Thanks to Ralph H. Grabowski from WorldCAD Access I read an article about Dessault Systems who is launching virtual automotive dealership in the Indian market.
As in the real automotive sales sites, where a prospective car owner walks into a showroom, selects his vehicle and gets a sense of the interiors and exteriors before actually buying it
“With the current economic slowdown, automobile manufacturers are finding it difficult to manage costs and are looking at slimming their dealership networks"
Back in the days where we were thinking about the services we wanted to offer - CAD rendering and visualization was one of our highest priorities.
We believe that good rendered picture about the CAD model is much more cost-effective than making expensive prototypes over and over again.
In above mentioned article there is another good point - when you are selling product with quite high price you just can't afford producing your product with all variations and for all different sale and market events. Beautiful picture or 3D animation can do almost the same work, cheaper.
One simple example from our portfolio:
