Dayne Turbitt, MD of productONE, says BMW Oracle Racing selected the PTC product development system because it best supports the biggest objectives of innovative yachts: to be lighter, faster and stronger.
 
PTC has worked with BMW Oracle Racing since 1999, providing the team with solutions for product development. In 2004, the partnership was renewed to support the sailing team in its challenge for the 32nd Americas Cup in 2007 in Valencia, Spain.

The team uses Pro/Engineer for all its design activities, from developing the shape of the hull and keel, to designing structural components for the mast. In addition, the engineers have automated many of the design tasks and optimisation routines through the Pro/Engineer application programming interface, Pro/Toolkit.
 
PTCs Product Development System offered tremendous help in what had been a tedious and manual design process. A process that used to take two to three weeks has been compressed to only a few minutes with no chance for introduction of human error, says Ian Burns, design co-ordinator at BMW Oracle Racing.

In addition, the advanced structural analysis capabilities of Pro/Engineer, and highly accurate interfaces to external analysis tools are used extensively by the team, aiming to ensure that the components can withstand the tremendous stresses experienced in a sailing race, yet still be as light as possible. For much of the analysis work, the designers collaborate with structural engineers from BMW. The German car manufacturer is a partner of the team providing technology transfer from the automotive industry.
 
Structural Optimisation is critical for the design of a yacht. The detailed design models created within Pro/Engineer provide a highly accurate model as input to our analysis and lightweight applications, says Professor Raymond Freymann, BMW group director of research and technology. We can rapidly test many different variations and quickly and easily export the required geometry and design information.