Context
Aircraft electrification and eVTOL technologies are rapidly maturing. They are at the heart of a new and promising form of human transportation, fueled by billions being invested in this emerging market.
By 2026-28, thousands of vehicles and services will likely connect people to Cities, traditional airports, and places of work.
The move from drones to urban air mobility has been initiated by start-ups and small OEMs, even if bigger players are gradually joining the crowd.
To stay ahead of the competition, these small to medium-sized eVTOL and UAM startups need to be First to Prototype.
To be the First to Prototype, these companies need to speed up the development process right through to market launch, while ensuring efficiency and meeting all the requirements in terms of safety, reliability, robustness and sustainability for their products and their components.
Offering CATIA solutions on the 3DEXPERIENCE on-the-cloud ensure these companies can reach this target, with the full digital continuity on the platform, to enable a complete virtual twin experience.
Project presentation
The E-way concept, designed using CATIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, is an autonomous vehicle project initially designed to alleviate hospital staff by ensuring non-medicalized patient transfers.
In 2024, this project gained a new life by developing other usages:
- Freight
- Shuttle
- Medical usage
Emphasizing a systemic approach integrating:
- Design Thinking
- System Thinking
- Creative Design
- Concept Engineering
- Multidiscipline Engineering
- Design Circularity and Sustainability
And of course, digital continuity to enhance collaboration among designers, engineers, and all the stakeholders for sustainable and innovative solutions.
Video 1 - Understand the Context
| Demo 1 - Understand the Context The e-way is a new mobility concept, initially designed during the pandemic to alleviate hospital staff by ensuring non-medicalized patient transfer. This innovative concept utilizes both terrestrial and aerial mobility services. An updated and more developed version was created recently to give it a new life. As the pandemic is less a trending topic, it was important to give the e-way a reason for being. This is why we developed a completely new innovation process to imagine, design, and simulate a new product and systems for impactful human experiences toward a more sustainable world. For that, a whole team of CATIA experts worked on this project, integrating knowledge from the whole CATIA portfolio, including creative design, system engineering, concept & mechanical engineering, MODeling and SIMulation (MODSIM), electrical & fluids, sustainability and construction. This engineering excellence was achievable with social and collaborative apps on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, allowing remote work and use of different devices between the design and engineering teams, facilitating a nomadic and collaborative design process. This project was even exposed during the Dassault Systèmes “Virtual Worlds for Real Life” marketing operation at Piccadilly Circus, from April 29th to May 5th 2024. It was possible to experiment an augmented reality experience that allows you to see a virtual e-way flying in London. |
Video 2 - Define the Global Experience
| Demo 2 - Define the Global Experience The systemic approach integrates the product with its relation to humans, stakeholders, and its environment. We need to take into account the global experience to ensure all the parties involved are satisfied. Mixing design thinking (for a better user experience) and system thinking (to meet the ecosystem requirements) helps question the vehicle's usage, the global service offered, but also the business strategy, the taxonomy, and the sustainable goals that the company wants to reach. This is why creative tools were used, such as 3DEXPERIENCE Whiteboard, to start mapping the system, the user journey, and different scenarios and use cases that could happen in real life. Then, by entering these creative journeys and scenarios into CATIA Systems solutions, we could provide a global vision of the experience and the various use cases, and thus address the company's multiple goals in terms of design quality, reliability and sustainability. The scenarios are mapped into the system, so we can understand the links, enrich the user journey and simulate it by adding intelligence, for example with time constraints (how long it takes the e-way to get to the site of the accident?) This systems approach is a global approach that helps designers, architects and engineers to identify project priorities, even at an early stage of the process, to ensure smooth collaboration. User Roles
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Video 3 - Design for Circularity | Demo 3 - Design for Circularity The hub station is the building that has been created to park e-ways. The systemic approach and the scenario definition identify the operational hub as an essential element for the global experience, because it is the point of contact with the environment and the service. To make this hub resilient, a circular design methodology is implemented to contribute to the hub's global strategy and its innovation, by rethinking shapes, materials and functions. Lifecycle assessment (LCA) applications have been used to analyze the global impact, allowing us to make the right decisions. At the early stage of the design process, we can make adjustments, to transform the conceptual hub into an ecological one, with the integration of more sustainable materials and functions, to make it manufacturable. Globally, this sustainability approach and function is used as an innovation catalyst rather than a constraint in design. User Roles
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Video 4 - Explore Design Concepts | Demo 4 - Explore Design Concepts Digital continuity and user-centered research enable the exploration of different possibilities and services of the global experience. Scenarios identified with stakeholders are essential inputs for industrial designers, to conceive and work on the vehicle’s creative design. For example, it helps them to draw the right shapes, or the right kinematics of the interior design. Designers can work collaboratively throughout the design process, by importing 2D sketches to create 3D sketches and immersive VR drawings, while taking technical constraints into account at an early stage by carrying out feasibility studies. Finally, designers conceived the vehicle to accommodate three interior designs, each adapted to a specific usage:
But above all, this digital continuity is interesting for designers because they can dynamically express ideas, to engage collaboration with other departments like the concept engineering one, for the structure for instance. User Roles
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Video 5 - Validate the Product in Operation | Demo 5 - Validate the Product in Operation Design inputs from scenarios and sketches guide the concept engineering department in creating the right structural load cases. Topological optimization helps understand the path forces of the structure to accommodate different interior designs. Digital continuity and traceability allow design exploration, iterative simulation and modification of the vehicle's body in white in a parametric way to find the best alternatives. Detailed engineering departments can then validate designs through this iterative simulation and modification approach called MODeling & SIMulation (MODSIM). It is a new way to create complex structures, mechanisms or assemblies during a phase when the final design is in progress. This is the step where you can consider factors such as the vehicle's stability, temperature control and airflow in the interior cabin. In this example, it helped to identify the necessity of adding back grids for the airflow, which impacts the vehicle's design. But thanks to the digital continuity and collaboration on the platform, that was possible. User Roles
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Video 6 - Detail Multidiscipline Engineering | Demo 6 - Detail Multidiscipline Engineering The mobility system architecture helped to define the user journey for each usage and to find links between them. The functional analysis, by simulating different scenarios, allows to design and develop the project most efficiently, by creating parts (such as the door) that take into account the whole vehicle, its usages, its transportation capabilities (terrestrial and aerial), its stakeholders and the global environment. Iterations between CATIA V5 and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform are still possible, so you can import your project from one to another to facilitate collaboration and back and forth between the different teams. At this stage, you can still explore innovative solutions and workable concepts for detailed design and engineering, to make the project as close to reality as possible, for instance, by creating and simulating electrical and fluid components or testing virtual performance of plastic part and mold tool designs with an intuitive simulation assistant. To go further, complex wire harnesses can be designed and optimized in context without the need for physical mockups. User Roles
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