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A rendering of the inside of a car designed with NX and Mastertrim

Seat design

Mastertrim seat trim engineering

Optimize your entire seat trim engineering process to deliver more designs, of higher quality, faster. Mastertrim software helps you to eliminate reliance on prototypes, significantly reduce time to market, increase productivity through automation and minimize the risk of cost estimate uncertainty.

Seat and interior component design

Make design changes quickly, efficiently and share information throughout the development process with Mastertrim in NX.

Using Mastertrim for design facilitates the creation of a 3D CAD digital twin by streamlining the task of authoring design data that defines a seat trim cover, including sew lines, cover pieces materials, attachments and hardware.

This enables you to make changes quickly, based on more accurate feedback and efficiently share information throughout the development process.

Mastertrim provides seat trim engineers with the tools needed to:

  • Become less reliant on physical prototypes
  • Achieve efficiency and accuracy during design, validation, and manufacturing development processes
  • Better streamline collaboration and communication between styling, design, and manufacturing, as well as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and the supply chain
  • Leverage the digital twin to effectively share information throughout the development process
Black leather car seats

Custom seat trim engineering solutions from Mastertrim

The powerful features of Mastertrim Seat & Interior Design allow you to build a custom solution. Read more about these features below.

Seat trim design collaboration

With Mastertrim, stylists and engineers can easily communicate priorities and issues via a single platform. Mastertrim is integrated with NX software for CAD, allowing stylists to see the impact of their designs immediately. Mastertrim enables stylists and engineers to easily collaborate to get feedback on potential manufacturing issues and costs.

With CAD integrated Mastertrim and styling tools, stylists and engineers can easily communicate priorities and issues. The image of NX CADs interface, shows when the styling shape is changed, the impact of that change can be quickly evaluated by Mastertrim and actions can be taken. This image shows NX’s Realize Shape functionality being used to change the shape of the seat trim. Then Mastertrim’s producibility and costing tools can be used to quickly evaluate the change for any potential issues before making any physical prototypes.

Variant authoring

Creating many designs across multiple CAD models can lead to data management and update challenges.

Mastertrim saves time by uniquely allowing you to define, update, and generate outputs for multiple trim variants within one 3D CAD model.

Variant authoring allows multiple seat variants to be created based on a single initial design, instead of creating an entirely new CAD model for each material type. With minimal effort the user can create a number of variants all based on a single design. The user can then output or process that information just the same as they would for any other design. This image shows an example where one seatback styling shape can be used to author multiple variants, including varying seam locations, and generate multiple sets of flat patterns from one CAD model.</br>

Teamcenter publishing

Obtain all the traditional PLM benefits of bill of materials (BOM) management, revision control, release management and notification systems for trim data with Mastertrim's Teamcenter Publishing functionality.

Mastertrim authors the complete seat trim BOM, including variants, to Teamcenter, as well as reading back in part numbers and revisions to complete the change management cycle.

Mastertrim’s connection to Teamcenter allows your company to bring the trim engineering process into the PLM workflow and take advantage of all of its benefits. This includes BOM management, revision control, release management and notification systems. This image is showing how the BOM is first authored in Mastertrim and then published to Teamcenter where the BOM can be viewed and managed. Multiple variants can be published at one time.. In addition, critical components such as hardware, kits, threads and materials are included in the BOM view for completeness.

Photorealistic seat trim rendering

Create photorealistic renders that include solids, textures and stitching. Rendering in Mastertrim requires no separate software or process for creating renders during the design process, enabling quick feedback and better communication.

Viewing the renders does not require a CAD license and can be done with a stand-alone viewer that anyone can install.

Mastertrim builds upon its industry leading soft trim digital twin solution by leveraging Siemens’ best-in-class rendering engine for dynamic photo realistic rendering. Now you can define, analyze, cost, iterate and view your design all within one seamless 3D solution before generating the manufacturing data and creating your first prototype. This image shows the Rendering utility within Mastertrim that is used to create the rendering files and the stand-alone viewer that can be used for seamless collaboration within your company. The results are a photorealistic rendering of the seat trim along with any hardware you want to include.

Producibility assessment with design validation

Avoid delays in the seat trim design process and resolve manufacturing errors and issues using producibility simulations to diagnose potential problems early in the design process. 

Mastertrim allows you to validate the quality of cover fit digitally, reducing the need for physical prototyping. When issues are uncovered, you have the choice of selecting alternative materials, or to move seams.

Mastertrim’s producibility simulation allows for a quick evaluation of the design, accounting for the shape, material and seam locations defined. This image is showing the simulation interface shows green when no producibility issues are present, red when areas of wrinkling occur and blue for areas of bridging or excessive compression. When issues occur, alternative materials could be selected, styling shapes changed or seams moved to address any issues.

Seat trim costing

Understand the cost implications of your designs. Small changes in a design can have dramatic cost effects. Automatically produce accurate cost estimates early in the process driven by design details such as material area, length of seams, attachments, hardware and seam types.

Mastertrim provides capability to do design for cost modeling by generating the data needed for design based cost analysis, directly from the details of the seat cover Mastertrim model. This allows for cost feedback early and often during design. As a result engineers know when they are making million dollar decisions. This image is an example of a spreadsheet that can generated from Mastertrim using the seat trim data captured.</br>

Seat trim definition

Overcome a lack of standardized engineering and trim definition processes by providing accurate and precise design data in the form of a digital twin representing your complete seat trim definition. Mastertrim allows you to easily create a complete digital twin representation of the desired seat trim definition, including geometric and non-geometric data, material, seam and attachment types, and material and seam properties.

Mastertrim turns the CAD system into a system for trim engineers and developers by allowing them to work in the way they think. The image is of the easy to use interface which presents data in the language of the seat cover or seat engineer.

Automatically generate engineering documentation

Automatically generate engineering documentation and eliminate the tedious and error-prone manual process.  

Customizable details are incorporated into drawings and documents automatically, including labeling for flat patterns, annotated 3D cross-sections, coloring by material, customizable tables and labeling of isometric views. 

This image is an example engineering drawing that can be automatically generated from Mastertrim with full associativity to the original 3D definition. Additional documents that can be generated include cost data, BOMs, cross section drawings and data files for direct export to cutting machines. This saves engineers a tremendous amount of time and reduces errors.

Seat trim flat pattern generation

Save time and material by developing accurate product flat patterns. 

Leverage the seat trim digital twin representation to develop 2D flat patterns automatically. Rule-based automation of notches and sew specifications allows you to ensure that flat patterns are generated based on company-defined rules.

Flat patterns can be generated automatically from Mastertrim. They can include details such as seam allowances, notches, nesting symbols and more. Mastertrim’s specialized flattening algorithm has been industry proven to generate accurate patterns digitally as shown in this image. This will save significant time and iterations by reducing the number of physical prototypes needed to get to a production worthy seat.

Seat trim manufacturing

Simplify downstream operations and communicate effectively with the manufacturing floor and suppliers.

By using Mastertrim, manufacturing is able to simplify downstream operations and communicate effectively with the manufacturing floor and suppliers. The Mastertrim digital twin enhances communication of the seat trim definition between design and manufacturing enabling manufacturers to identify producibility issues such as wrinkling and communicate this to designers before a prototype is manufactured.

Black leather car seat

Seamlessly exchange data

Exchange data between 2D pattern editing and nesting software with Mastertrim. Format patterns for editing in the 2D editing software of your choice. Existing 2D flat patterns can be imported into Mastertrim and then edited or used to measure areas, perimeter and lengths, as well as generate documents and cost data (providing a two-way link between the 2D editing application and Mastertrim). This allows for legacy data to be brought into the digital twin process.

This image shows a flat pattern design with a menu open for exchanging data. Exchange data easily between your preferred 2D pattern editing, nesting software and Mastertrim. With Mastertrim, you can effortlessly import existing 2D flat patterns, enabling you to edit them, perform precise measurements of areas, perimeters, and lengths, and even generate documents and cost data. This establishes a bidirectional connection between your chosen 2D editing application and Mastertrim, thereby streamlining the integration of legacy data into the digital twin workflow.
Case Study

SCS Interiors

Using Mastertrim and NX to reduce seat-pattern development time by 40 percent
Case Study

Using Mastertrim and NX to reduce seat-pattern development time by 40 percent

Company:SCS Interiors

Industry:Aerospace & defense, Automotive & transportation, Marine

Location:Duluth, Minnesota, United States

Siemens Software:NX, SES (formerly Vistagy)

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