SOLIDWORKS and the F1 Engineers of Tomorrow

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If the saying “you are a product of your environment” is true, everything you see, do and hear influences the person you are. So if your dream is to be an F1 engineer, it makes good sense to start designing and building race cars.

Step up SU Racing – a team of students from Sunderland University.

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Full throttle to the starting grid

Every year the Institution of Mechanical Engineers runs a competition called Formula Student. It challenges European university students to design, build and develop a single-seat racing car. Each team must also its market car to sponsors before taking its place on the starting grid for a series of performance challenges.

For SU Racing, SOLIDWORKS is a vital member of the team.


From SOLIDWORKS to Silverstone…

Some things in life are easy. Designing a racing car isn’t one of them.

It has to be strong yet lightweight; nice and nippy yet capable of rapid deceleration. It must be able to hurtle in to hairpins, without risking the safety of whoever is brave enough/lucky enough (delete as appropriate) to be hunched in the cockpit. For help with the whole caboodle, SU Racing turned to SOLIDWORKS.

SU Racing is an ever-changing team of (mostly engineering) students from Sunderland University. With SOLIDWORKS it can quickly design, visualise and prototype in 3D. It’s the weldment functionality that is particularly useful, allowing SU Racing to streamline the design and manufacture of the skeleton of their vehicle. Within minutes SU can create designs with auto-generated extrusions before obtaining automated cut lists and bills of materials (BOMs) needed for manufacturing.

That dramatically accelerates the design process and saves prototyping time as well as development costs.


Today’s uni students, tomorrow’s F1 engineers

The Formula Student programme allows students to gain hands-on experience that’s crucial for their nascent careers: teamwork, project management, working to deadlines, budgeting, marketing and presentation. In short: skills that employers are keen to sniff out in prospective engineering candidates.

The programme seems to be a fast-track to the F1 starting grid, or at least a place in the pit stop garage. Former SU Racing students have gone on to work for the likes of Red Bull, McLaren, Renault F1, Triumph, Nissan Cranfield and BAE Systems.

Sure, you are a product of your environment. But sometimes your environment is determined by the strength of your product.

Could SOLIDWORKS improve the way you work? Find out here.

SOLIDWORKS UK

SOLIDWORKS UK

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. offers complete 3D software tools that let you create, simulate, publish, and manage your data. SolidWorks products are easy to learn and use, and work together to help you design products better, faster, and more cost-effectively. The SolidWorks focus on ease-of-use allows more engineers, designers and other technology professionals than ever before to take advantage of 3D in bringing their designs to life.