Autodesk Customer Success Story Tucker Sno-Cat Corporation

Image courtesy of Tucker Sno-Cat Corporation

Project Summary A family-owned company founded in 1942, Tucker Sno-Cat Corporation (Tucker) is the oldest successful manufacturer of snow vehicles in the world. Tucker’s involvement in the first motorized crossing of the Antarctic testifies to its industry leadership. Tucker also invented the four-track vehicle design, which features superior traction, stability, safety, and climbing ability. The famed vehicle’s innovative design eliminates pitch poling on moguls and rough terrain, and creates little terrain disturbance. It’s been said to traverse the snow as lightly as a skier would.

Always at the forefront of snow vehicle innovation, Tucker strives to respond quickly to customer needs, whether it’s customizing an existing vehicle or designing an entirely new SNO-CAT vehicle. Driving Tucker’s success are flexible—yet fast—design and manufacturing processes that yield the highest quality. Committed to innovation, the company powers its product development process with Autodesk® Inventor® Professional software, the foundation of the Autodesk® solution for Digital Prototyping, and validates its designs through finite element analysis (FEA) and mechanical event simulation (MES) using Simulation Mechanical software. These sophisticated tools enable Tucker to perform complex simulations to assess the performance of designs in the harshest environments. With the Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping, Tucker has been able to:

• Produce fewer physical prototypes before manufacturing parts • Reduce engineering change orders by 80 percent • Use materials more efficiently, cutting waste and material costs • Realize 50–60 percent cost savings by performing FEA and MES in-house • Cut the product development cycle from as long as two years to six months

The Solutions Tucker pioneered the SNO-CAT vehicle more than 65 years ago—and it has been at the top of the industry ever since. The company’s over- snow and all-terrain vehicles range from single- occupancy to 26-passenger machines, which are used to traverse the world’s rough and snowy terrains. In today’s competitive market, Tucker needed a way to meet customer needs for customized, high-quality vehicles more quickly.

“A customer may want to change the deck size or mount a special plow blade or forklift attachment,” says Albert Allen, mechanical designer at Tucker. “To get the sale, we need to model how it will look and work in a few hours.”

Learn More To learn more about Autodesk Digital Prototyping visit www.autodesk.com/digitalprototyping.

Designing the complex assemblies needed to meet today’s emission standards and customer requirements would be virtually impossible without Autodesk Inventor. – Albert Allen Mechanical Designer Tucker Sno-Cat Corporation

Masters of Rough Terrain

Tucker Sno-Cat® meets the challenges of the world’s harshest environments with Digital Prototyping

COMPANY

Tucker Sno-Cat Corporation LOCATION El Paso, Texas

SOFTWARE Autodesk

® Simulation Mechanical

Autdesk ® Inventor

® Professional

AutoCAD ®