Case Study: Skip Barber Racing School slashes design time by up to 80% and reduces development costs with SolidWorks

Accelerating High-precision Racecar Design With SolidWorks Premium

Skip Barber Racing School, the world’s largest racing and driving school with a fleet of more than 150 racecars and dozens of rebuilds and new chassis each year, found AutoCAD 2D too slow and cumbersome for complex assemblies. To move to a 3D parametric workflow they evaluated several packages and selected SolidWorks, deploying one seat of SolidWorks Premium and one seat of SolidWorks Professional for better large-assembly, sheet‑metal, simulation, PDM and communications capabilities.

SolidWorks enabled Skip Barber engineers to detect and resolve assembly interference in software, run integrated Simulation analyses for safety and weight optimization, and share designs via eDrawings and automated BOMs—compressing design cycles and improving collaboration across locations. The result: design time reduced by as much as 80 percent, improved racecar performance, lower development costs, fewer design errors, and optimized component weight and safety.

Skip Barber Racing School

James Achard

Lead Engineer for Operations