VirTex

In the automotive industry, innovation has always been one of the main stimuli. The goal of this project is to improve the fabric design process for automotive interior by using virtual prototyping techniques. The design stages to be simulated are the design of the material itself (woven, knit or even leather), the cut and layout of fabric in the interior (seats, ceiling, floor, doors, etc.) and the adaptation of seat and interior geometry where it stresses the fabric's properties.

By evaluating design concepts at an early stage in the design process, we want to reduce development cycles and their duration. When designing interior fabrics, this means pre-visualization of fabric, seat or even complete cockpit before even the material itself has been produced.

Obviously we cannot completely remove the need for real prototyping, since in the later stages of decision making visual appeal is only one of several factors: surface haptic and durability, for example, cannot be reproduced in our planned set-up, and are out of scope of this project.

The visual design and evaluation stage shall be supported by one or more different virtual environment set-ups. Using 3D display- and input-techniques, we want to provide the designer with a set of tools for evaluating and tweaking designs: from details in the range of a few millimeters up to the appearance of a complete cockpit layed out with virtual fabrics and lit by sunlight.

The following methods are supposed to be used throughout the whole design process: from a single designer evaluating fabric structure in 3D, over local and remote collaborations, to the presentation of a whole cockpit to the customers' decision makers. This requires not only one single VR setup, but rather a series of setups with varying features, quality and costs.

Our results will be directly tested in our company partners design pipeline in cooperation with at least one of his customers, and later integrated in the workflow.