“Last July, our family was in a terrible rollover. I broke two vertebrae in my lower spine. My son was buckled in his Marathon car seat. I am eternally grateful for this, and fully recommend BRITAX car seats to others. Thank you for building such stable and strong products to protect our children.”

How often do manufacturers get to say their products made such a big difference in someone’s life?

The BRITAX team hears testimonials like this all the time. Their strollers, infant carriers, and car seats help protect children around the world. And they’ve managed to accomplish all this with PTC Creo’s help.

For over 30 years, BRITAX has been building reliable infant car seats and booster seats. Their designs have to take into account a huge number of variables, including:

  • Protecting the child’s head from impact
  • Keeping the child’s body from flying forward
  • Meeting increasingly stringent and ever-changing safety regulation
  • Caregiver’s ’ease of use’ when installing the seat and buckling in the child

In addition to all this, BRITAX’s designs also have to be aesthetically pleasing, a significant consideration for their target markets.

PTC Creo helps BRITAX meet their design needs through two key areas: Efficiency and Teamwork.

Efficiency

PTC Creo helps BRITAX’s product engineers envision and design their products from early concepts in sketches to production-ready models.

“When you work with complex part geometry, advanced surfaces, and intricate assemblies, it’s best to create a 3D model as soon as possible, and use it throughout the product development process,” expained Mark Gunter, Senior Development Engineer at BRITAX. “We use PTC Creo 2.0 in combination with its advanced surfacing capabilities to take concept designs all the way to production.”

PTC Creo is essential to the product development process when taking steps like:

  • Sharing renderings of the initial idea with customers to solicit feedback on the design.
  • Using early mechanical simulations to coordinate aesthetics with aggressive safety strategies.
  • Producing manufacturing data directly from the 3D model in order to get initial supplier feedback.

BRITAX also uses the data it gleans from its high-tech dynamic testing and measurement equipment to improve PTC Creo’s virtual simulations. This helps their team better predict a design’s behavior before physical testing begins.

Teamwork

PTC Creo also enables BRITAX’s teams to share early renderings, discuss design points, and evaluate stylistic options before deciding on a design.

As the design evolves, simulations and other downstream activities are automatically updates. Additionally, PTC Windchill ensures the entire team can access the latest designs, which ensures everyone stays fully informed of the design as it develops and can provide feedback whenever needed.

Said Strong, “By creating our product ranges digitally in 3D using PTC Creo, it’s easy to share the vision for a new product earlier, gather opinions and expertise, and remain innovative and ?exible, yet still deliver safe products in an efficient way.”

The End Result

BRITAX’s latest design, the Frontier 90®, was an instant hot commodity, garnering excellent reviews and an impressive number of early sales orders. PTC Creo enabled the design team to develop incredible new features, like:

  • Significant innovations, like the ClickTight Installation System, to guarantee a secure and easy installation of the Harness-2-Booster seat.
  • Improved safety with the True Side Impact Protection system, ensuring better protection from side impact collision.
  • Meeting and exceeding all regulations and legislation.

With PTC Creo securely in its tool belt, BRITAX is looking forward to continuing its tradition of innovation and safety leadership. If you are interested in purchasing one of the Britax car seats you can see a comparison table if you follow the link to see which one is best suited for you.

Interested in learning more about PTC Creo and its 3D CAD capabilities? NxRev offers a variety of seminars, tutorials, and customer service to help users get the most out of the PTC suite. Give us a call at 408-986-0200 to find out more.

To learn more about BRITAX’s use of PTC Creo, read their PTC customer story.