Today's automakers must comply with multiple government-regulated standards and norms, and CAVA (CATIA V5 - Automotive Extensions Vehicle Architecture) ensures legal conformity of the car architecture during the entire creation process, allowing companies to get designs right the first time.

CAVA is a joint project of Transcat (A Dassault Systemes Company) with Audi, BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Porsche and Volkswagen. The aim is to ensure that the different international regulations, standards and norms relevant for a vehicle are complied with during the process starting with the planning stage. This can be achieved by utilizing the feature-oriented and associative technology of CATIA V5.

CAVA provides a series of easy-to-use features each including a standard or regulation. Approx. 20 features are available: e.g. underbody clearance, headlight position, bumper position, safety belt fixing points, children’s restraint system, field of view, rear-view mirror etc. The different national standards (ECE, EWG, FMVSS, SAE etc.) and the corresponding values are included in the system. All CAVA functions are implemented seamlessly within CATIA for easy access to the feature tree, enabling full associativity resulting from geometry modifications such as car body parts or references points.

In principle the CAVA features have two functions: Firstly they can be used for creating the prescribed fields, sizes or space requirements, secondly already existing geometries can be checked for their conformity. Therefore CAVA is useful over the entire development phase of a vehicle: During the development phase for defining the external boundaries for vehicle design and during the phase of detailed design for continuously checking conformity to law. Protocols of this check are produced in part fully automatically.

CAV combine market leading industry knowledge with proven PLM solutions, which allow customers to gain rapid ROI. In increasingly regulated markets and industries, this gives customers a real competitive advantage. It acts as an intelligent agent constantly cross-checking norms and standards against our designs throughout their lifecycles. It also ensures the conformity to law of the vehicle architecture already during the design phase

EDS Technologies is the sole partner of Transcat in India. For more details on CAVA, please mail to marketing@edstechnologies.com