Design News for Mechanical and Design Engineers

Where does 3-D simulation fit into the production process?

We work based on a phased approach — concept, prototype, pilot and production. For us, 3-D simulation falls into the process of production. The manufacturing team has little input in the beginning of the design process and their involvement ramps up more and more as a product moves closer to production. Design is predominant in the beginning and manufacturing takes over toward the end of the product development process. 3-D simulation helps with this transition from design to manufacturing.

How do 3-D tools improve production?

We've found PTC's Pro/ENGINEER 3-D simulation tools help with everything from training to quality checks. To ease the process of training production teams, we now use Pro/ENGINEER to create a solid model of a product and then take screenshots of the design and each piece of the product and present them in a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation. The end result is an instruction sheet with a sense of motion. Teams can see how things go together in a fashion they can relate to because of the spatiality of the presentation. At the same time, 3-D helps with ergonomics and safety — up front, you can add in the properties of a material and because Pro/ENGINEER knows the volume of the product, you can see the weight. This is valuable information for safe operations and gives us insight to properly set up a production line. It also allows us to accurately present the parts keeping "last in, first out" in mind.

What were you using before 3-D?

Prior to 3-D simulation we were using traditional blueprints out on the floor and photographs — but photographs are really too busy to look at. The nice thing about Pro/ENGINEER is we can be very specific about what we want in the picture or the information we want to convey. Pro/ENGINEER also uses color identification to consistently identify parts from start to finish, so from multiple angles or a particular view you know where you're at spatially.

What other aspects of production rely on 3-D simulation?

We use 3-D simulation as a tool to provide a visual for quality and end-of-the-line inspections. We have a readily available document of how a product will look and work and a description of ease of work. This is a nice supplement to the manufacturing process and the final deliverable we have of new product development. From the beginning, instead of a drawing, manufacturers are taking this model and assembly process and can provide insight into how each part of a product can fit successfully. This hand-and-glove type of fit allows manufacturers to understand the design intent and helps design engineers understand manufacturing capabilities. We set out to design something that can be built simply and a quality check in the middle of that process helps with that.

Have you seen results since going 3-D?

A few years ago we would build a prototype and then conduct a pilot run of 25 units and we would feel successful if we had 20 to 40 percent good products produced. Recently, we ran a pilot using 3-D simulation throughout the process and achieved a 92 percent pass rate. The tool has required engineers and manufacturers to talk more and convey their messages constantly. Both teams are now located in the same department to accommodate a lot of conversation and questions. Now we're just focused on making our process more concise.

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