtual Tablet mode, which allows for your other displays to be quickly mapped, moving windows around, it’s all there to create the best working environment and tools for you without you having to delve into a thick manual of settings to dig out what you need. Even though the Xencelabs software UI is swift and straightforward, with this many options, it may prove a bit of an exercise to set up the Pen Display 24 precisely as you want it. But once you have all these little elements dialled in, then they become issues you’ll never have to think about again – which is the perfect way to work. The final positive is that the entire unit is silent. There’s not a fan to whirr. A

OPTIONS LIST Moreover, as with most things in the Xencelabs software, pressure curves can be mapped and customised. Three programmable control buttons are the only switchgear on the device, but offer fast access to settings, while elements like brightness are all controlled in the user interface (UI). You get the sense that the Pen Display 24 is not just an item to bolt onto your desk, but a package that has been

custom heatsink instead removes any excess temperature, leaving you questioning just when your workstation became so loud.

CONCLUSION We talk a lot about user-observed design, and Xencelabs has gone to admirable lengths to understand just what designers want from this product. Every element can be tweaked to the user’s satisfaction, while at the same time, the device can still be up and running, out of the box, in no time at all. The Pen Display 24 also offers sound construction. We don’t expect these devices to do much in the way of travelling, but given our review model had already put in some considerable miles between tradeshows and testers before it reached us, the build quality is solid, and that goes for the pens and Quick Keys device, too. The design and software is clean and user-friendly, and the overall package is great value for money. It’s a piece of kit worthy of the real estate it will command on your desktop.

1 Pen case containing ●

two styluses, nibs and connectors 2 Pen with pen clip ● 3 Xencelabs Pen ●

Display 24 with antiglare etched glass 4 Tilt stand ● 5 Quick Keys device ●

for shortcuts can be placed in four positions

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Preview: AMD Threadripper Pro 7000 WX / AMD Threadripper 7000 » With its new ‘Zen 4’ Threadripper processors, AMD looks set to rewrite the rule book for high-end workstations yet again, writes Greg Corke

t’s fair to say that AMD changed high-end workstations forever with its Threadripper processors. Starting out life in 2017 as a 16-core ‘prosumer’ or high-end desktop (HEDT) CPU, Threadripper came of age in 2020 with the launch of Threadripper Pro, a genuine workstation-class processor with up to 64 high-frequency cores, up to 2TB of 8-channel memory, tonnes of PCIe lanes and enterprise-level security and manageability. And with this true Intel Xeon competitor came the major workstation OEMs. First Lenovo, then Dell, and now with the new Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series based on AMD’s ‘Zen 4’ architecture, finally HP. While coveting the major workstation OEMs, AMD ignored the ‘prosumer’ or HEDT market, eventually making Threadripper only available as a ‘Pro’ variant with a suitable Pro sized price tag. But this is no longer the case. With its new ‘Zen 4’ Threadripper processors, AMD is offering both ‘Pro’ (7000 WX-Series) and ‘HEDT’ (7000 Series) variants. And from what we’ve been shown by AMD, both product lines look hugely impressive.

THREADRIPPER PRO 7000 WX AMD has made some big advancements over the previous generation ‘Zen 3’ Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series. Let’s look at each of these in turn. Core count: The past two generations of Threadripper Pro maxed out at 64-cores, but the new Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series goes all the way up to 96. This alone should deliver a substantial performance improvement in highly multi-threaded workflows such as ray trace rendering and engineering simulation, including Computational

Fluid Dynamics (CFD). But that doesn’t mean that AMD is ignoring customers with workflows or budgets that are better suited to lower core count CPUs. Indeed, AMD offers a wide range of Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series chips with 12, 16, 24, 32, 64 or 96 cores. But why would a customer go for a lower core count Threadripper Pro CPU when there are cheaper 12- and 16-core AMD Ryzen and AMD Ryzen Pro processors, based on the same ‘Zen 4’ architecture? The fact is that there are workflows, such as CFD, that benefit from Threadripper Pro’s significantly higher memory bandwidth or the ability of the platform to host more PCIe add-in boards, such as GPUs for rendering.

Higher frequencies: Base and boost frequencies on the Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series are significantly higher than the 5000 WX-Series. This should benefit everyone – those with highly multi-threaded workflows such as rendering as well as single threaded workflows such as CAD. The 64-core Threadripper Pro 7985WX, for example, delivers 3.2 GHz base and 5.1 GHz boost, which is 0.5 GHz and 0.6 GHz faster than its ‘Zen 3’ equivalent, the Threadripper Pro 5995WX. Even the top-end 96-Core 7995WX delivers a whopping 5.1 GHz boost, which is only 0.6 GHz behind AMD’s top-end consumer processor, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. These significant frequency gains

are in part down to an increase in Thermal Design Power (TDP), going from 280W in the previous generation to 350W for all new Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series chips. Higher IPC: All Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series chips get a significant boost simply because they are built on AMD’s newer Zen 4 architecture. Compared to Zen 3, AMD quotes a 13% uplift in Instructions Per Clock (IPC), the number of instructions a CPU can execute in a single clock cycle. This should benefit all multi-core and single core workflows. DDR5 memory: The Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series supports eight memory channels, the same as the 5000 WXSeries, but now it’s 5,200 MHz DDR5 memory, rather than 3,200 MHz DDR4. DDR5 memory delivers significantly more bandwidth than DDR4, which should bring big benefits to some memory intensive workflows such as engineering simulation. However, this probably won’t make a difference in many other workflows. Incidentally, AMD decided not to go for 12-channel memory, a hallmark of its Zen 4 EPYC server processors. According to AMD, this is partly to tailor the platform to a workstation audience and partly because there is simply no room in a standard workstation chassis. PCIe Gen 5: The new Threadripper Pro platform supports 128 PCIe Gen 5 lanes, which doubles the PCI bandwidth to any slot on the board compared to the previous generation with PCIe Gen 4. According to AMD, this should deliver real benefit to multi-GPU AI workflows. However, perhaps this is one for the future as most current pro GPUs, including the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada and AMD Radeon Pro W7900, are still on PCIe Gen 4.

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With 128 lanes, the platform can, in theory, support eight double slot GPUs. In reality this is less, as it’s decided by the motherboard manufacturers. Most of the major workstation OEMs support two or three double slot GPUs on their new Threadripper Pro machines, but we could see boards from specialist manufacturers that support more.

WHAT ABOUT AMD 3D V-CACHE? A lot of what we see in the Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series is inherited from AMD’s ‘Zen 4’ EPYC server processors. Some of the more recent models from the EPYC 9004 Series come with 3D V-Cache, a special type of L3 cache that is stacked vertically instead of horizontally, so more cache can be placed on the CPU. The 96-core AMD EPYC 9684X, for example, boasts a whopping 1,152 MB compared to its non 3D V-Cache equivalent, the AMD EPYC 9654 which has 384 MB. The benefit of having more cache is that the CPU has a greater chance of fetching the data it needs from faster cache instead of from slower system memory (RAM). And in some memory intensive workflows, such as CFD, where large amounts of data need to be fetched regularly, this can deliver a performance benefit, as demonstrated in DEVELOP3D’s review of the consumer-focused AMD Ryzen 7000 X3D processor, and in this blog post about CFD software Siemens Simcenter STARCCM+ (www.tinyurl.com/Epyc-siemens). The Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series does not support 3D V-Cache. Instead, it comes with standard L3 cache up to 384 MB on the 96-core model. On a core-to-core basis this is the same as the previous generation. AMD experimented with 3D V-Cache on Threadripper but found that there are ‘very few applications that show a material performance uplift’. Enabling 3D V-Cache also means a small drop in frequency which would reduce performance in workflows that do not benefit from additional cache.

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS As you would expect, with more cores, higher frequencies and higher IPC, AMD

is quoting significant performance gains for the Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series compared to the previous generation Threadripper Pro 5000 WX Series. Putting the number of cores to one side and only comparing 64-core models from both the Zen 4 and Zen 3 Threadripper Pros (7985WX vs 5995WX), AMD quotes considerable performance gains of up to: 31% in Unreal Engine; 39% in V-Ray (rendering); 27% in KeyShot (rendering); 46% in Ansys (simulation); 43% in Corona (rendering); 40% in Solidworks (CAD); 21% in Revit (BIM); and 31% in AutoCAD (CAD). We would expect to see similar gains at all different core counts, and of course a much bigger leap when comparing the 96-core 7995WX to the 64-core 5995WX in highly multi-threaded applications like ray trace rendering.

THE INTEL XEON W-3400 SERIES PROCESSOR KILLER? In our summer 2023 Workstation Special report we put AMD up against Intel in high-end workstation CPUs, taking the top end models from AMD’s ‘Zen 3’ Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series and Intel’s ‘Sapphire Rapids’ Xeon W-3400 Series – the 64-core Threadripper Pro 5995WX and 56-core Xeon w9-3495X. In summary, we found that AMD had a

lead in highly multi-threaded workflows like ray trace rendering, while Intel had the edge in single threaded workflows like CAD, and sometimes quite a considerable advantage in memory bandwidth intensive workflows like CFD. With the new Threadripper Pros it looks like this balance is set to shift completely in favour of AMD. With more cores, higher frequencies, better IPC and now with 8-channel DDR5 memory (similar to Intel), AMD is quoting significant performance gains across the board. In the multi-threaded design viz tool, Chaos V-Ray, AMD says its 96-core Threadripper Pro 7995WX is up to 123% faster than the top-end 56-core Intel Xeon w9-3495X. AMD is also quoting performance gains for processors with similar core counts. Comparing the 32core Threadripper Pro 7975WX to the 36core Intel Xeon w9-3475X, AMD says it is up to: 25% faster in PTC Creo (CAD); 39% faster in Ansys Mechanical (simulation); 44% faster in Luxion KeyShot (rendering); 45% faster in Solidworks (CAD); 20% faster in Revit (BIM); and up to 52% faster in MetaShape (reality capture).

THREADRIPPER FOR PROSUMERS In order for AMD to be taken seriously in the workstation market and adopted by DEVELOP3D.COM OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2023 47

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‘‘ While the Intel Xeon W-3400 Series beat the previous

generation AMD Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series in certain niche high-end workstation workflows, it’s now hard to imagine how Intel will compete on anything other than price/performance

’’

the major workstation OEMs, it not only needed great performance but a pro grade processor with Intel Xeon-like features such as security, manageability, lots of PCIe lanes and support for Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory (and lots of it). This all led to the launch of Threadripper Pro in 2020. Soon after, AMD made the decision to phase out the consumer variant of Threadripper. The problem was, consumer variants of Threadripper (or prosumer, enthusiast, HEDT - call them what you will) were much cheaper, and with topend Threadripper Pro CPUs going for over £6,000 at one point, this put many of AMD’s high core count CPUs out of the reach of many content creators, 3D artists, photographers, or design viz studios. For the ‘Zen 4’ launch AMD has made the surprise move to reintroduce an HEDT line up of Threadripper processors, which it is simply calling the Threadripper 7000 Series. These processors will be cheaper and so will the motherboards that house them. The HEDT Threadrippers are very similar to their Pro counterparts in terms of clock speed and cache. However, the HEDT platform only supports 4-channel memory instead of 8-channel, so there’s less memory bandwidth; 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes instead of 128, so supports fewer GPUs; and it doesn’t have pro management features. There are also fewer models to choose from – 64-core, 32-core, or 24-core. There is no 96-core model (so the

ultimate performance crown remains with Threadripper Pro) and no 16-core or 12-core models, presumably because AMD feels that that part of the market is well covered by its consumer-focused Ryzen 7000 Series processors. While the major workstations OEMs, including Dell, HP, and Lenovo, will continue to only offer Threadripper Pro, we expect the ‘HEDT’ Threadripper 7000 Series to be popular with specialist workstation manufacturers like Scan, BOXX, and Armari. According to AMD, workstations with the HEDT processor can also be smaller thanks to ATX motherboards that have fewer PCIe slots than the EATX boards used for Threadripper Pro. And the motherboards and processors will also be cheaper. AMD says that most motherboards will support up to two GPUs and up to two NVMe SSDs.

CONCLUSION On paper AMD’s new ‘Zen 4’ Threadrippers look to be incredible workstation processors, combining a phenomenal number of cores with boost frequencies not that far behind AMD’s best consumer CPUs. Five years ago, this was simply unimaginable. Significant increases in core count, IPC and base frequency all look set to contribute to substantial double digit performance increases in both single threaded and multi-threaded workflows compared to the previous generation. In addition, while the Intel Xeon

W-3400 Series beat the previous generation AMD Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series in certain niche high-end workstation workflows, it’s now hard to imagine how Intel will compete on anything other than price/performance. How much the new Threadripper Pro processors will cost is still unknown and while AMD could choose to place a big premium on its new chips, it could also choose to go aggressive on price to build market share. If that happens, perhaps we will even see the price of Intel Xeon processors fall? Interestingly, AMD is also giving itself serious competition from within, with the re-introduction of an HEDTfocused Threadripper processor. While many larger design, engineering and architecture firms will only buy from major OEMs like Dell, HP and Lenovo, others are more flexible and the ‘HEDT’ Threadripper 7000 Series presents a big opportunity for specialist workstation manufacturers. Yes, you get less memory channels and miss out on some pro features, but we expect performance in most rendering tools to be similar, if not better if machines are overclocked, something that the major OEMs simply won’t do. And of course, with lower-cost CPUs and motherboards, these workstations should be significantly cheaper. The new ‘Zen 4’ 7000 Series Threadripper CPUs will be available late November. We look forward to testing them soon. ■

ALL THE MAJOR WORKSTATION OEMS NOW ON BOARD When AMD introduced 1st Generation Threadripper Pro (3000 WX-Series) in 2020, Lenovo broke the mould by becoming the first major workstation OEM in nearly 15 years to launch a workstation with an AMD CPU. Lenovo was rewarded by AMD with an exclusive agreement for Threadripper Pro and the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 became an instant success. It wasn’t until 2022 that Lenovo got some real competition when Dell came on board with 2nd Generation Threadripper Pro (5000 WX-Series). At that point in time, considering AMD’s complete

dominance over Intel in highend workstation CPUs (Intel hadn’t released a major Xeon processor for several years), we were incredibly surprised that HP didn’t come on board too. That all changes with the launch of 3rd Generation Threadripper Pro (7000 WXSeries). HP has finally joined Dell and Lenovo, with AMD now having all three major workstation manufacturers on board. Considering where AMD was just five years ago, this is major news. So far, only Dell and HP have released details of their new Threadripper Pro 7000 WXSeries workstations. We expect

Lenovo to follow soon. The underlying theme for the new Dell Precision 7875 (pictured right) and HP Z6 G5 A is that both machines are positioned in the middle of their respective product stacks, alongside and below those with Intel Xeon W-3400 CPUs with up to 56-cores. This positioning is dictated primarily by the expandability, serviceability and size of the machines, and not necessarily by the performance of Threadripper Pro. For example, neither vendor is making full use of Threadripper Pro’s 128 PCIe lanes, with Dell supporting up to two double

height GPUs and HP supporting up to three. By having fewer PCI slots, Dell and HP can reduce the size of the motherboard, PSU and chassis, which all help bring down the base cost of the systems. But even with this ‘mid-range’ positioning, because the Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series is available with 12 to 96 cores, both machines are capable of supporting a huge range of workflows, from entry-level to high-end. And having a single product that can cover so many bases is always good news for the IT folks that manage these workstations.

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LAST WORD

Established tools and workflows don’t cut it for auto designers looking to shake up the market with brand new ideas, writes Stephen Holmes. And that’s driving newcomers to experiment with radically different approaches

t was while sitting in the barber’s chair this week that I had a revelation. Not that my dark hair is now locked in a losing battle with grey (that began years ago), but that the tools of the trade in most industries are far more a matter of individual choice than those used in design or engineering. While I sat there, draped in a fetching leopard-print smock and forced to look at the reflection of my aging face under some uncomfortable lighting, the nonchalantly cool lads stood working behind each chair debated their preferred brands of trimmers, scissors and hairdryers. It was evident that each had a personal favourite for each stage of their workflow, and that the owner of the shop imposed no mandates on what brand, size or shape of kit they used. You can probably guess where I’m going with this. In automotive design, everything still comes down to a narrow band of tools: Sketching, Alias, a big lump of clay and some shiny new extended reality (XR) kit. Designers, moving from one company to another, typically get locked into their employer’s preferred toolset. You can even accurately predict the next steps after styling: flip it into Catia or NX, and off it goes down the welltrodden path of reassuringly executable engineering. Yes, there are some outliers where another software slots in, but it’s generally a tight process, honed over decades, with a view to getting cars out of the imagination and on to the asphalt. But as we see from this issue of DEVELOP3D, the arrival of electric vehicles (EVs) has opened up cracks in this well-

worn route. New companies, on a mission to meet customer demand for electric powertrains rather than just slicker lines or more cupholders, has opened the door to new tools.

FORGET LEGACY WAYS The mammoth budgets, legacy infrastructures and long timeframes seen within the automotive market’s established incumbents don’t exist for its newcomers. Running hard and fast with digital tools is the way forward, hence the increasing reliance on XR. Designers of auto interiors especially love this tech. It allows them to visualise a cabin, dash or seats in an unlimited number of materials. The idea that some of these materials might be 3D printed [see article on p36] feeds back into this high-speed workflow, where prototyping and verification happens within hours, not weeks. The need for speed and cost effectiveness means new brands are willing to pick up both design tools and talent from other workflows. Free software like Blender and some game-design tools frequently pop up in conversation. The arrival and potential impact of generative AI is appreciated by everyone I spoke to, with tools like Vizcom either already in use or being deployed. While the traditional pipeline remains, automotive studios are now more open to helping designers feel comfortable getting ideas out of their heads and into pixels. On the surface at least, the big software companies are more open to working harmoniously with design data from other products. Autodesk executives, for example, have explained to us how Alias is happy to import Blender data, in order



In automotive design, everything still comes down to a narrow bunch of tools: Sketching, Alias, a big lump of clay and some shiny new XR kit



to keep the design process moving along as smoothly as possible (p28). However, you get the sense this only goes so far. The openness exists to support the existing food chain and Autodesk’s position in it.

It’s ‘out with the old and in with the new’ when it comes to the tools on which auto designers rely

IN WITH THE NEW So while change is happening, buoyed by the workflows of new brands, the old framework for designing a car hasn’t completely broken down. How long it persists will be interesting to see. Will the next generation of great car stylists continue to emerge from the wellregarded classrooms of the RCA, Rhode Island and Turin — or will they hail from a games design course in Huddersfield or a programming degree in Bangalore? Or will new designs originate from a few simple prompts submitted to an AI engine? Opening up the design pipeline, and the greater inclusion of designers might follow, can only breed more creativity, not cause stagnation. It works in other professions: after all, we don’t all walk out of the hairdressers sporting an asymmetrical Mohican. Well, not this time, anyway. GET IN TOUCH: The conversation at the barber’s had Stephen thinking back to his pandemic panic-buying of hair clippers, not to mention the shoddy results he achieved in the bathroom mirror with a beard trimmer. Thankfully, things are marginally better now. On Twitter, he’s @swearstoomuch

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