×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

(OP)
I am contimplating starting my own automobile company.  I need advice regarding what computer programs I will need to design a car basically from scratch, and if trail versions are available for free.  I know I will need a CFD program but I am not sure which would be the best for someone without a supercomputer.  The same holds true for a FEA program.  

All posts will be read and all posts will be greatly appreciated.

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

The great news is that all software vendors will give an automobile company a free seat for almost any program, and demos.

The bad news is that what they mean by an automobile company and what you mean are rather different.

Anyway here's some programs I've run across

drafting/solid modelling: Unigraphics or Catia or ProE.

FEA: NASTRAN ABAQUS ANSYS(?) LSDYNA

FEA pre/post processing: Hyperworks

ProE often have slightly limited free versions available, I am not aware of any way for normal people (as opposed to giant corporations) getting the others legally for free.

There are many other programs that can be used for other important parts of designing a car, but that's enough to start with.


 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

Why start your own?  You could probably buy Chrysler at a bargain basement price.

Frankly, though, if you're at the level of asking for free versions of sofware, I don't see how you've got the resources to actually implement the hardware.

TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

The OP is a dichotomy obscured by a conundrum.

rmw

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

Greg... Offtopic, but do you actually work? smile Your replies are everywhere!

You didn't suggest Solidworks which already has an integrated FEA solution--I'm not suggesting it's the best but it's certainly well consolidated. Solidworks has the trial period and I know that there is at least one (NEiWorks) Nastran plugin for it.
 

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

BiPolar,

Solidworks is not popular in the auto industry, while all of the software packages listed by Greg are.

Regards,

Cory

Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

BiPolarMoment

If you click on someones handle you can read their history before you question their qualification and embarrass yourself

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers for professional engineers
 

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

If you really are starting from scratch, put the CFD on hold.

- Steve

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

Pat,

While I do admit I may have posted from ignorance with regards to CAD packages in the automotive industry, the comment to Greg was a joke, not a questioning of his qualification. I'm sorry you could not be as civil as Cory.

Cory,

Thanks, I was not aware--I don't know why it could not be used for a start up though. Are there limitations that are particular to the Solidworks CAD package for automotive applications?

Thanks.

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

SW is somewhat less than completely magical when dealing with arbitrarily curved surfaces... like in automobiles.

But CAD software selection is among the least of your problems.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

BPM - I've pretty much given up on TV- so eng-tips (and a few other websites, I only regularly visit about 12) is what I do instead of finishing my homework. Nothing changes!

 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

The first thing you will need to start a car company is cash, and plenty of it. Next is deciding what part of the vehicle you are going to design and or manufacture that will separate you from the competition. Then you will need to find partners to do the other parts of the vehicle. Many people underestimate the complexity of building a new several thousand part assembly. How you structure the design and development activities can have a significant effect on cost and success just as much as your software choices.

Try not to reinvent the wheel. Most features we see in cars were tried before 1950 so spend some time looking at history to see what did not work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_motor_vehicle_manufacturers_of_the_United_States is a list of defunct car manufactures in the US.

Ed Danzer
www.danzcoinc.com
www.dehyds.com

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

Good Luck - three of the biggest are in the hole - deeply and you want to start a new one.  Better be good.....

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

And one of the most profitable ones is little more than a hedge fund these days.

- Steve

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

(OP)
first IRstuff, as greg pointed out, my idea of a car company might be different from yours.  I don't want another Chrysler, I'm sure Pagani is having the time of his life. Also I was asking for TRIAL versions, it would seem to be a waste of resources to purchase inferior software.  And frankly, you don't know the limit of my resources.

second EdDanzer, thanks for the link.  I couldn't help but notice most of those companies became defunct early in the last century.  The plan is not to re-invent the wheel, just make it more efficient.

third MiketheEngineer, yes it will be good

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

(OP)
oops...  forth SomptingGuy, the CFD program is vital to what will make the engine unique.

Everyone else who took the time to make a usefull post, thank you and if you don't mind, keep the ideas coming.

Chow

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

Probably it would be less frustrating if you were to identify what tasks you need to accomplish, rather than just asking for a laundry list of packages that people use in the automotive industry.


 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

... you didn't mention that you were going to be designing & building your own engines too.

- Steve

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

If you want anyone here to take you at all serious, maybe you should outline your intent and resources.

To date from the information supplied (or not supplied) I have concluded you are a wanna bee with almost no resources. I suspect many others have drawn the same conclusion. If you want useful help, you need to really define the situation.

The request for info on FREE software, has in the absence of other information, reasonably led people to conclude you have almost no resources.

Even a kit car manufacturer needs considerable resources.

The last thing a new car company that cannot afford a collection of multi seat software packages normally does is design and make their own motor

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers for professional engineers
 

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

I doubt you finish your engine design with free software or trial copies. We've been looking at CFD again to do hydraulic valve work and would have to budget $20,000.00 US minimum with training. Engine work would be much more involved and will require more than a normal Windows workstation to crunch the numbers. You may be able to do the engine design in SolidWorks but I doubt FlowWorks will do the CFD.

I plan on doing the valve design in SolidWorks because we have it, but will sub out the CFD as we cannot justify the initial cost and learning time for CFD on this project.

More information about your intents and goals would allow more information to be provided.

Ed Danzer
www.danzcoinc.com
www.dehyds.com

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

Great idea. And you will have no problem competing. The key is a good product at a very low price.
Don't the big outfits use Catia?
The design part should be pretty easy. Its the tooling that is going to be the difficult part and costly.
Is it to be made of metal or fiberglass?  How many units per day month or what ever? Are you going to do everything in house or outsource? The machinery costs are going to be a huge deterent. If you are looking at using many existing off the shelf parts for your vehicle, then why would you need to design an engine for it? Its much easier to take something off the shelf and do what ever modifications that are needed to accomplish what you are trying to do. Unless it is a completly different engine design.
I hope you do succeed in this, and I hope you can design something way better than all the rest, as they have all lost any ability to style a car.  

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

Go to the Feds and ask to be bailed out BEFORE you need it - call it your conservation of energy program...peace

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

RE: interested in starting my own automobile company, need advice

CFD wise I use Fluent, and can highly recommend it.
There is also a version that is integrated into Catia, although I haven't tried that.
This isn't a cheap package though.
I regularly use Catia, Pro/Engineer and NX6.
I find Catia the "best" of the 3 but there is little really to choose between them, annoyingly whatever I'm trying to do on one of them always seems to be much more straighforward on one of the other 2. Pro/Engineer is the cheapest I think, and seems to be popular with powertrain rather than entire vehicles.
Any of these packages can be run on a non-super computer, indeed I run them alll successfully off a laptop that cost about £1000. A good graphics card is pretty important though.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources