Designing with Virtual Reality

In a rapidly globalizing market environment, commercial vehicle OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and their suppliers are facing a very dynamic business climate. Innovative virtual product engineering technologies have definitely become a precondition to sustain and improve their competitiveness, growth and quality standards. Virtual reality is making this possible, bringing design, engineering and manufacturing teams together to work on the up-to-date virtual prototype to improve the assembly and disassembly processes. Back in 2010, MAN approached the University of Applied Science Upper Austria, Campus Steyr, to collaborate on a project where MAN could implement virtual reality into their planning process. “With rapid data preparation in virtual reality workshops, powerful assembly functionalities and user friendliness, ESI’s IC.IDO proved to be the right choice for this collaboration. IC.IDO’s usability, physical calculation and real-time detection of parts colliding during the assembly process matched MAN’s needs. Not to mention, what previously took us two weeks can now be completed in just one day,” says Franz Obermair, professor at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.