During its 42 years in the automotive service field, Italdesign-Giugiaro has worked with many international carmakers and has been responsible for some of the world's most revered concepts and production vehicles. In May this year, the firm became part of the VW Group, marking a new era in its growth.
Italdesign-Giugiaro provides services for complete project development within three main areas: styling, engineering and testing and prototyping, which all operate autonomously within the organization. The company's aim is to work in synergy with its clients, which is why they constantly investigate and evaluate emergent technical solutions.
Italdesign has been responsible for some of the most famous concept and production cars over the past decades
The company was recently acquired by the Volkswagen group
All Italdesign-Giugiaro designs emerge from realistic technical data on the car underneath
Sketch of the Italdesign-Giugiaro Quaranta concept, created to celebrate the company's 40th anniversary
In search of new solutions
Italdesign-Giugiaro, for example, was the first independent service provider to implement a Virtual Reality Center in-house in order to offer 1:1 scale virtual reality design and style services.
And now, to harmonize the design process – and improve integration between styling and engineering – Italdesign has started several pioneering pilot projects with Dassault Systèmes to investigate 'clay digital modeling' (concept/free form modeling), as well as high-quality surface modeling.
"Innovation and creativity are key factors for facing the market changes and competition. Many of our suppliers have changed or do not exist any longer, while our partnership with Dassault Systèmes has been ongoing for 20 years," says Italdesign CIO Giuseppe Savino. "Dassault Systèmes has always been the right partner to leverage innovation and this is why we are looking forward to deeply investigating emerging design solutions like CATIA Imagine & Shape."
Combining technology with hand craft
While most famous for their products' iconic styling, the Italdesign-Giugiaro philosophy stems from an approach of ensuring technical feasibility first, creating designs that meet all technical requirements, ensuring workable solutions.
During Giugiaro's design process, the first virtual surfaces are created following the selection of a design proposal. Rendering, animation, virtual and physical modeling techniques – all handled interactively – support this research and presentation phase.
At this stage, the 3D data of the model can be useful for engineers to conduct the first feasibility studies and for the workshop department to mill a 1:1 scale physical model. The modelers' manual skillfulness still plays an important role in the finishing and touch-up phase, but technology goes hand-in-hand with the high manual skill of the craftsperson and their utmost attention to detail.
As this process illustrates, styling – and experience hand craft – is still a primary and fundamental part of the Giugiaro approach. However, over the last decade, industrial design has rapidly evolved from the traditional design-by-hand approach to the use of the most advanced technological tools, with which Italdesign has ensured its leadership in the field.
New challenges, new solutions
This approach has hidden challenges: a lack of integration, difficulty in data exchange and different UIs in various software systems present serious complexities of management. Moreover, a modified model often has to be re-created in the different systems along the lifecycle.
New tools, which boost creativity and are easy to use, are needed in order to allow designers to 'concretize' their ideas immediately. From Italdesign's perspective, the modeling tools used in the automotive field should draw inspiration from the ease of use of the entertainment applications, while integrating control and analysis tools required by the engineering domain.
Dassault Systèmes' software makes this possible – CATIA provides unified industrial design solutions to address the full design workflow – and for the creative conceptual phase of this workflow the company proposes a dedicated tool, CATIA Imagine & Shape.
When it comes to high quality surface modeling ('Class A' surfacing), Italdesign has over 15 years experience with ICEM Surf. However, over the last six months of 2009, Italdesign tested CATIA ICEM Shape Design (the next generation of the tool) working with pre-defined scenarios and use-cases taken from a list of user requirements. One main benefit was identified.
The five images on this side of the page show screen grabs from the IMA tools, used to create digital surfaces from 2D sketches
Integration between styling and engineering in terms of data exchange, CATIA workbench usage and IT environment harmonization was assessed. Advantages were identified in using the parametric associative functionalities, even though not all vehicle external and internal surfaces can be developed using this method.
The company found that many parts – such as the front grille, center console, air vents, headlamp and engine cover – could be realized following a pure virtual parametric design approach. Importantly, along the lifecycle of the process, the model can be easily modified by changing parameters rather than being rebuilt, therefore saving time.
As a consequence of these results, Italdesign decided on a smooth license migration plan. According to the company, having a common environment – such as the one Dassault Systèmes is promoting – encourages innovation and facilitates integration between styling and engineering.
Helping to meet new demands
The attention being given to such emerging solutions is increasing dramatically. An evaluation team featuring the major German OEMs was founded in spring 2009 with the aim of providing Dassault Systèmes with consolidated requirements, as well as to evaluate whether the tools were ready to be used in a production environment.
Italdesign-Giugiaro expects concept modeling tools to influence several aspects of designers' activities and to freeze designs more quickly. This is expected to give them a competitive advantage in today's market, where they are expected to provide clients with a larger number of proposals in a shorter period of time during the initial design phase.
This system also allows the easy translation of digital data into a physical mockup at the proposal selection phase, which is particularly important to Italdesign-Giugiaro: the company still believes physical models lead to better results when evaluating proportions, surfaces and curves.
Commitment to innovation
Although concept modeling tools have not yet reached a level of maturity where they are generating the same impact that digital pen-display devices had in moving from manual to digital drawing, they have introduced many interesting new functions, demonstrating Dassault Systèmes' efforts to meet new requirements arising in the styling domain.
Italdesign-Giugiaro is planning to carry out a new analysis and assessment phases in partnership with Dassault Systèmes, evaluating new tools that can be integrated into the design process in an efficient and natural way. It demonstrates a continuing commitment to innovation and creativity and a determination to remain a design leader, which has always been a distinctive mark of Italdesign-Giugiaro.
Find out more about Italdesign Giugiaro at www.italdesign.it
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