Driving the power of invention
Driving the power of invention
March/April Edition, 2008: The famous battle of the V8s, between Ford and Holden, has for years captured the imaginations of thousands, so much so that the drivers and teams have become household names and the victors etched into folklore. But you don’t hear so much about the engineers breathing life into the 8 cylinder chariots, without whom the battle would be far less grand.
After a massive victory at Mount Panorama last year, V8 fans know all about Team Vodafone. What isn’t so well known is the name of Triple Eight Engineering, who are the genius’s behind the car that brought home the podium finish.
Triple Eight are responsible for the entire lifecycle of the car’s design, from a concept being tossed around the lunchroom to the fully constructed prototype thundering around the race track. The design process comes about by using Autodesk’s Inventor which provides fully integrated 2 and 3-dimensional modeling, complete with clash detection and intelligence work.
“We use Inventor pretty much 100% of the time. It depends on the job you’re doing but if it’s not structured or placed correctly, then a component can fail and put the driver at risk,” says Simon Holt, chief designer, Triple Eight.
Holt relies on Inventor for modeling the entire car, from the gearbox to a proprietary drawing for the break discs. It’s all designed, tested and examined on the software. When you consider design software has traditionally required intensive hardware to power it, there’s no real shock to hear that Triple Eight have recently undergone an upgrade to their computer systems.
“The quad core assembly was a result of the old system exceeding the operating limit. In the last four weeks alone we’ve gone through roughly 350 drawings so there’s a massive output,” says Holt.
When the safety requirements and the amount of pressure on an engineering team to perform are considered, it’s no surprise that there is a lot of concern about the software choice. A successful design implementation can means hundredths of a second improvement and what could be the difference between pole and second position.
With one fulltime employee and three part time designers on board the Triple Eight crew, Holt says the entire team is using state of the art computer systems, which have been switched over to Microsoft Vista and have been holding up well with the new operating system. It’s a major relief for the team given their reliance on the software.
“Without Inventor and the 3D drawings we wouldn’t be anywhere – it’s not possible to keep pace with the rest of the teams in performance racing without it. The very powerful teams have very powerful resources and we need to keep up,” says Holt.
Other teams, says Holt, will actually employ Formula One personnel just to ensure they’re on the cutting edge and avoid falling off the back of the grid. This has however been unknown to Triple Eight who have instead found they’re actually being asked to supply parts and expertise because of the success of their marquee client, Team Vodafone.
“Motor spot is a shot-cut as far as the engineering side goes – you have to get things out as quick as possible,” says Holt. “This means drawings can be compromised and not up to a true engineering standard if you don’t do them right.
“We’ve been able to excel in this and now supply to a lot of other teams, from Team Kiwi to TKR who we supply quite a bit – Jim Beam Racing also uses a lot of our stuff, so there’s quite a few.”
While there’s a large number of things that can happen between the time a concept is thought up and the moment the button is pushed, Holt believes even if you’re slow off the mark you will very quickly get up to speed with Inventor.
It’s clearly a formula that’s been paying dividends for Holt and the crew as they’ve just come from designing a brand new roll-cage for the Team Vodafone car and it’s first outing was at none other than Mount Panorama, where the team took home Bathurst’s 1,000 trophy.
“We are often looking to improve the car’s performance by hundredths of a second in a lap that lasts just one minute and 30 seconds,” says Peter Jamieson, commercial manager for Triple Eight Australia.
“When every single one-hundredth of a second counts, every part of the process can make a difference. The time that we spend on Autodesk Inventor at the workstation developing an efficient design is directly responsible for the ultimate performance of the car.”
In addition to the first place finish at Mt Panorama and second overall in championship standings, Triple Eight have also been recognised by taking out Autodesk’s Inventor of the Month award for January 2008.