Concept Design & CAS

CAS design — Computer Aided Styling — is the stage between a sketch and a production part. It turns a designer’s intent into geometry engineering can build on, without losing the line the designer drew.

PSH Design has worked in that stage since 2009, for automotive, aerospace and medical device programmes. What arrives here as a sketch leaves as data a supplier can manufacture from.

What CAS design is

CAS is not Class A, and it is not concept sketching. It sits between them.

A stylist works in sketch, clay or Sub-D. Engineering needs closed, buildable geometry with defined continuity. CAS modelling is the translation — surfacing that holds the design intent, judged on highlights and section quality rather than tolerance alone, and revised as fast as the design changes. Done properly, CAS gives the studio something to judge and engineering something to inherit. Done badly, the Class A team starts over, and the programme loses weeks.

Sub-D from sketch: where we are strongest

Most work does not arrive as clean data. It arrives as a rough sketch, a reference photograph, a scan of an existing part, a technical drawing with the hard constraints already fixed — usually some combination, rarely all of it.

This is what PSH does best. We build Sub-D models in Blender directly from early sketches and develop them into resolved 3D form, shaping volume, proportion and surface transitions while the design is still moving. Sub-D stays fast under change: the designer keeps drawing, the model keeps up.

If all you have is a sketch, that is enough to start.

And everything after it

CAS is one stage of a chain, and we run the whole chain.

Automotive exterior and interior carries a Class A requirement: the CAS model feeds our Class A surfacing team and is rebuilt to full G2/G3 curvature continuity for visible-surface tooling.

Most other work does not need that. Aerospace interiors, medical devices, industrial and consumer products are judged on form, fit and manufacturability, not on highlight quality across a painted panel. For those, CAS goes straight to CAD engineering — assembly, part breakdown, production data.

A supplier who handles only the CAS stage hands over a surface and stops, leaving you to find the next specialist, explain the design again, and pay to rebuild geometry they did not model. Here each stage is the same team on the same data.

What you get back

• CAS surfaces ready for review and downstream Class A
• Class A surfaces to full continuity where the programme requires them
• Or complete production data — assembly and parts — where it does not
• Delivered in the native format and version your team already uses

Beyond Blender, PSH works in the most advanced surfacing software in professional use today.

Start with one surface

Work of this kind is easier to judge than to describe.

Send one sketch, one scan, one photograph — and we will model it. No charge, no commitment. For large files, a share link from your own cloud storage is fine. You will have a reply from a design engineer within 48 hours.

We work under NDA, yours or ours. Nothing is stored on public cloud or shared drives. On request, all project data is destroyed at close and confirmed in writing.

Request a free test project →