UNLV Formula Racing: How Four Student Subteams Keep One Race Car in Sync

Four subteams, one car

UNLV Formula Racing is an interdisciplinary student team at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, building a formula-style electric race car in SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD. Students work across chassis, powertrain, electrical systems and aerodynamics.

Every subteam's work lands on someone else's part. A bracket moves and the harness route changes. A body panel grows 3 mm and no longer clears the suspension. The car only works if the four groups stay on the same version of the same assembly.

That is the same problem a 10-person engineering team at an SME faces, with two differences: the students turn over every year, and almost none of the work happens in one room.

Moving the whole car in on day one

Getting a large assembly into a new system is the step most evaluations stall on. For UFR it was a copy and a check-in: place the files in the local cache folder, check them in, and the references come with them.

"Being able to move an entire large assembly into Sibe for the first time simply by placing files into local storage and checking them in has been a huge win for us. That process alone has saved a significant amount of time."

— UNLV Formula Racing

The local cache mirrors the folder structure the team already used, so nobody had to learn a new layout on day one.

What the sponsorship covers

UFR runs the whole car in a cloud CAD Document Management workspace, free for the season.

No servers to stand up and nothing for the students to administer, which matters more on a student team than most, because nobody on the roster is a full-time IT admin.

Design work that does not wait for the lab to open

Students design between classes, at home, and in the shop. Opening the current version of a part takes a browser and a link. Check what changed since the last revision, then pick up where the last person left off. No VPN, no waiting for a machine in the lab to free up.

Faculty advisors and sponsors see the same models without a CAD license.

What the students get from the workspace

• Import an existing assembly by dropping the files into the local cache and checking them in
• Check files in and out directly in SolidWorks, with assembly references resolved
• Track every version and revision automatically, so nobody overwrites a teammate's work by accident
• See where every file stands at a glance, from status icons in the local cache
• Roll back to an earlier version when something goes wrong
• Send a public share link to an advisor or sponsor with no Sibe account

No servers, no VPNs, no admin hassles.

Why the file history matters at competition

The car is judged on paper as well as on track. A written Design Report has to explain why each choice was made, and a design decision is far easier to defend when the revision history behind it is intact.

That history builds itself as the students work. Nobody has to reconstruct it the week before the report is due.

Following the season

The build runs through 2026, from the first sketches to the checkered flag, and we will be following it.

If you run a student engineering team in SolidWorks, get in touch. We would like to hear what you are building.

Running the same problem on a production team? Book a free 20-minute demo.