Good Afternoon,

Apologies if this is a really silly/picky/non-technical question - it seems silly to me, but I also really want to know the answer.

When working with motorcycle design, is the same co-ordinate system used as for automotive design?

I've always used what I call "standard vehicle co-ordinate system" as defined by ISO 4130 whenever I've been working on automotive parts (mostly finite element analysis of subframes and chassis structures).

I've been asked to look at a motorcycle structure, and the first thing I want to do project wise is ensure that everyone works in the same co-ordinate system with the same origin. My instinct would be to use ISO 4130 co-ordinates with the X origin being in line with the centre of the front axle and the Z origin either being on the ground plane or 100 mm below.

However, the abstract for ISO 4130 says "Defines a reference system and fiducial marks which are used to define dimensional data relating to road vehicles defined in ISO 3833, excepting motorcycles and mopeds." (My physical copy is stuck at work and I'm working from home).

This makes me wonder if there's something different that covers motorcycles, as that seems to be implied!

(As an FEA guy, getting bits of CAD in different co-ordinate systems is a bugbear that I like to eliminate before it happens).

All help gratefully appreciated!

Many thanks