The Research And Implementation Of Platform For Vehicle Body Key Data Aided Design

With the rapid development of the domestic auto market, competition of auto industry is growing in intensity. In order to heighten self-competitiveness, the domestic automobile companies not only put into more new models, but also set a higher request to the design capability and design quality. Each world-famous auto company has its own accumulated platform dedicated to design experience and data. The platform collects vehicle data as many as possible, so that engineers can not only know the data of competitive vehicle clearly but also control their own data in a certain design range.The work of this paper is a trial of Chinese-brand autos to enhance their own ability. The work is done by secondary development to CATIA. A Platform for Vehicle Body Key Data Aided Design is built on CATIA. The platform currently includes a Body Key Data Management System and a Master Section Parameter Calculator. The Body Key Data Management System is developed, using Visual Basic.Net and MySQL. It is made connection to CATIA through CATIA/CAA and CATIA/Automation secondary development technology. It can realize the database management, such as data input, edit and search. Data models can be directly loaded from database into CATIA application. Data comparison report can also be customized and exported. The Master Section Parameter Calculator is developed using CAA/C++, making the evaluation of master section performance more directly and conveniently. The paper mainly studies the following contents:Firstly, the development plan is confirmed. The scheme is to create a new workbench in CATIA, and make the workbench as a platform, the developed modules are integrated to this workbench as toolbars in a add-in way. Two toolbars are developed that can each call Body Key Data Management System and Master Section Parameter Calculator. And MySQL is selected as the system database.Secondly, the body key data acquisition to the mastered vehicle models is done. Six vehicle models of which have a higher data integrity are selected to be the data source of the Body Key Data Management System. Section position, section principle and section method are unified. Parameters of vehicle, master section, hinge, door and material are identified.Thirdly, the Body Key Data Management System is designed and implemented. The system interface is based on VB.NET. The database can be accessed through ADO.NET technology. With Automation technology, digital model loading and comparison report exporting are realized.Finally, according to demand of body engineers to evaluate the performance of master section, with the CATIA Geometric Modeler and theoretical formulas, the Master Section Parameter Calculator is developed in a way of In-Process.