Ashok Leyland uses Autodesk Alias to design LCV’s and save costs by leveraging on digital prototyping |Ashok Leyland, the Hinduja Group flagship, and Nissan Motor Company came together in 2007 to address the growing Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) market by jointly leveraging their mutual strengths. This Joint Venture (JV) brings together the Nissan’s tradition of engineering excellence and quality orientation with Ashok Leyland’s intimate knowledge of the market and cost efficient value addition in India.
Founded in 1948 and headquartered in Chennai, Ashok Leyland is one of the oldest and largest commercial vehicle manufacturers in India with a turnover of US$ 2.5 billion in 2011-12. With its own comprehensive R&D base, strengthened by collaborations with global technology leaders, Ashok Leyland has established a tradition of technological leadership and a strong reputation for product reliability. After years of working together, Ashok Leyland Nissan vehicles unveiled their first light commercial vehicle in 2012, “Ashok Leyland Dost”. This 1.25 ton payload capacity vehicle is now available in three versions with the top-end version featuring premium features like air conditioning, power steering, dual-color beige-gray trim and fabric seats which were earlier available in the passenger car segment.
Previously, they had outsourced their design work to overseas design studios which posed a number of challenges like limited control over design, little or no knowledge of local trends, confidentiality issues, and lack of proper communication that resulted in delay in the introduction of new products. It was difficult to convey design concepts using traditional clay modeling method as it is time consuming. Another challenge they faced was in preserving the design intent throughout the complete product development cycle. Sumantran V, vice chairman, Ashok Leyland wanted to create a better product under this JV. He motivated the design team towards “Japanese quality at Indian cost”. “We wanted to conceive an efficient product with no compromises which is simple, strong, elegant, extremely reliable, economical and eco-friendly and leverage on the rapidly growing LCV market in India,” said Sathiya Seelan, head, styling studio, Ashok Leyland.
In 2007, Ashok Leyland decided to establish a design studio to overcome outsourcing issues and bring every stage right from concept sketching to the development of production ready Class- A surfaces in-house. Ashok Leyland selected the software of the choice ‘Autodesk Alias Automotive’ for its wide range of features like sketching, modelling, surfacing and visualisation. “Autodesk Alias brings traditionally used clay modelling techniques to software tools; enabling designers to create models in less time with fewer iterations” said Seelan.
Now, the company handles the entire digital modelling activity in-house using Autodesk Alias tools. Using the fast concept modeling and high quality precision surfacing functionalities, designers implemented advanced surfaces, curves and forms to build revolutionary LCV designs with unique features and aesthetics. Designers were able to translate the initial concept sketches to concept surface model in 3D environment thus preserving the design intent throughout the design cycle. Autodesk Alias helped them to create visually appealing designs using Class A surfacing tools.
The appearance of the body is intended to evoke a feeling of robustness, solidity, safety and happiness. The fascia resembles with an ethereal smile of Buddha. Autodesk Alias software enabled Ashok Leyland to develop the vehicle’s interior in coherence with the exterior design, which shrunk the time needed for the design and development. Unique multi-reflector head lamps with integrated side indicators resembling the hockey stick, was digitally validated using Autodesk Alias software and was put to production. Thus, directly saving the high cost of physical prototypes. The dashboard was designed with the goal of offering the maximum amount of space and utility to users.
The software helped creating the digital surfaces of the indentation on the dashboard as well as validating them for final production without having the need to create costly physical prototypes. Also the advanced surfacing tools within the software enabled the designers to sculpt the complex but aesthetically pleasing interface between the air vents and the dashboard. It also provided an integrated workflow with the leading CAD tools used by engineering departments. It streamlines the communication between design and engineering teams through the capability of the software to read/write CAD files without any data loss. “With Dost, we were able to give our customers an aesthetically designed LCV. Thus, our design team prides itself on using the most cutting edge tool by Autodesk. People thought of LCV as unattractive; we have changed that perception by providing car-like features in Dost,” explains Seelan.
Dost is envisaged as the next-generation product in the Indian LCV industry, rapidly evolving on the lines of the passenger car segment. The software has helped them save on costly physical design models by providing high quality and precise digital prototypes to achieve design excellence faster. “It’s a great pleasure to see happy faces of our customers. Dost is a contemporary, powerful and highly efficient vehicle, bringing forth to its users the “Japanese Quality at Indian Cost”. We couldn’t have done all that without the help of Autodesk Alias software,” concludes Seelan.