This month we will be digging deeper into the digital tools that are at the heart of contemporary car design
Ahh, the Good Old Days: a crayon or pencil, a clean sheet of paper and plenty of imagination. All you need to produce a super sports car or the world’s greatest truck.
But automotive design is much more than our childhood imaginations. It is the most complicated consumer product available. Modern design and production techniques demand digital tools and high-powered computers, advanced software and sophisticated fabrication and assembly equipment, which often includes robots.
The digital tools available to the designer have never been greater, and more are coming online every day. This month, Car Design News will examine the digital tools available to the designer, and look ahead to the tools of tomorrow, with ideas for new workflows in the design process.
We hear with increasing frequency about artificial intelligence, in particular, which is perhaps the most pressing (and occasionally anxiety-inducing) issue in this corner of the industry. Is it a tool to accelerate processes and augment the work that designers are already doing, or is it the beginning of the end for some processes, and jobs, altogether?
How is virtual reality (VR) being leveraged during the visualisation phase, turning what could be static presentations or time-consuming models into a playful activity and embedding designers into the digital product they’ve just created. And with open source software now available to the masses, what does this mean for some of the more established packages, and does it mean anyone can now try their hand at design?
Join us later this week, and all throughout the month, for articles on this fascinating and salient topic. And if you miss your crayons and pencils, follow our monthly focus on sketching in April.
Did you catch our focus on perceived quality last month? Revisit the topic here.
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