IGI Breathes New Life into Nissan Design America PowerWall

January, 2009 - Along with most major automobile design studios worldwide, Nissan Design America (NDA) in San Diego, California has been utilizing full scale design visualization for many years. NDA has found that the visualization of full scale, 3D, digital renderings and models of new vehicles under development yields significant internal communications efficiencies, and significant speed-to-market and quality improvements. Given the current state of the economy and the substantial pressures facing the automotive industry in particular, technologies capable of getting better products to market faster are now more important than ever to automobile manufacturers like Nissan.

Unfortunately – and unexpectedly - a few years into their use of their original PowerWall visualization system, the digital design team at NDA began encountering a steadily increasing number of problems with their system’s performance. Ultimately, its operational condition became so unreliable and had reached such a state of disrepair that it was essentially deemed useless. Unable to find an adequate resolution to the problems with their existing system, Nissan finally decided to invest in an upgrade to restore it back to its intended usefulness while hopefully also improving the overall image quality of the system.

Nissan found its way to IGI to discuss its objectives. With years of experience in advanced visualization system design, installation and maintenance in the automotive industry, NDA was satisfied that it had encountered a partner who well understood their predicament and goals for the system upgrade. IGI engineers soon began rolling up their sleeves to assess the problems with the current system.

Since The Nissan Technology Center North America (NTCNA) in Farmington Hills, Michigan, had an identically configured PowerWall at their facility, Detroit-based IGI was able to quickly dispatch system engineers to that location to conduct a technology assessment, determine what needed to be corrected, and develop a design upgrade. With the assessment completed and the proposal approved by NDA, the project to update Nissan’s San Diego PowerWall began.