Protoyping - Essentials

Recent studies have identified that as project complexity grows, hardware availability and software/hardware integration are two key barriers to keeping development times short and costs low. Virtual prototyping techniques offer real gains in these critical areas.

Virtual products

Prototyping is essential for the selection and proving of the most appropriate design. Controlling the prototype phase of a project whilst minimising waste is an area in which we have been particularly concerned. Our experience has led us to develop the Virtual Product technique. Here we build a working simulation of the product on a PC using custom software running in the Windows environment. No physical model is made. This gives us a cost effective method of prototyping which allows important features to be trialled before a physical model is built. The Virtual Product is particularly useful for :-

• Proving complex user interfaces
  
• Assessing visual appeal
  
• Coding and debugging data storage functions
  
• Evaluating algorithms in a repeatable environment

Virtual products - further benefits

The life of the Virtual Product can extend beyond the design modelling phase and it may be used for :-

• Customer demonstrations
  
• Market assessment
  
• Product verification
  
• Product training

At AND we have pioneered this method and Virtual Prototyping is now the preferred route for many of our major customers.

Physical prototypes

Our services extend to building physical prototype models of new products. We can build an electronically compatible bench models or construct a full pre-production prototype.

Where prototypes already exist or can be provided by our customers we integrate our sections of work with the customers. Here we promote a ‘team’ atmosphere where engineers from all concerned parties work together to complete the phase.