Ten Strategies for Becoming an Effective CAD Leader - Part 6

Strategy 6: Leverage design data throughout the enterprise

Today’s CAD leaders recognize that product development is no
longer the isolated, autonomous enclave of engineering that it was in the past.
With the adoption and advancement of 3D CAD technology, product design data has
become more accessible and usable for a variety of business operations outside
of engineering. functional areas that can benefit from 3D CAD models include
manufacturing, quoting/purchasing, documentation, sales and marketing, and
field service.

Manufacturing has long been a recipient of product design
data, and 2D engineering drawings remain a staple of many production
operations. Yet, with the availability of 3D CAD data and new CAD tools, you
can do so much more than simply refer to sheaves of paper documents on the shop
floor. In addition to using solid models to automatically generate tool paths,
develop molds, and program CAM-based operations with a high degree of precision
and control, engineers can now create 3D animated work instructions for use in
assembly operations.

The same approach applies to the creation of product
documentation. Why spend time recreating technical illustrations for user’s
manuals, when that information already exists within a solid model? With
today’s modern 3D CAD tools, creating an exploded view, step-by-step user
assembly instructions, or even a movie that shows how to put the product
together is just a limited number of mouse clicks away.  Purchasing can use CAD and automatically
generated bill of materials (BOM) data to solicit quotes, place orders, and
support just-in-time ordering for manufacturing. Sales and marketing can use
design data to create preproduction visuals for seeding the market.

Service personnel can access detailed maintenance and repair
information—including complete movie animations of important procedures—online
while they are in the field. Effective CAD leaders recognize how valuable and
information-rich 3D CAD models can be and understand how they can leverage this
information in various ways to boost productivity outside of engineering.

Read past articles:

Strategy 1: Embrace best practices and new technologies

Strategy 2: Develop skills and retain talents

Strategy 3: Maximize integration and automation

Strategy 4: Foster collaboration and innovation

Strategy 5: Focus on continuous quality improvement

Strategy 6: Leverage design data throughout the enterprise

Strategy 7: Document and analyze productivity

Strategy 8: Manage product design data efficiently

Strategy 9: Communicate effectively with business personnel

Strategy 10: Demonstrate product development contributions

Download the Whitepaper - Ten Strategies for Becoming an Effective CAD Leader

 

*This article is an excerpt from the "Ten Strategies for Becoming an Effective CAD Leader White Paper", published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 7

Part 7. Conclusion

As manufacturing organizations strive to identify ways to save time, cut costs, and improve their competitiveness in global markets, mining the value contained in their product design and 3D CAD digital assets holds great potential for substantially improving productivity. By automating downstream product information publishing functions—ranging from assembly, manufacturing, and field-service instructions to product documentation, training, and marketing materials—your company can realize shorter times-to-market, improved operational efficiencies, and better quality documentation.

Manufacturers that use an integrated documentation authoring package not only enjoy greater accuracy, increased productivity, and more cost savings, but also realize significant ROI within the first year.

By automating the creation of product documentation and related content—and linking it directly to 3D CAD models—manufacturers can improve profit margins, achieve faster times-to-market, and increase sales related to better customer education. A 3D authoring tool empowers you to produce documentation faster and at lower cost, while reducing levels of rework and lowering production overhead. With more effective training and service, your company not only will enhance customer satisfaction, but also will realize shorter maintenance down times and greater profit margins.

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us at cati@cati.com.

 

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

 

Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 6

Part 6. Creating vibrant, exciting marketing content and web-based catalogs

Because CAD data enables you to create imagery for print and online marketing purposes with a 3D authoring tool, it is an incredibly valuable asset. Many manufacturers spend millions of dollars annually on professional product photography to present and market their products when a more cost-effective, high-resolution, CAD-derived image could satisfy the same need. Some media, such as television and magazines, always will require live-action video and photography. However, the burgeoning need for digital content and the explosive growth in online, web-based catalogs both demand visual content that manufacturers can best supply by re-purposing product design data.

Even if a manufacturer already derives catalog visuals from CAD files, the process requires the input of both an engineer and a marketing professional to separate engineering data from marketing needs. With an integrated documentation system, marketing professionals can render, modify, and change images to meet specific printing or marketing needs, such as controlling resolution—pixels and dots-per-inch—which is not easy to do with CAD screen captures. Because the CAD model can be used to update views and animations that match the final product, marketing professionals no longer need to wait for Engineering to finish the product to create content.

With CAD-derived imagery and animations, manufacturers can make their online and digital media marketing vehicles more exciting, dynamic, and interactive, while saving money at the same time. With an integrated 3D authoring tool, just about anyone can transform a CAD model into a dazzling interactive animation.

Furthermore, manufacturers can begin marketing the product upon its release for production rather than waiting on initial production runs or photography to begin creating market demand. By re-purposing CAD models as marketing visuals and animations with content creation software, you can reduce photography costs, increase visual flexibility, and get out in front of product introductions.

Check back tomorrow for the concluding Part 7

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us at cati@cati.com.

 

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 5

Part 5. Publishing effective training materials

The ongoing development and publication of product training materials—for customers, new employees, and global partners—is another area where the repurposing of CAD design data can pay big dividends for today’s manufacturers. Because the native CAD files serve as the single source for all product content, using a 3D authoring tool to customize training materials for specific groups is far easier and more efficient than crafting these materials independently. This capability is especially useful—you can create effective training materials without using the costly textual translation services once required for communicating with overseas audiences.

With integrated documentation software that can embed 3D content, markups, and animations in any ActiveX-compatible business application, manufacturers have the power to create, manage, and deploy product training documentation on a global scale, at much lower cost. This capability allows you to embed product training content in common communication applications, such as Microsoft® Word, Excel, and PowerPoint®; as a standalone executable for viewing with free player software; or in HTML format to distribute over the web.

Many manufacturers spend millions of dollars annually on professional product photography to present and market their products when a more cost-effective, high-resolution, CAD-derived image could satisfy the same need.

Check back tomorrow for Part 6 of 7 covering "Creating vibrant, exciting marketing content and web-based catalogs."

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us at cati@cati.com.

 

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 4

Part 4. Delivering accurate field service, maintenance, and repair information

In a global economy where customers reside in different countries, the ability to provide accurate and universally comprehensible field service, maintenance, and repair documentation is critical.

Providing this type of product documentation has presented greater challenges, added demands on engineering resources that do not carry primary responsibility for its development, and increased operational costs. For example, documenting the intricate details necessary for showing how to dismantle a machine, perform a maintenance service or repair, and reassemble it might require a series of step-by-step graphics from Engineering. Service technicians frequently call in to engineering departments to get this type of information for use in the field. Complicating this challenge even further is the fact that the field-service technician may speak another language, requiring translations of service or repair documentation materials, which adds further costs and also delays product shipment in many industries.

With 3DVIA Composer, manufacturing can replace text-based field service instructions with graphics and video animation, therby improving service operations, minimizing the need for language translations, reducing training needs, and decreasing operational costs.

Check back tomorrow for Part 5 of 7 covering "Publishing effective training materials."

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us at cati@cati.com.

 

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 3

Part 3. Creating better user manuals and product documentation

While product documentation can fulfill a range of uses, its core purpose is twofold: to provide customers with the information they need to use and enjoy a manufacturer’s product and to develop customer loyalty for that product. Therefore, the production of user manuals, part lists, and product schematics is an important function for building customer satisfaction and loyalty—one that requires the contributions of illustrators, writers, and publishing specialists. Whether product documentation personnel are engineers or have a limited engineering background, they can substantially increase their chances of success by creating graphical content directly from CAD models.

With a 3D authoring tool like 3DVIA Composer, product documentation specialists can avoid using a CAD system or asking an engineer to produce product information such as exploded views, vector line art images, or annotations.

Instead of re-creating visuals from the finished product, they can create 2D and 3D visuals to meet any documentation requirements. Whether the need is vector line art of an exploded view for technical illustrations or a detailed view of a high-resolution raster image for a user manual, documentation
professionals can save time and improve the visual’s quality by accessing and reusing native CAD data.

Product documentation professionals can save time and improve the quality of documentation visuals by utilizing a 3D authoring tool like 3DVIA Composer to create documentation graphics directly from native CAD data. 

The interactive nature of 3D provides an effective means for showing your customers how to use a product and for illustrating how that product works. Integrated documentation software provides the capabilities for creating interactive content from the actual product CAD file.

Check back tomorrow for Part 4 of 7 covering "Delivering accurate field service, maintenance, and repair information."

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us at cati@cati.com.

 

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 2

Part 2. Automating manufacturing and assembly instructions

By implementing an integrated documentation solution, you also can enhance an important internal function—the efficient creation of more effective 3D manufacturing and assembly work instructions. Traditionally, manufacturers have relied on the use of 2D engineering drawings—with exploded views, annotations, callouts, and balloons—to instruct manufacturing personnel and assemblers in producing components, subassemblies, and assemblies.

In a global economy, unanticipated language and literacy barriers between design and manufacturing personnel can get in the way of achieving right-first-time production. Often, time is wasted in finding and verifying components, or in trying to understand manufacturing and assembly work instructions. Manufacturing personnel on the shop floor—who may speak another language or reside in another country—cannot simply place a call to engineers to clarify a design.That’s why nontextual, visual 3D content is becoming increasingly important for communicating vital manufacturing information.

 
By Providing universally understood 3D manufacturing and assembly work instructions, your company can minimize iterative cycles and disagreements between engineering and production.

A simple animated 3D work instruction can convey manufacturing and assembly instructions more clearly, effectively, and universally than text-based 2D drawings, helping reduce production errors and lower manufacturing costs.

Check back tomorrow for Part 3 of 7 covering "Creating better user manuals and product documentation."

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us  at cati@cati.com.

 

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

Streamline Product Documentation With 3DVIA Composer - Part 1

Today, product developers are gaining competitive advantage, saving time, and cutting costs with a new class of integrated software tools. With 3D authoring software like 3DVIA Composer, your company can use 3D CAD data to automate the product documentation process—without modifying product designs. By addressing the changing nature of CAD data, this associative documentation tool seamlessly and effortlessly keeps your documentation up to date.  This 7 Part series will explain the benefits of streamlining your product documentation across the manufacturing enterprise.

Part 1. Introduction

While 3D CAD has made designers and engineers more productive and efficient, the innate value in the CAD models they create often ends with the delivery of 2D drawings or printed materials to manufacturing. As manufacturers strive to find ways to become leaner, more efficient, and more competitive in global markets, generating CAD data to satisfy all the product documentation requirements of the manufacturing enterprise may hold the greatest potential for improving productivity.

Product Documentation is often a separate step that currently takes place after product design in many product development processes, creating delays and the need for additional rework.  Shortening this step by using a 3D authoring tool to develop documentation content concurrently can accelerate time-to-market and increase competitiveness.

While many organizations already leverage 3D CAD content in some fashion, a 3D authoring tool allows you to avoid the rework associated with updating CAD models to incorporate engineering changes into downstream documentation. Software that updates content directly from the CAD model can distribute design modifications throughout all related deliverables.

As the design changes, 3D authoring software enables technical illustrators to create and update exploded views. Manufacturing specialists can develop and update graphics in assembly instructions, and customer service personnel can do the same in service documentation.

By implementing a documentation authoring solution, your company can realize greater accuracy, increased efficiency, and a more significant return on investment (ROI) within the first year.

Using a 3D Authoring tool like 3DVIA Composer, Manufacturers can generate CAD data to meet the documentation, assembly, manufacturing, training, service, and marketing content needs, automatically and simultaneously.3DVIA Composer enables you to produce documentation as much as 30% faster than with conventional methods, and realize significant ROI by reducing documentation, training, and localization.

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of 7 covering "Automating manufacturing and assembly instructions."

To learn more about 3DVIA Composer, visit cati.com or email us  at cati@cati.com.

 

*This article provides excerpts from the "Streamlining Product Documentation across the Manufacturing Enterprise with 3DVIA Composer White paper, published by  DS SolidWorks Corp.

 

CATI Demo Gallery Update: SolidWorks, Simulation, 3DVIA, EPDM, and Objet 3D Printer Videos

The new CATI Demo Gallery is full of great videos on a variety of topics ranging from SolidWorks 3D CAD to 3D Printing and everything in between.

Highlights:

• SolidWorks - 3D Design


• SolidWorks Simulation - Analysis


• SolidWorks Enterprise PDM - Data Management


• 3DVIA Composer - Product Documentation


• Objet 3D Printers - Rapid Prototyping & 3D Printing

>>Click here to view our videos

 

Jim TeDesco
Marketing
computer Aided Technology, Inc.

Assembly Instructions Made With 3DVIA Composer

Leverage 3D CAD data to streamline communication between engineering and manufacturing divisions within your organization.  3DVIA Composer makes it easy for you to create high quality assembly instructions that will help you save time and money.

Check Out 3DVIA Post3D From DS SolidWorks Corp.

3DVIA Post3D is a new product from DS SolidWorks Corp.  3DVIA Post3D provides a virtual, online environment for Product Designers and Engineers to collaborate in 3D. Just post your design, then invite others to view and discuss the work in real-time at your own customizable URL.  It is like having a virtual showroom for your products.  Post3D will be released later this year, but you can learn more by visting the preview site.
Follow this link http://www.post3d.com/

Jim TeDesco
CATI Marketing