Manchester, UK. 6 August, 2009. – At this year’s IAA, (Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung), in Frankfurt am Main, Icona Solutions Ltd., in partnership with its German business partner, HIC Engineering, will demonstrate for the first time at a major international event the latest version of its innovative perceived quality simulation and visualization software, aesthetica V3.1.

aesthetica is used by leading automotive industry OEMs to help them improve the perceived quality of their vehicles while reducing development time-scales and costs. Unlike other visualisation software products, aesthetica uniquely applies information on manufacturing variations and assembly deformation directly to the 3D CAD model of a vehicle to enable real time, ‘what you see is what you get’ (WYSIWIG) perceived quality studies, using realistic imagery, from the early stages of the vehicle development process right through to production.

Demonstrations of aesthetica at IAA illustrate many of the new features and functions introduced with V3.1, including: the ability to visualize how a new concept design will look when assembled using an existing vehicle platform; the ability to visualize the impact of real-world manufacturing variation on a vehicle, including offset means and skewed or non-symmetric distributions; and the ability to apply actual shop-floor inspection data and visualize real form variation directly on digital parts or assemblies.

New photo-realism capabilities.
In addition to these new data import facilities, demonstrations also show how the new direct interface from aesthetica to Autodesk Showcase digital mock-up and visualization software and enhancements to the existing direct interface to the Bunkspeed HyperShot 3D visualisation software enable photographic-quality visualization of deformed models created with aesthetica.

No additional data preparation is required for aesthetica models to be viewed in either Bunkspeed HyperShot or Autodesk Showcase because the exported models include all required geometry, materials and viewing positions. However, both Bunkspeed HyperShot and Autodesk Showcase can be used to add further visual effects, such as scenes, to the exported models for added realism when viewing them via a virtual reality environment, such as a Powerwall.

About aesthetica
Icona Solutions’ aesthetica software provides a unique solution for improving perceived quality by giving manufacturing companies the ability to simulate and visualize the impact of production variation and component deformation on a new product, early in the digital design process. It reduces the need for physical prototypes, removing cost through the early identification of perceived quality issues and by reducing the need for pre- and post-production rectification.

Unlike traditional visualization tools, which can only create visualizations of the 3D CAD model in its perfect, as-designed nominal state, aesthetica brings innovation to the entire concept-to-production process by enabling proposed tolerances as well as actual variation and deformation data to be applied directly to the product geometry. The results are presented in a high-end visualization environment, in real time, with realistic lighting and materials, exactly as customers will see the finished product, with its production variations, in reality. Decisions can then be made early on as to whether or not the variations – and the cost implications of necessary design changes - are acceptable.

About Icona Solutions Ltd.
Icona Solutions develops software that uniquely combines variation simulation and high-end visualisation to provide immediate insight into the impact of manufacturing variation and deformation on perceived quality, improving the desirability of the finished product while saving time, avoiding costs and improving communication and collaboration. Icona Solutions is a member of both Dassault Systèmes’ CAA V5 Adopters and Siemens PLM Software’s JT Open programs and a development partner of Autodesk, enabling the company to develop software solutions as an integral part of the broader PLM software environment. Icona’s products are supplied and supported globally through a network of qualified resellers and engineering service providers. Find out more at: www.iconasolutions.com

ENDS

Editors: for further information, contact:
Tim Illingworth: +44 (0)1706 629882: Email Contact
Neil McLeod: +44 (0)1666 504293: Email Contact