Software improves design productivity and quality

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jan 24, 2007

A major player in industrial washing and drying systems chose OneSpace Modeling to improve design productivity and quality.

Eliona, a major player in industrial washing and drying systems, has chosen CoCreate's dynamic modelling 3D CAD software, OneSpace Modeling over competing tools.

Eliona, based in Vilvoorde, Belgium, concentrates on the design, development, manufacturing and commissioning of washing, disinfecting and/or drying systems for cleaning of all type of crates, trays, containers, pallets, trolleys etc.

"We chose the CoCreate solution because we want to improve design productivity and quality", says Ronnie Vermeylen, Project Engineer at Eliona.

The company cited three ways the software could help meet that goal: to reduce the number of costly physical prototypes and errors associated with sheet metal design and manufacture; to support re-use of components so they could be used across projects; and to boost productivity when last-minute changes arose.

Previously, the company designed products using parametric and nonparametric 2D solutions.

But when Eliona investigated parametric 3D CAD tools, it saw severe productivity problems.

Last-minute, unanticipated customer input couldn't be included without schedules slipping.

Even in small teams, designs could not be shared, as the intra-part and assembly relations needed to be completely understood before any one designer could make a change.

As all machines are available in two mirrored versions, it was important to be able to change mirrored parts and assemblies with the same flexibility as the original design.

With parametric solutions, the mirror operation would have lead to loss of parametric relationships.

Instead, Eliona opted for CoCreate's modelling and its Sheet Metal addon.

Dynamic modelling is an essential part of CoCreate's lean product development philosophy.

Lean product development calls for technology that blends easily with existing production tools, but also brings significantly less complexity and more value to design processes.

As such, OneSpace Modeling supports features like history-free modelling and rich master models, so designers can attach any information to models.

Then, anyone who uses the model later can be sure of the original designer's intent.

"The whole team worked productively with OneSpace Modeling and Sheet Metal within a week after training", says Vermeylen.

"The software was so intuitive, designers quickly knew how to best design their model including the design for manufacturing which we introduced specifically for sheet metal design".

"Overall, we estimate to reduce the amount of prototypes by 30% and design errors by 50%".

Last minute changes could be incorporated easily without endangering project deadlines.

"Plus, using rich master models helps us to more effectively share and leverage components across projects", says Vermeylen.

Eliona, supported by reseller Savaco, expects overall costs to drop, delivery times to improve, and quality to increase.