Abstract
In order to meet the new time to market tight requirements, it is necessary to employ a series of new tools targeted to a more powerful support of the early stage of product development. Work practices and techniques must be oriented to achieve the maximum automation in the most repetitive tasks : an innovative methodology has been developed in order to drive the geometric constraints to the ergonomic study starting from performance targets. A collection of geometrical data from recent projects and from the major competitors vehicles enables the designer to evaluate the actual trends and the requested targets. From such an array of data it is possible to perform a series of iterative evaluations of the ergonomic quality of the project. A parametric
archetype of the vehicle interior compartment allows a deeper connection to the CAD engineering environment, resulting in a series of parametric surfaces which, while in keeping with the required targets, form the basis to the following styling studies as well.