Streamlining Function-oriented Development by Consistent Integration of Automotive Function Architectures with CAD Models

A primary challenge in the automotive industry is the increasing complexity of modern cars caused by the high amount of vehicle electronics respectively vehicle functions which are implemented as mechatronic systems. A promising solution is the relatively new function-oriented development approach that focuses on the interdisciplinary development of such functions and which helps to handle the high complexity in automotive development. At this stage, however, a function-oriented development does not fully exploit the capabilities of virtual technologies which are fairly well-established technologies in the automotive product development. One reason in particular is that function-oriented data is not yet integrated with geometric CAD data. The authors’ main contributions begin with an analysis of the data structures of function architecture data and CAD data and they provide a definition of the requirements for a consistent mapping of named data structures. Moreover, they also develop a meta-format that enables a system-independent description and exchange of function architectures. In addition, the authors carry out a prototypical implementation that shows the applicability of the proposed data integration approach and they derive new methods that can assist a function-oriented development. Finally, the authors evaluate these methods by means of actual use cases. Summarizing, their research focuses on the interdisciplinary integration of function architectures with CAD models to create synergies and to enable new, beneficial methods for the spatial visualization and utilization of such data.