Scuderia Mensa, a Formula Student racing team from RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Germany, designed the Monocoque for its 2020 racing car with BricsCAD®Mechanical. The team started building racing cars for the international Formula Student competition in 2006 and has found BricsCAD to be a simple and intuitive tool for their latest project.
Formula Student program
Viola Mc Kearney, Scuderia Mensa’s team manager, is responsible for the implementation, administration and financing of the project to ensure the team reach its goal of building a car.
“We formed a group of motivated students in 2006, with the support of a university professor, and launched our first car at events in 2008. Since then, we’ve built a vehicle every year. Our cars use a combustion engine, however, from 2011 through to 2015 we used an electric motor, and we will use an electric motor again this year.”
“About 50 students are working on the project and we are organized like a small company. We have different departments including powertrain, electrics, vehicle dynamics, body, aerodynamics, business media, and driverless technology, which is important because we plan to build a car in 2022 that can drive autonomously. Every team member has their own tasks, for which they are responsible, and must work completely independently.”
Every year, the Scuderia Mensa team put its car to the test against other teams in Formula Student competitions all over the world.
"Approximately 1000 teams take part in the Formula Student competitions, the world's largest design competition. There are about 20 events each year and they are held in locations such as the Hockenheimring, Silverstone and Barcelona.”
Mechanical design with BricsCAD
Scuderia Mensa relies on the support of partners to construct its vehicle. In 2020, the team partnered with Bricsys to use BricsCAD®Mechanical for the design of car parts.
Viola explains, “With BricsCAD Mechanical we designed the "Monocoque" which includes the chassis, the rear frame and the suspension. The simple and intuitive handling of BricsCAD is especially nice when you use it for the first time. Even if you have never used BricsCAD before, you know immediately, ‘OK I have to press this to do that’, and ‘this works through many handy little symbols.’ There is always a description and a good search bar. It fares especially well in comparison to other CAD software packages.”
“There is a great deal of communication among the team, especially when designing the monocoque, which makes BricsCAD an excellent tool to work with. When we send parts off for manufacture, the manufacturer has not yet had any problems opening the BricsCAD files we have provided.”
Training and development
MERViSOFT, the local Bricsys partner, offered the students the opportunity to participate in a BricsCAD training course.
“Training is very important to us and a key benefit of joining the Formula Student program, as we can further develop our skills in programs outside of our studies. In this case we were able to gain insights into BricsCAD, so our adoption of the software was quick and easy,” concluded Viola.
RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Automotive
Scuderia Mensa
- www.scuderia-mensa.de
