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Computer Aided Bus Skeleton Design
(BUS-CAD)

H. M. A. Hussein and Alexander Harrich

Abstract The designing and manufacturing of a new bus is a
process which need of a large number of technical labors and a
great consumption time, starting from designing operation until
full production process. Bus Industry in the Arab region realized
some success and is equivalent to their counterparts in Europe
and America. This makes the interest in reducing the time and
efforts spent in the design, planning and production processes in
the bus industry is an added value. The bus steel structure
(skeleton) building process is the starting base for all the
following manufacturing processes. Planning Department -based
on it start writing the operating pages and determine the
required raw materials for the bus manufacture. The logistic
department starts to provide the necessary raw materials for the
bus construction. Tool department starts to design and
manufacture of production facilities, and main fixtures (drilling
and welding) for constructing the bus skeleton. The
administration department collects all the informations to
estimate the bus cost and expect the profit from the
implementation of this product. The virtual world created by the
computer in nowadays our life puts a strong chance to simulate
many of the manufacturing processes before they occur, and this
was not available before. Bus skeleton design, planning and
manufacturing operation represent a good example can be
implemented entirely by using computer simulations. The
present paper discuss the basic lines for construction a program
to reduce the design, planning and manufacturing processes of
the bus structure. Objective of this proposed work is designing a
parametric program for the bus skeleton design (all types) with a
possibility in parametric design modification in the bus skeleton
Automatic creation of technical documents Bus welding
assembly fixture construction - determine the initial cost
estimation of the bus.

I ndex Term Parametric design, Bus skeleton, CAD,
Concurrent engineering, Process Planning

I. INTRODUCTION

Bus and mini-bus in any country is a kind of industry which is
connected directly to the prosperity and the stability of this
state. It starts after two years of completion of the security and
sociality stability of the welfare state, but stopped immediately
in case of any defect in this stability. Begins, when the
industrial company owner demand for buses to transport his

H. M. A. Hussein, Author is with the Advanced Manufacturing Institute,
King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA., phone: 00966568775127
hhussein@ ksu.edu.sa

Alexander Heririch, Author is with Institute of Automotive Engineering,
Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 11/1, A-8010 Graz, Austria
alexander.harrich@tugraz.at

workers from and to his factories. When, Tourist company
owner demand for buses for tourists trip transport around the
country. When requested by state agencies for the buses, mini-
buses inside and outside of cities to transport citizens here and
there.
The design of the internal bus skeleton structure is the basis of
typical bus development of the bus industry. It contains of
framework of tubes with different cross sections, which
arranged in specified shapes based on the design philosophy.
This arrangement is used to be safe for occupants and to
sustain the extreme conditions can be matched on the road.
For this reason, several tests are made on the bus structure to
measure the durability. The most important is the impact and
the Roll-Over Tests. Time expected to complete the bus
structure design is more than 3 months and then followed by a
group of related industrial processes, such as; (1) covering the
bus body structure by panels, Sheeting. (2) Manufacture the
bus front and rear from fibreglass. (3) Process planning for
each bus components. (4) Cost Estimation for the complete
bus skeleton, which is a decision making support for the bus
company owner. (5) provide all the production facilities
requirements to complete the bus body. (6) Design and
manufacturing aspects of the assembly welding fixtures for the
six sub-assembly fixtures and finally the main Merry Jig. In
some industrial facilities, there is interest in the FEA
simulation programs to predict the durability of the structure
and the extent of its ability to withstand the shocks and the
coup. As well as simulate the thermal analysis of the body
structural related to the welding fixture to determine which
places may be exposed to the greatest welding deformation
operations. Then, consolidate and treatment of these regions
by more clamps. The means of installation that will maintain
the structure dimensions intact to ensure the safety of the next
related operations. Unfortunately, in many bus factories in the
Arab region neglects of the body skeleton FEA simulation and
depend only the on the past designer experience for added
more bus structure tubes, which increases the weight and cost
of the bus.
The bus or minibus body skeleton design represent the
bottleneck stage within the industrial facility, which once
completed successfully, the other company sectors starts to
work either parallel or sequential. Thus, an acceleration of this
process leads to a reduction of development time, which can
be consequently transferred into money. In this way the
industrial partner enhances its efficiency."


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II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Process to accelerate of the bus structure completion design is
an urgent need within the industrial factories working in the
bus industry. The giant companies working in this area are
expecting to have their own programs for the bus structure
design. The informations about this programs not reach us
except very little of these experiments are either considered
secrets of the industry or because they are completed within
companies so may not be publishing for research purposes in
this case.
From past experiences that have reached us is the experience
of El-Nasr for the cars manufacturer of in Egypt,NASCO
which carried out through The Automated Integrated
System (1 and 2), through which the completion of the
program to build the structure of bus public transport (within
cities) using the AutoCAD program and AutoLISP language
linked to MS-Excel program. The coordinates were extracted
from a real bus skeleton from the former company products
called N966. Its collected point by point from the blue printed
pages. The coordinates value then stored in Excel file. An
AutoLISP program constructed to build each layer of the pipe
through the pipe skeleton. The AutoCAD program also has
been linked to DCL, Dialogic Dialogue Box. Hundreds of
equations, computational relations and engineering rules
which related on the bus skeleton design have been used. All
those data are extracted from the company experts in bus
design. This expert rules data are stored into excel file to
construct the Knowledge Based Design. After full success of
Bus Skeleton design model, a Finite Element COSMOS
program is used to analyze the stresses on the structure and to
predict the extent of safety design structure. This work took
nearly 6 years starting in 1990. American University in Cairo
AUC and Azhar University are participated in the model
preparing project. The Mechanical Design Department in
Cairo University was participating in the stage of skeleton
stress analysis.
Researcher Majid Rasmy of Cairo University, progress of his
Master degree 2003 in reach an optimal design of the movable
tubes structure. This study was implemented in cooperation
with Ghabbour bus industry in Egypt. In this study, a movable
tube structure is simulated by computer and the stress analysis
is done using COSMOS finite element program.
Researcher U.C. Tapici from Istanbul Technical University,
Turkey, 2006 (3 and 4) study the impact of appropriate clamp
selection in the process of tube welding used for bus structure
to reduce the dimensions distortions resulting from the arising
thermal stresses based on the welding operation. A
Programmable arc welding robot is used in this operation.
Researchers Lan, Chen, Lin (5) in Automotive Engineering
School in both of Jilin University in China and Birmingham
University in 2004 have a weight-loss study of the bus
structure to the permissible limit with using a stress analysis
program ANSYS. The study applied on 2 models, one of
those models before decreasing the weight, and the other after
decreasing the weight on the bus side wall. A comparison is
done between the 2 models to get ride off the unnecessary
tubes which have not a significant impact in the durability of
the structure.
The Researcher Vikas Yadav (6) in 2006 has studied the
impact action on the lower part of the bus by using the stress
analysis software, and similarly, the researcher Ganesh R.
Panneer (7) from the University of West Virginia in 1998 to
study the impact of trauma on the schools bus side.
The researcher PankajChandna et al, (8), as well as Rahul
Mahajan et al (9) have studied stress analysis on the bus
structure using Hypermesh and NASTRAN programs, the bus
structure model is build using the CATIA program.
In the current paper, a new parametric bus skeleton model will
build on both AutoCAD and CATIA program using tailor
made macros. The both macros controlled using visual basic
program, which connected with MS-Excel to extract the
coordinates for constructing the bus skeleton model. The
program is build to construct all the busses family groups,
such as mini_buses, city_buses, inter_city_buses, high deck,
super_high_deck. For each family of busses, the proposed
program will help in the Body skeleton model construction
module, bus skeleton modifier module, components process
planning module, cost estimations module, bus body sheeting
module, and Fixture design module.
In the first stage, the research work will focus on extracting
the co-ordinate data from the mini-bus crouser, which is one
of the Ghabbour-Egypt company products, as shown in Figure
1, to build the program main base. The co-ordinate data will
extract from a ready made AutoCAD file for body drawing.
The extracting operation will need another tailor made
AutoLISP and VBA codes for this very long operation, but in
the same time it still need for extensive setup work and data-
entry work. The first stage work for constructing the bus body
model, will not focus on the design quality, but will focus only
on the time duration measurement in constructing the model.

Fig.1. Mini-bus crouser

III. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
The main goal of this project is to introduce integrated
software in bus and mini-bus industry called BUSCAD.
BusCAD Program is to solve all the problems related to the all
types of buses in the bus industry. The types of busses could
be classified into MiniBus, CityBus, Intercity Bus, High Dick,
Super high Deck, School bus, ... etc as shown in Figure 2,
which shows the proposed program main menu. Each button
allows the user to access the selected type of buses. These
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problems such as designing and building the bus skeleton
structure with the ability to re-design or modification in the
structure if necessary. The covering or sheeting of the desired
bus structure location. Designing and drafting of the interior
accessories bus design such as chairs, dashboard, the upper
shelves.... etc... Producing the full detailed process sheet for
every part of the bus components. Welding fixture design for
each assembly and sub-assembly of the bus skeleton.
The flexibility of selecting between different techniques in bus
welding fixtures designs, which suitable to the factory
planning and capabilities.
Identifying initial cost estimation for the bus projected. For
the implementation of such a design, which is determined by
the expected profit and speed of decision-making for the
implementation of the product or not and is determined by the
price of the integral relationship between the programs of
CATIA and MS-Access avoiding thus to deal with external
programs such as the Oracle, Sap or Paan.
Finally, stresses analysis of through advanced technologies
provided through the fifth edition of the CATIA program
compared with the previous versions. Stress analysis in the
bus project includes two important issues here. The first topic
is to dynamic analyze the stresses on the bus skeleton of the
bus to check the bus structure durability and its ability to
protect the passengers lives inside in case of collisions with
moving or fixed objects, as well as in cases of Bus Roll-Over
Test. The second theme is to analyze the thermal stresses on
the body skeleton structural bus resulting from the welding
operations. This analysis is important. To determine the most
important points on the bus skeleton structure that should be
clamped to avoid distortions. The analysis will provide us with
the necessary force required at which point to overcome the
tube distortion based on thermal stresses.

Fig. 2. The program main menu

Fig. 3. The proposed operations on the bus skeleton.
Figure 3 illustrates the most important operations to be
performed on the bus skeleton structure. In each of those
applications we need first to construct a computer 3D model,
and without this model we cannot move to any of the
following related steps. Whenever, the rapid construction of
the computer 3D model, the rapid speed related steps could be
done, the rapid speedily access to the optimum design, and
then the fastest decision making could be done.
The target of this project proposal in the first stage is to
construct the bus skeleton 3D model via CATIA or AutoCAD
programs. The first program stage focuses on achieving this
goal in a very short duration, without taking the optimum
design into consideration. The optimum design will be care in
the following program stages.

III. THE USED PROGRAMS
Program - at the first stage - is an interactive language
between CATIA and AutoCAD programming, and Excel
Programming. The coordinated stored in Excel file will
arranged in the suitable manner that can be read in the CATIA
or AutoCAD programs. The Excel coordinate sheet will be
controlled through another set of Excel sheets, which work as
a translator from Excel sheet to other to simplify the
arrangement problem. This technique for this reason becomes
easier for the programmer to read, follow and control the data.
All the cells in each sheet are connected together with a sum
of relations and equations to simplify the full excel file
control. In case of the CATIA programming, the CATscript
file is divided into a number of divisions.
The first part is responsible in connecting the CATIA program
with the MS-Excel file. The second part is responsible in
receiving data from the Excel coordinate sheet, and store them
into variables inside the CATIA macro, The stored
coordinate variables in the case of minibus is more than 3000
items. The third part, receiving the stored coordinates items
from the second part of the program, and then converted into
points. The fourth part of the program connecting between
points to construct lines and Splines, the fifth program part
prints the lines and splines on the CATIA screen. The dealing
with AutoCAD program is nearly the same steps with little bit
minor modifications. The whole programs items are controlled
using the visual basic program.

PROGRAM OPERATION PROCEDURE.
Once running the program, the dialogue box in Figure 17
appears to select the vehicle type that will be working on it, as
example for the first stage "MiniBus". The dialogue Figure 18
shows the selection of the operation type, as example "Bus
Skeleton Design".

Fig.17. Bus side curve control screen
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Fig.18. The Bus Roof Curve ontrol Screen

To design the skeleton structure for a new minibus, the side
curve must be firstly select, and for this purpose the dialogue
box in figure 17 is designed to control the bus side curve. The
curve is controlled by adjusting its coordinates. Whenever the
curve contains more points, whenever the smooth curve can
we obtain.
Figure 17 shows, the curve coordinates of the mini-bus
Cruiser, which by changing these coordinates especially in
Y and Z directions and kind, the side of the screen shows
the shape of the curve representative of the new curve and the
coordinates directly relate to the page program Excel cells for
control, which in turn relate to the program page of the Excel
program which integrated with CATIA, and contains the
software on 25 points for the curve representative side in order
to give you the maximum degree of flexibility in the
extraction by a new curve.
The next step for the mini-bus structure design is the roof
curve design, and for this purpose, a dialogue box is designed
as shown in Figure 18, as the same technique used in the side
curve. Through the powers of 26 control points, any roof
curve can be design easily, as possible to the roof to reach the
optimal design and is worth mentioning that must be adhered
to the limits of certain in this drawing curves whether abroad
or to the inside - and that these limits are subject to either
previous experience in the BB design or the limitations posed
by each country in its own designs, such as the maximum
width and height of the top of the vehicle so as not to conflict
with the heights of bridges or display methods provided for in
the design codes used in this state.

CATIA and AutoCAD aided Bus Industry
The next step is to run the CATIA or AutoCAD program to
start the macro directly from the Desktop or to run it through
the pull-down menus from within a program CATIA or
AutoCAD Tools. The program draws the proposed bus or
minibus components design through the graphical media even
in CATIA or AutoCAD. The components for the minibus are
about the 350 part, each representing a tube or section in the
bus structure. The software synthesis of Relations between
CATIA or AutoCAD as a graphical media and the MS-Excel
program automatically and then, extracts these values to put
them in a Parameters, and then re-called again for the printing
this data on the graphical media program screen. Figure 19
shows part of the CATIA product tree.

Fig. 19. The CATIA Product Tree

Figure 20 shows the full mini bus skeleton mini bus for the
crouser product. Using a tailor made AutoLISP code, all the
model tube converted into wire frame (lines and splines) in the
middle centre of the buss tubes as in figure 21. In the second
level, another AutoLISP code runs to search the entire
drawing data base and select all the lines and splines co-
ordinates and extract their first and end points co-ordinates
and store into excel file as a database. These two codes save a
lot of time of the data entry work.
Figure 22 shows the re-build of the buss wire frame into
CATIA graphical environment.

Fig. 20. The Bus Skeleton model on the AutoCAD Environment

Fig. 21. The Bus skeleton wire Frame on the AutoCAD Environment

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Fig. 22. The Bus skeleton wire Frame on the CATIA Environment

CONCLUSIONS
Computer aided bus skeleton design, is a powerful tool to
support bus building companies, The work in this project must
be done in steps, The first step which in this paper focus in
how to rapid build the bus skeleton.

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