Case Study: F.tech R&D North America achieves 20–25% faster pre-processing and standardized model building with Altair Knowledge Works' F.tech-PAS

Standardization of the Model Building Process with Meshing and Weld Creation Automation

F.tech R&D North America, the U.S. arm of Japanese Tier‑1 supplier F.tech, provides in‑house design, CAE, prototyping and testing for automotive components like subframes, control arms and pedals. Their CAE team faced a need to standardize and speed up the model‑building workflow—particularly tedious geometry clean‑up, meshing and multiple weld creation steps—to reduce manual effort, cut errors and meet program deadlines.

Altair delivered a customized Pre‑processing Automation Solution (F.tech‑PAS) built on Model Mesher Director and integrated with HyperMesh to automate geometry simplification, auto‑splitting of surfaces, meshing, weld/washer creation and material/property assignment, producing solver‑ready models. The tool standardized pre‑processing across components, reduced human error and improved analysis accuracy, cutting pre‑processing time by 20–25% and enabling faster, more reliable runs with Altair OptiStruct or other solvers.

F.tech R&D North America

James Smith

Senior Design Technician