New dimension to power generator design

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 17, 2002

One of the world's largest steam generation equipment manufacturing companies is using SolidWorks to design fossil-fuel burning equipment used in commercial power generation and industrial plants.

One of the world's largest steam generation equipment manufacturing companies is using SolidWorks software to design fossil-fuel burning equipment used in commercial power generation and industrial plants around the world.

Babcock and Wilcox, a subsidiary of global energy services company McDermott International, has steam generation systems and equipment in more than 800 utilities (fossil fuel-fired and nuclear-powered electricity generating plants) and organisations (corporations, hospitals, universities, refineries etc) in more than 90 countries.

The company plans to use SolidWorks three-dimensional computer-aided design (3D CAD) software not only in the design of its new boilers, but also for service and replacement parts projects for its important retrofit market.

It has purchased 110 seats of the software for use in its headquarters in Barberton, Ohio, and other manufacturing facilities throughout North America.

"We chose SolidWorks over other 3D CAD software because it is an established, innovative product that has an architecture very open to integration with other applications", said Norm Smith, manager of CAD support operations at Babcock and Wilcox.

"We determined that SolidWorks was the superior product in terms of value and capability among the 3D packages that we evaluated".

Babcock and Wilcox chose SolidWorks CAD software to lead its transition from 2D to 3D solid modelling.

Before SolidWorks for instance, engineers toiled over thousands of independently created 2D CAD drawings for one boiler project.

As many as 15-20 drawings might be needed for a given sub-assembly to finalise the design.

As the designs evolved and engineers made changes, they had to manually ensure that each drawing reflected those changes and note their impact on the rest of the design.

This process took time and carried the potential for errors that slowed production.

SolidWorks is a robust, proven platform that lets designers make a design change to a model, and automatically transfer that change and its impact to all the drawings associated with that model.

SolidWorks can help Babcock and Wilcox quickly accommodate design changes and minimise costly and time-consuming errors.

Babcock and Wilcox will continue to use knowledge-based engineering (KBE) tools to drive the design of its products.

As part of the move to the next-generation KBE environment, the company will use software designed by SolidWorks partner Navion to build applications in which company standards will directly drive the designs and enable the designers to arrive at the final design more efficiently.

"The graphical output from these rule-driven applications will be 3D SolidWorks models.

We're excited about using the open architecture in SolidWorks to help us deploy a KBE system for product design that will help get our products to market more quickly than ever", said Smith.

John McEleney, CEO of SolidWorks, said, "We often take it for granted that every time we flip on a light switch, the energy comes from a large power plant where enormous systems generate enough steam to produce electricity for millions of homes.

The products that Babcock and Wilcox develops are extremely complex, with stringent quality and reliability requirements.

That's why it has chosen SolidWorks software as its migration path from 2D to 3D design.

SolidWorks has set the standard for mainstream 3D solid modelling, and will provide Babcock and Wilcox's worldwide engineers with the tools they need to accelerate product design and reduce production errors".