Mentor Automotive joins world-class automotive programs

Under the auspices of Mentor’s Higher Education Program, Mentor Automotive is providing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of industry-leading software, support and training to universities and student teams in both the PACE and EcoCAR 3 programs.

This enables students to be proficient in today’s skills and methodologies before graduation and be ready to contribute to leading automotive companies immediately.

PACE

The PACE program was established by General Motors to develop the automotive Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) team of the future. Each of the 65 PACE universities worldwide, which General Motors targets in its recruiting efforts, will be offered the same set of Mentor Automotive engineering tools adopted by General Motors.

These include the Capital® product line for electrical systems and harness design with SystemVision® for electrical systems simulation, FloEFD 3D thermal and fluid analysis software (integrated with the Siemens NX 3D CAD package), and FloTHERM software for electronics cooling analysis, plus the Xpedition® printed circuit board (PCB) design platform with HyperLynx software for high-speed design reliability verification.

In addition to General Motors leadership, PACE is supported by Autodesk, HP, Oracle, MathWorks, Siemens PLM Software and Mentor Automotive. Through PACE, engineering students develop practical skills in the core software and processes they will use in high-technology careers in industry.

EcoCAR 3

EcoCAR 3 is the latest DOE Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition (AVTC) series, sponsored by DOE and General Motors and managed by Argonne National Laboratory.

The 4-year program challenges 16 North American university teams to redesign and convert a 2016 Chevrolet V6 Camaro into an advanced hybrid car to reduce its environmental impact, while maintaining the muscle and performance expected from this iconic American car.

The teams even design in new Advanced Driver Assistance (ADAS) functions. Mentor Automotive is providing EcoCAR 3 a wide range of tools from its automotive product portfolio, including tools for electrical system and harness design (Capital, VeSys and SystemVision), mechanical analysis tools (FloEFD, Flowmaster, FloTHERM), vehicle networking tools (Volcano), embedded software tools (Sourcery CodeBench, Nucleus), and PCB design and verification tools (PADS, Xpedition, and HyperLynx).

“Mentor’s Capital software suite has greatly improved our electrical design and documentation practices. Its deep configurability has allowed us to capture the finest details of our hybrid powertrain electrical system design,” said Jonathan Moscardini, electrical team lead engineer for McMaster University’s EcoCAR 3 Team.

“Capital has given us enterprise-grade collaboration and user management tools without any of the usual enterprise-grade IT headaches. The MCAD integration enables us to more accurately define and route our custom harnesses for the 2016 Chevrolet Camaro. The Mentor tools revealed multiple design insights, before we touched a single physical wire. The ease-of-use of the entire suite has helped us complete our work faster than ever."

The specs of McMaster’s hybrid Camaro suggest a bright future for energy-efficient, high performance vehicles. The 600 combined horsepower car has a total range of more than 300 miles and an electric-only range of 30 miles. Fuel efficiency is impressive as well at 42 miles per gallon, and muscle car enthusiasts will appreciate the acceleration (zero-to-60 mph in 4.6 seconds).

"EcoCAR 3 is one of the world’s premier vehicle technology competitions," said Nick Smith, business development director at Mentor Automotive. "The fact that in just four years students can build cars that perform as they do is testament to the ingenuity of these engineering students, but also to the increasing power of advanced design tools and software, such as those supplied by Mentor Automotive."