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Vehicle outlines showing SmartWindow usage. SmartWindow demonstration application.

Software packages that address specific areas — such as wire harnesses, electrical motors, or electronic controllers — provide a cyberspace link from concept through design, engineering, and manufacturing.

Structural Dynamics Research Corp. (SDRC) and Transcendent Design Technology just released a next-generation software solution for wire harness and cable systems design. "The mechanical and electrical worlds have been separated by a chasm due to differences in skills, culture, language, and loosely integrated tools. Transcendent and SDRC are the first to engineer a completely integrated solution for the entire design process of wire harness and cable systems," notes Enrique Ortega, Transcendent's Vice President of System Design Products.

Adds SDRC's Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Bill Carrelli, "The significance of this solution is that the electrical engineer can now work concurrently with the mechanical engineer to maximize design trade-offs and optimize interdisciplinary design decisions."

Applied Dynamics International Inc.'s SIMsystem is being used for General Motors' next generation Hardware-in-the-Loop simulators to design, verify, and validate control strategies relating to electronic controllers. Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation enables analysis of control system hardware and software in a laboratory setting. "General Motors' goal is to reduce costs and time-to-market, and improve overall quality in the development of its electronic control systems across all vehicle platforms," notes John McIntosh, Applied Dynamics President and CEO.

A new electronic control unit software tool, TargetLink, automatically generates fixed-point code for production ECUs. "(The software) has already been tested with genuine ECU functions provided by automotive benchmark partners. TargetLink-generated code was equal and in several cases superior to handwritten production code in terms of execution and memory consumption," notes Herbert Hanselmann, President and CEO of dSPACE, the Paderborn, Germany-headquartered company that developed TargetLink. Code generated by the software runs on any processor that is programmable with standard ANSI-C code. TargetLink code documentation is done in HTML.

Event recorder usage is poised to become a mainstream monitoring tool for vehicle electronics. The U.S. Army Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM)'s COMBATT (commercially based tactical truck) evaluation project will include an event recorder on modified full-size pick-up trucks (Ford F350 super duty platform, Dodge Ram 2500/3500 platform) as well as a modified HMMWV (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle). "With real-time data recording, we can pinpoint when something went wrong and why it went wrong," says Elio DiVito, Electrical Engineer at TACOM's National Automotive Center. An event recorder integrates information from multiple systems, such as engine, transmission, and anti-lock brakes. "From an accident reconstruction or equipment failure standpoint, this is important data. And from a maintenance and diagnostic standpoint, an event recorder can be very helpful. Such a device helps you be a detective by giving you more information," DiVito says.

Unlike an electronic module that gathers data from that module only, an event recorder collects information from multiple vehicle areas with a memory capacity greater than that of a single electronic module. "The event recorder can be used on any vehicle with a databus. Although the U.S. Army has only three vehicles with a databus (palletized load system, family medium tactical vehicles, heavy equipment transport system/tank haulers), the likely future is re-manufactured vehicles with increased electronic content," DiVito says. COMBATT's first demonstration and evaluation prototypes are expected by the end of 1999.

As for production carry-over of event recorders, Ford Motor Co. equipped almost all 1999 model year vehicles with event data recorders. "It captures a limited amount of information, like how much the vehicle slows, when the algorithms are activated, and when an airbag deploys," says Jennifer Flake, Ford Public Affairs Safety Manager. Although the recorded data stored in the airbag control module remains untapped, a retrieval device for consumer vehicles is under development. "Ford wants to analyze and use real-world data to help enhance our vehicle safety systems," Flake explains.