  Automotive engine assembly and disassembly are common and crucial programs in
the automotive industry. Traditional education trains students to learn
automotive engine assembly and disassembly in lecture courses and then to
operate with physical engines, which are generally low effectiveness and high
cost. In this work, we developed a multi-layer structured Virtual Reality (VR)
system to provide students with training in automotive engine (Buick Verano)
assembly and disassembly. We designed the VR training system with The VR
training system is designed to have several major features, including
replaceable engine parts and reusable tools, friendly user interfaces and
guidance, and bottom-up designed multi-layer architecture, which can be
extended to various engine models. The VR system is evaluated with controlled
experiments of two groups of students. The results demonstrate that our VR
training system provides remarkable usability in terms of effectiveness and
efficiency. Currently, our VR system has been demonstrated and employed in the
courses of Chinese colleges to train students in automotive engine assembly and
disassembly. A free-to-use executable file (Microsoft Windows) and open-source
code are available at https://github.com/LadissonLai/SUSTech_VREngine for
facilitating the development of VR systems in the automotive industry. Finally,
a video describing the operations in our VR training system is available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZe4YTwwAC4
