AutoForm-OneStep^®

Software for

Engineering Manufacturable Sheet Metal Parts

Achieving and exceeding cost, quality and time targets on a vehicle program are vital to healthy profitability; dictated by today’s highly competitive marketplace, these targets are more aggressive than ever before. Designing and engineering parts right the first time is no longer just desirable, but essential to success. The “right” design has to satisfy aggressive styling, packaging, weight and performance requirements while being manufacturable to adequate and reliable quality, at reasonable cost.

AutoForm-OneStep provides, from very early on in the product development program, crucial and “real time” assistance to designers / design engineers:

	In making the right choices on crucial design elements by identifying formability hot spots,
	By validating formability based on proposed or plausible stamping layouts, and
	In assessing the relative cost of design and material choices.

AutoForm-OneStep has numerous application opportunities over the product development cycle, ranging from product formability engineering through material cost optimization to early assistance in die and process layout. The diversity of applications and of users, namely product designers and engineers, process and die face designers, material and die cost estimators, is made possible by the ease of usage of AutoForm-OneStep, and by the relative simplicity of data required to run AutoForm-OneStep simulations.

Enumerated below are the business and engineering benefits that derive from the typical applications of AutoForm-OneStep; these benefits highlight both the versatility of AutoForm-OneStep, and the extendibility of its application through carefully designed integration between AutoForm modules:

	Product engineering - Part formability validation, from early on until product release - Design studies to evaluate alternative part designs - Design studies to evaluate alternative material type/grade and gage - Thickness mapping for downstream CAE - crash, durability, NVH
	Material and die cost estimation - Material / part cost estimation and optimization - Die cost estimation based on formability assessment and blank - Material grade and gage selection for optimal cost / performance
	Preliminary die face and process engineering - Single- versus multi-stage forming - Single stamping vs. double-attached  (1-off versus 2-off stamping layouts) - Optimal die tip

Besides the above application areas, AutoForm-OneStep complements the application of AutoForm-DieDesigner and AutoForm-Incrementalplus through accurate blank development necessary for process planning and optimization.

The following are a few of the prominent features of AutoForm-OneStep:

	Ideal for “real time” design studies by part designers
	Unique and proven application methodology embedded in intuitive set up wizard
	Simulation based on part or full tool geometry
	Automatic / interactive die tip evaluation
	Simulation of forming from flat and wrapped blank
	Simulation of parts with tailor-weld lines
	Automatic mapping of forming results on to application-specific models for crash / safety, NVH, durability and other CAE analyses
	Extensive generic materials library for initial studies
	Development and export of accurate blank outline
	Optimal embedding of developed blank on coil stock
	Tolerant of gaps / overlaps, sharp edges, holes in imported part geometry
	Automatic global filleting of sharp edges
	Geometry import from a wide variety of data formats