Improving real products with virtual design tools

We constantly work to stay at the cutting edge of design and technology. Our location within the Daresbury Innovation Centre means we regularly interact with cutting edge businesses and technologists.

Virtual design tools such as 3D CAD are widely used by designers and engineers. At 4D Products we work with the Virtual Engineering Centre to utilise high end virtual technology, usually only used by large international manufacturing organisations.

When a product is designed, the ergonomic considerations can be key to its success or failure. Imagine a car where the gear stick is out of reach, or the instrument panel cannot be viewed properly. Large products can be very expensive and time consuming to prototype, especially if you need to go through several iterations. We can now virtually prototype a design straight from our 3D CAD data. Using anatomically correct animated mannequins and environments, we are able to measure the users interaction with the product. This offers real time feedback and highlights any issues with user interaction, ergonomics, reach, potential for injury, and safe working practices.

4D Products are really excited to utlilise this cutting edge technology and the support of the centre to feed directly into our design work. We can evaluate a design in an engaging 3D environment on a 6 metre wide display screen, which can also track the viewers movements, and provide haptic* feedback. A wide array of simulation tools can also be used to investigate such things as heat and fluid dynamics, and finite element analysis.

Great design results from an ongoing process of feedback and optimisation. These virtual engineering tools help us to deliver great results for our clients and stay at the cutting edge of design.

*Haptic devices allow the user to feel the forces and vibrations within a virtual assembly