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3D CAD software
News Release from: PTC - Parametric Technology (UK) | Subject: PTC Product Development System
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 06 September 2007
CAD software cuts design times
Lowrance used Pro/Engineer design and simulation solutions to slash cut the development time for its marine electronics products in half.
Lowrance has improved the design time of its marine electronics products by 50% with the PTC Product Development System (PDS) Lowrance recently used Pro/Engineer design and simulation solutions to develop a family of marine electronics products in only six months, half the time previously required
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 7 Feb 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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Lowrance challenged its engineers to include features such as 600 by 800 pixel colour graphics and internal hard drives up to 30Gbyte in a family of marine electronic devices that combine sonar capabilities with GPS and mapping features.
In parallel with the design initiative, Lowrance began to investigate how to streamline its design process to facilitate simultaneous work on multiple projects.
The integral design and simulation capabilities of Pro/Engineer enabled Lowrance engineers to concurrently design the marine electronics as linked assembly models that reference many of the same parametric component models.
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This approach increased its ability to maximise modularity and component re-use among the three new products.
Since the designs were coupled, common components only had to be changed once to update their references in all of the products.
An additional benefit to designing these products using a single system is that the electronics could be analysed throughout their development to ensure that they satisfied strict performance requirements, reducing the reliance on costly and time-consuming physical prototype testing late in the process.
"Planning for component re-use gives us the ability to simultaneously design and test across all three new products", said Steve Swisher, Senior Design Engineer, Lowrance.
"Using the old system it would have taken one year to design, test and deliver to the market these products versus the six months that it took with the PTC Product Development System".
"We were also able to reduce our costs typically associated with multiple physical prototype development and multiple quality control cycles".
The PTC PDS also helped Lowrance drive collaboration among its industrial designers and mechanical engineers.
With the old system, design information was handed off from industrial design to mechanical engineering at one defined point in the process.
This resulted in a slow, manual process to check, provide feedback and correct any design changes that sometimes occurred after a physical prototype was created.
Using the PDS, both groups can work on the same model and it allows the mechanical engineers to provide timely feedback to the industrial designers.
"Once organisations develop a process to take advantage of the benefits that component re-use and collaboration deliver, they are in a better position to beat competitors to market with new, innovative products", said Chad Hawkinson, Vice President, Product Strategy, Electronics, PTC.
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