Case Study: Scania achieves faster development cycles and improved FE model quality with Altair ProductDesign

Reducing the Development Cycle with Assembly Automation

Scania, a European heavy-vehicle manufacturer known for highly customized products, faced a CAE bottleneck: engineers had to rapidly verify many vehicle variants with finite element simulations, while time-consuming, error-prone tasks like positioning hundreds of components, defining contacts, and building pre‑strained bolt connections slowed development. Scania engaged Altair—specifically Altair ProductDesign’s Process Automation team—using the HyperWorks framework to address these challenges.

Altair developed a semi-automatic pre‑processing manager (HyperWorks Process Manager) that automates CAD selection, monitors FE and geometry libraries, cuts holes for bolt fits, and generates “spider connections” (solid bolts with pre‑tension and contact definitions). The Altair solution improved FE model quality, standardized the CAE process, increased flexibility in product development and modeling, and delivered a significant reduction in the overall development cycle.

Scania