Our team uses many CAD software tools to design our car. Our design engineers use Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Onshape, and more. Members of our team have learned these tools through a variety of technology courses our school provides. Through this season, we have built on those skills to allow us to design our car. When designing, we like to make many similar designs with slight changes. We keep a record of every version we’ve made so we can see the differences in the analysis step. Using CAD software like this allows us to try out unique shapes and techniques with little risk.

After designing several versions of a part, we use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to analyze the airflow around the car and pinpoint parts or shapes that create the most drag. The software we use is called Ansys. We use it to look at the drag coefficient, downforce, and lift to identify optimal designs for the car body, front wings and rear wings.

Once we’ve decided on some designs to try out, the car bodies must be cut. They are cut with a CNC (computer numerical control) machine. The CNC machine works by cutting away layers of the material until it reaches the shape we need.

All the other car parts that we need to make have to be 3D printed. Some of our team members only recently learned how to 3D print, but we have all gotten quite proficient. 

We are very grateful for our school, Northern Secondary School’s, supply of 3D printers that help us get our parts printed. For all our testing and prototypes so far, we have printed with our school’s Ultimaker S5 printers, though we hope that for our final car model, we will be able to get higher quality prints.

Testing and being strategic with what we print helps us not waste any filament just to be broken or thrown straight in the trash. ​