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Aerospace and defense

Siemens technology helpsrevolutionize business class flightLie-flat seats have been called “God’sgift to air travel.” Used primarily onoverseas routes, these seats make itpossible for passengers to recline fullyfor a more restful sleep. When lie-flatseats became the must-have accommo-dation for first-class air travel, JapanAirlines (JAL) gave B/E Aerospace a tallorder: supply us with a flat seat forbusiness class that’s every bit as goodas first class seats, or better, but designit so it takes up less cabin real estate.And one more thing – the seat shouldlook stunning.

The stunning part was no problem. B/EAerospace’s industrial design team istop notch. The challenge on this project was how to pack the seat’s many internal components(electronics, motors, mechanisms, AV equipment and so on) into a very tight space. This wouldrequire extremely close collaboration between industrial design and engineering.

In the past, their collaboration had been problematic due to incompatible digital tools. Theindustrial designers worked with standalone conceptual design software. Engineers used variousCAD packages. Translation to a neutral file format was necessary for the two groups to sharedata. But translated files were so full of errors that the receiving party, whether designer orengineer, spent hours fixing mistakes, sometimes even recreating the geometry, before the usercould work with the file. When data was transferred from industrial design to engineering,

Issues

Create next-generation lie-flatseat for Japan Airlines’ (JAL’s)business class cabin

Incorporate privacy shell, fullrecline position and built-inmassage, yet occupy less cabinreal estate than first-class flat seats

Establish development processfree of data translation to meetchallenges of JAL seat

Approach

Engage product lifecyclemanagement (PLM) solutionsfrom Siemens PLM Software

Use single data format (nativeNX® software) to representJAL seat from conceptualdesign through mechanicalengineering

Capture seat’s outer surfacesin NX Shape Studio; designinternal mechanisms withinNX Design

Support concurrentdevelopment by usingTeamcenter® software toprovide access to engineeringdata

When B/E Aerospace transferred seat shapes from standalone industrial design software intoCAD, it lost design intent and wasted countless hours recovering from translation errors.

Stunning new airplane seat illustrates beauty of single data format B/E Aerospace developed Japan Airlines’ lie-flat seat using product lifecycle management solutions from Siemens

Siemens PLM Software

errors could be so significant that design intent was lost. From the engineers’ point of view, incomingsurfaces were very difficult to manipulate. Explains Tom Plant, vice president of engineering for thecompany’s Seat Products Group: “There were no features on the surfaces that we could modify.”

Handling the tight packaging of the JAL seat wouldrequire constant back-and-forth between industrialdesign and engineering. Realizing this, B/E Aerospacedecided to look for a better way to enable the twogroups to share data.

NX native file format eliminatestranslation, eliminates problemsThe solution B/E Aerospace came up with was toeliminate data translation altogether by using asingle data format from styling through mechanicalengineering. The company chose technology fromSiemens PLM Software – NX Shape Studio forindustrial design and NX Design for mechanicalengineering – because these programs use the samegeometry platform. “It was a very clever move onSiemens’ part to build an industrial design packageon the NX geometry kernel,” says Glenn Johnson,

B/E Aerospace’s challenge on the Japan Airlines’ lie-flat seatwas how to pack the seat’s many internal components(electronics, motors, mechanisms) into a very tight space.This would mean constant back-and-forth between industrialdesign and engineering, a process typically requiring time-consuming data translation.

Results

No time wasted translatingfiles or repairing geometry;two days/week saved

Accuracy in data transferallowed conceptual design and engineering to take place concurrently

Single data format enabledhighly sculpted, tightly packaged product

Seat won Chicago AthenaeumMuseum of Architecture andDesign’s prestigious “GoodDesign” Award for 2002; alsoon short list to receive an honor in “iF”(InternationalForum) Design’s 2003competition

Aerospace and defense

the company’s industrial design manager. “This is currently the only way I’m aware of to avoiddata translation between industrial design and engineering.”

Moving to a single data format solved B/E Aerospace’s translation problems immediately.Industrial designers and engineers worked with each other’s files in native format, with completeaccuracy. They were able to go back and forth with the data as often as necessary to create thebest arrangement of internal parts within the outer shell. File sharing was made even simpler bythe Siemens engineering collaboration solution – Teamcenter. All that was necessary to useanother person’s file was to type its number into Teamcenter.

The transition to Siemens software did more than just eliminate data translation problems. Itbrought more sophisticated modeling techniques to the project. “With its NX base, ShapeStudio has tools that other industrial design programs don’t,”says Johnson. “For example, Shape Studio provides the abilityto create highly complex parametric surfaces that you can thengo back and modify.” Modifiable surfaces saved a great deal oftime as the industrial designers worked with the client to honethe shape of the JAL seat. Having surfaces defined parametri-cally helped the engineers as well. “It was a tremendous advantagefor engineers to take parametric models from industrial designinstead of some translated geometry that they’d have torecreate,” says Plant. “When designers handed over 3D shapescreated in Shape Studio, engineers could run with them.”

How did industrial designers feel about using software basedon a high-end CAD system such as NX? “Just fine,” saysJohnson. “The first response, knowing Shape Studio’s connectionto a CAD package, might be to shrink away from the interfacethinking it’s too slow for free-form modeling. But that wasn’tthe case. As soon as we saw how Shape Studio presents itsamazing functionality in an extremely understandable manner,that mindset changed.”

The move to Siemens not only eliminated the normal data translation bottleneck

between industrial design and engineering,but it also brought more sophisticated

modeling techniques to the project.

“Siemens has addressedindustrial designrequirements on top of theextremely powerful NX CADpackage.The more you useShape Studio, the more yousee how powerful it is.”

Glenn JohnsonIndustrial Design ManagerB/E Aerospace

“We've been migrating ourorganization to Siemenssoftware. Eventually all data,from conceptual design todownstream operations suchas technical publications,tooling and NC programming,will be created in NX andmanaged by Teamcenter.”

John WhitingCorporate DirectorEngineering SystemsB/E Aerospace

Aerospace and defense

B/E Aerospace savesextraordinary cycle time; newseat also wins design awardThe JAL project was a resoundingsuccess, both as a product and as atest of the all-Siemens approach. Theseat was nominated for threeindustrial design awards. To date, theseat has won the Chicago AthenaeumMuseum of Architecture and Design’sprestigious “Good Design” Award for2002 and is now on the short list toreceive an honor in “iF” (InternationalForum) Design’s 2003 competition.However, the seat’s beauty is far morethan skin deep, with efficiently packedinternal components, includingelectronics, motors, mechanisms, AVequipment and more.

The seat features an adjustable flat footrest that folds up to extend the length of the seat in reclineposition and includes a built-in massage function. The armrests fold down to create a total width inbed mode of 23.5 inches for greater sleeping comfort. The bottom line is significantly increased in-flight living quarters, the best-in-class footwell available and compelling functionality. The innovativedesign was made possible by NX Shape Studio, which enabled optimal collaboration betweenindustrial designers and engineers.

In addition to the better product that came from sharing native data, the JAL project showed howmuch time could be saved when this approach is used. On previous seat programs, industrialdesigners and engineers had spent up to two days of each week repairing geometry. On the JALproject, this time was put to much better use, making the seat as beautiful and functional as possible.

The success of the JAL seat confirmed B/E Aerospace management’s decision to migrate the entireseating group to PLM software from Siemens. “My role is to get the company up to the highest levelof engineering efficiency possible,” says John Whiting, corporate director, engineering systems.“That’s why we are progressively moving the full lifecycle of product information from industrialdesign to engineering, tooling, NC programming and technical publications onto the common dataformat within the Siemens suite of tools.”

Solutions/Services

NX Shape Studio

NX Design

Teamcenter

Client’s primary business

B/E Aerospace Inc. is the world’sleading manufacturer of cabin

interior products for commercial passenger aircraft

and business jets.

Client location

B/E Aerospace Inc.Wellington, Florida

United States

B/E AerospaceIndustrial Design Studio

Winston-Salem, North CarolinaUnited States

Bug-free softwareGlenn Johnson, industrial design

manager, B/E Aerospace,has a master’s degree in CAD

and knows well-written softwarewhen he sees it. “I’ve used

NX Shape Studio extensively forthe past year and have not found a

bug in it yet.It works perfectly, even when I'm

doing things that would crashother packages, such as real-time

texture manipulation on the latest graphics card,” he says.

“Hat’s off to the developers. Theyobviously did a lot of testing.”

ContactSiemens PLM SoftwareAmericas 800 498 5351Europe 44 (0) 1276 702000Asia-Pacific 852 2230 3333www.siemens.com/plm

© 2008 Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. All rights reserved. Siemens and the Siemens logo are registered trademarks of Siemens AG.Teamcenter, NX, Solid Edge, Tecnomatix, Parasolid, Femap, I-deas, JT, UGS Velocity Series, Geolus and the Signs of Innovation trade dress are trademarks orregistered trademarks of Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries. All other logos,trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks used herein are the property of their respective holders. 2/08