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Nissan engineers working on the Qashqai used visualisation software to predict manufacturing variation before committing to tooling. The tool helps cut design-to-manufacturing time and costs.

Designers work with CAD/CAM tools using nominal dimensional values and perfect digital or physical models. Variation in the real assembly process is inevitable, but factors can collude to produce “Friday afternoon cars” with poor tolerances. These can destroy brand quality.

Nissan used Icona Solutions’ Aesthetica software to run a 50,000-unit sample assembly. This showed what could happen when worst-case tolerance limits combine.

Icona technical director Dr John Maxfield said: “Designing a car in CAD without seeing the variation is like night-driving without headlights. Aesthetica lets you see the gaps, flushes and alignments at an early stage.”

In the past, Nissan’s perceived quality team used physical models to perform control exercises. Worm gears on the model allowed them to create variations by moving individual components. Some manipulation of the digital model was also possible, but both methods were slow and haphazard. Nissan still produced some physical models of the Qashqai in clay, foam, Uryal and metal.

Aesthetica is the product of a 10 year research project involving Jaguar, Magna, Rover and Leeds University. Icona was set up in 2003 to find commercial applications for the tool.

Nissan Europe was the firm’s first customer and will use Aesthetica on all future programmes. GM, Porsche, Hyundai and Bentley are implementing the package.