Standardizing on a single CAD solution can be the solution to manufacturer’s biggest headaches. Companies began doing so during the recent recession, when cost savings drove most major decisions. However, there are two additional areas where consolidation also plays a pivotal role: Reuse and Collaboration.

Let’s take a closer look at what manufacturers stand to gain in these three areas by consolidating their CAD software systems.

Cost Savings

Cost savings extend beyond software licensing fees, as operating multiple solutions extends many of the “cost drivers” that make up the total operating cost of a software solution. Other cost drivers provide ongoing savings in the annual Engineering IT and operational budgets. Even hardware and software infrastructure costs may come down because there is no need to support specific instances and versions to support different packages and architectures.

“In my experience, standardizing CAD is cheaper from the IT perspective,” explains Paul Hoch, Team Leader Product Engineering Services for Zumtobel AG. “A single solution allows a common upgrade strategy, shared knowledge, and central help desk across all sites.”

Reuse

Consolidating an enterprise on one CAD system can help manufacturers reuse the intellectual property in their 3D models more easily. Reuse can also help companies save money by reducing:

  • Overall design efforts
  • Time needed to validate new parts
  • Time needed to ensure environment compliance
  • Time needed to test, source, and validate redundant suppliers
  • Costs associated with excess inventory

“Our engineers can access and reuse current models in their engineering process…Even just looking at [parts from other sites] and understanding what the other site is doing can give a lot of help or seeing a solution to a problem.”
– Paul Hoch

Collaboration

A unified CAD system also encourages design collaboration and better product development across various teams. Engineers can share models with experts, who can comment on and directly edit the modeling techniques of the product.

Consolidation also enables concurrent engineering, allowing multiple aspects of a design to be developed in parallel instead of serially. This reduces development times significantly. It also enables the Manufacturing, Sourcing, Documentation and Service departments to provide input sooner in the process.

“If we weren’t in the same tool, we couldn’t discuss designs between sites and departments and they would have more problems than they should have.”
– Paul Hoch

Consolidating on PTC Creo

Since 2011, many companies have switched from having multiple CAD software solutions to just using PTC Creo for all their design work. These companies create many different types of products that are used all over the world, but they have one thing in common: a desire for simple and elegant solutions.

PTC Creo offers each company the same benefits: faster time-to-market, easier and more rapid design reuse, simpler collaboration, and – most importantly – more business.

Creo 3.0: The New Standard

With the rollout of PTC Creo 3.0, standardizing a company on one 3D CAD solution has never made more sense.

The new Unite™ technology will make it easier than ever to use CAD files from a variety of systems directly in PTC Creo Parametric™, Direct™, Simulate™, and Options Modeler™ apps. This will make consolidating multiple CAD systems onto PTC Creo much more efficient.

Unite Technology supports these improvements with features like:

  • Compatibility with Solidworks®, Catia®, Solid Edge®, Autodesk® and NX™ files
  • Easy reuse of existing CAD data in its current format, with no need for a costly upfront migration
  • Converting existing legacy data to PTC Creo easily and on demand
  • Ability to convert individual parts as needed, instead of being forced to convert entire assemblies to modify individual parts

All these advantages (plus the many more we simply don’t have space to talk about here), PTC Creo 3.0 just might be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Sure, we’re biased. We’re the number one PTC reseller on the West Coast. We’re believers. And you should be, too.

Interested in learning more about PTC Creo and its 3D CAD capabilities? NxRev offers a variety of seminars, tutorials, and customer service to help users get the most out of the PTC suite. Give us a call at 408-986-0200 to find out more.