inspecting under the hood of autodesk...

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YOUR eSOURCE FOR ACHIEVING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE SUMMER 2003 Inspecting Under the Hood of Autodesk Vault Inspecting Under the Hood of Autodesk Vault Introducing Autodesk Inventor Professional 7 for Design Team Specialists AutoCAD Mechanical Helps Krupp Canada Excel at Unique, World’s-Largest, One-of-a-Kind Designs Morganite Cuts Costs and Cycle Time with Autodesk Inventor Getting the Most Out of Your CAD Investment Introducing Autodesk Inventor Professional 7 for Design Team Specialists AutoCAD Mechanical Helps Krupp Canada Excel at Unique, World’s-Largest, One-of-a-Kind Designs Morganite Cuts Costs and Cycle Time with Autodesk Inventor Getting the Most Out of Your CAD Investment

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Y O U R e S O U R C E F O R A C H I E V I N G C O M P E T I T I V E A D V A N T A G E

SUMMER 2003

Inspecting Under theHood of Autodesk VaultInspecting Under theHood of Autodesk Vault

Introducing AutodeskInventor Professional 7for Design Team Specialists

AutoCAD Mechanical HelpsKrupp Canada Excel atUnique, World’s-Largest,One-of-a-Kind Designs

Morganite Cuts Costsand Cycle Time withAutodesk Inventor

Getting the MostOut of Your CAD Investment

Introducing AutodeskInventor Professional 7for Design Team Specialists

AutoCAD Mechanical HelpsKrupp Canada Excel atUnique, World’s-Largest,One-of-a-Kind Designs

Morganite Cuts Costsand Cycle Time withAutodesk Inventor

Getting the MostOut of Your CAD Investment

Involve the entire design team, incorporate existingfiles, reduce overall development costs, and go fromconcept to customer in almost half the time.

Find out how Autodesk Inventor,® a high-performance,3D mechanical design system, made it possible.Now there is a solution that helps you achieve superiorproductivity throughout the entire product lifecycle.Visit autodesk.com/inventorhere.

Photograph and rendering courtesy of Hardinge Inc. Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, and Autodesk Inventor are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USAand/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. ©2003 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

With Autodesk Inventor, the firstthing Hardinge’s lathe cut was 40%in development time.

CONTENTSV O L U M E I • N U M B E R 2 S U M M E R 0 3

6 Inspecting Under the Hood of Autodesk VaultAn army of power users descends on Novi, MI,to put a pre-release version of Autodesk Vaultthrough its paces.

COVER STORYCOVER STORY

manufacturingsolutions 3 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

4 Keeping It Simple, Step-by-StepVice President Buzz Kross reinforces how central mechanical designers are to the division’s PLM strategy.

10 Introducing Autodesk InventorProfessional 7 for Design TeamSpecialistsHere’s a first look at the ManufacturingDivision’s newest product to boost the technical reach of the design team.

14 AutoCAD Mechanical Helps KruppCanada Excel at Unique, World’s-Largest, One-of-a-Kind DesignsFrom designing the largest conveyor system in the world to the largest ship loader, it’s allroutine for Krupp Canada.

16 Morganite Cuts Costs and CycleTime with Autodesk InventorMaintaining a competitive edge in today’s difficult business climate often comes down to demonstrating design efficiencies.

18 Why Use DWF?Why should you utilize DWF in your company?Read on to find out.

20 ALSTOM Power Uses SynergisAdept to Shorten Cycle Times, BoostReliabilityWith Autodesk Inventor and Synergis Adept aspart of its design tool chest, ALSTOM Powerstreamlines its design processes.

22 Getting the Most Out of Your CAD InvestmentAlong with product development, Autodesksimultaneously develops training coursewareto ensure you get the most from your softwareinvestments.

24 The Autodesk GalleryA design showcase of customer art.

25 Autodesk EventsBe sure to attend these important resellerevents in your area.

B U Z Z K R O S S

M A N U F A C T U R I N G

WITH THE LAUNCH OF OUR NEW digital

version of Manufacturing Solutions magazine

about three months ago, I introduced you to

the concept of PLM, or product lifecycle man-

agement, as we view it here at Autodesk. I

emphasized how crucial you, the design engi-

neers, are to the idea of PLM as we see it. One

thing we will not be doing as we move toward

PLM at Autodesk, I said, is to de-emphasize

design. On the contrary, design is central for us

to product lifecycle management.

It’s necessary to define what PLM means to

us like I’m doing here because the term con-

jures up so many associations for people. You

know, ideas like complexity, high-cost, and a

heavy drain on the IT infrastructure in your

companies.

But that’s not at all the kind of associations

that fit the PLM concept at Autodesk. Just the

opposite. We’re moving down the PLM path

in a simple, step-by-step manner that keeps

the focus on you and your engineering

departments.

You’ll be learning about Autodesk Vault—

the heart of PLM for us—as you read through

the articles in this issue of Manufacturing

Solutions. We held a gunslinger a short while

back and invited a number of design engi-

neers to join us for a couple of days to try out

Autodesk Vault. As we always do when we

hold a gunslinger event on pre-release soft-

ware, we gave participants a chance to work

on their own to try to “break” the program—

one of the areas of gunslinger get-togethers

that power-users thoroughly enjoy. But they

were also briefed on how to go about installa-

tion and set-up of the prod-

uct for their companies. One

of the things we say—and

stand behind—is that it

shouldn’t require more than

a couple of hours to set up Autodesk Vault

and show your staff how to use it the same

day.

That’s not an exaggeration. By design,

Autodesk Vault is simple to set up and simple

to use. But it’s also powerful—it gives you, the

engineer and mechanical designer, file and

document management tools that you need

to automate versioning so that you save

valuable design time and you work more

efficiently.

We heard that word ‘simple’ used quite a

bit during the gunslinger, and we were

pleased to hear it, because that’s the associa-

tion we want to create for PLM. That’s what

step-by-step product lifecycle management

means to us.

ROBERT KROSS, VP, Manufacturing Solutions

Division

Keeping It Simple, Step-by-Step

www.autodesk.com

VISION

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Find CMP books in your local bookstorewww.cmpbooks.com/cad • 800-500-6875 • [email protected]

3D Modeling in AutoCAD2nd Edition

Extend your AutoCAD expertise with a command ofits powerful 3D capabilities. Learn the conceptsand principles of the program’s 3D features withuseful illustrations,examples and hands-onexercises for every oneof the 3D commands.

ISBN 1-57820-091-1$54.95

MASTER’S SERIES

Mechanical Desktop 5

Master Autodesk’s best-selling 3D solid modelingprogram with this thorough description of all of theprinciples and techniques related to parametricmodeling. Step-by-step instructions and hands-onexercises demonstrate the 120+ commands thatenable you to create solid models that are flex ibleand readily modified.

ISBN 1-57820-065-2$59.95

AutoCAD 2002 Inside & OutMake everyday work faster, easier and more pro-ductive! Renowned columnist Lynn Allen explainsdifficult concepts with technical insight and hertrademark humor. This extensively illustrated bookgoes from fundamental concepts through increas-ingly complex features, leading you to in-depthAutoCAD mastery.

ISBN 1-57820-075-X$34.95

The AutoCADET’s Guideto Visual LISP

Customize AutoCAD to include productivityenhancements like new commands, combinations ofexisting commands or list processing scripts to storeand manipulate data. This tutorial offers a completeintroduction to the Visual LISP language, environ-ment and editor. Advanced topicsinclude data manipula-tion and programmingdialog boxes.

ISBN 1-57820-089-X$44.95

C O V E R S T O R Y

ABOUT A DOZEN Autodesk Inventor power users

descended on Novi, MI, in late May to spend a couple of

days in a hands-on examination of Autodesk Vault —a

new workgroup data management environment integrat-

ed with Autodesk Inventor 7 and Autodesk Inventor

Professional 7. . With titles like senior mechanical engineer,

CAD manager, and senior design engineer, these folks are

not timid about delving deep into a product to see what

makes it tick, and if possible, what gums up the works.

But that’s the nature of Autodesk gunslingers—a

multi-day event where potential users of a new product

are given some insight into the product by its develop-

ers, and then turned loose to tweak, manipulate, and

push the product to its limits. Both camps benefit.

Participants in these events get some early insight into

the product and a chance to do an early evaluation of its

suitability to their companies, and Autodesk benefits

from the feedback collected over the two or three days

with ideas for final product tweaking and future develop-

ment directions.

But Autodesk Vault wasn’t completely new to all of

the attendees. In fact, the product under its former

name of truEVault from truEInnovations, Inc., is almost

Inspecting Under the Hood of Autodesk Vault

www.autodesk.com

AUTODESK VAULT

A U T O D E S K V A U L T

manufacturingsolutions 7 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

as old as Autodesk Inventor itself. It’s some-

what ironic that developers of the original

technology stole a few ideas from the

Autodesk playbook as they put the initial

product plan together, says Brian Roepke, co-

founder and former President and CEO of

truEInnovations and now Product Designer

for Autodesk Vault . “We looked at what was

out there in the PDM market at the time,”

says Roepke, “and didn’t see anything for

small- to medium-sized companies that was

low-cost and easy to use.”

TruEVault’s developers went for the 80/20

rule that Autodesk made famous with its

development of AutoCAD , notes Roepke, by

delivering 80 percent of the kind of function-

ality expected of a PDM system at roughly 20

percent of the cost. To do so, developers uti-

lized Windows-based SQL server technology

and focused on check-in and check-out

vaulting security.

With the acquisition of truEInnovations’

technology earlier this year, Autodesk took its

first step into product-lifecycle management

with the goal of adding file and document

management features to Autodesk Inventor.

And given that truEVault was a partner-certi-

fied product that already worked as an

Autodesk Inventor add-on and seamlessly

with Autodesk Streamline , the transition into

the Autodesk product family proceeded

without a hitch. But May’s gunslinger event

in Novi was the first opportunity for a num-

ber of Autodesk Inventor users to give the

technology a peek under the hood.

Simple and Effective

Michael Best, a senior CAD designer with

Nashville, TN-based RTS Wright, designers of

robotic technology systems, admits that he

came to the gunslinger event with no pre-con-

ceived notions about product-data manage-

ment.“I wanted to see what Autodesk Vault

could do and whether it would be applicable

to our company,” he says.“The key thing for me

was its file versioning capability. For a small- to

medium-sized company such as ours, it offers

easy-to-use file check-in and check-out fea-

tures that we could put to use right away.”

File versioning also scored a plus from

Duracell’s Bechtel, CT-based Kevin Duprey, a

Senior Engineer in the Development Group.

“One of the things we don’t have is formal file

management,” he says.“We put files in a direc-

tory, and that works for us internally. But we

need to use our files in a more efficient man-

ner. With vaulting, we could take parts in and

out from the server and speed up how we do

things.” With 30 some seats of Autodesk

Inventor in his company, Duprey also sees a

benefit in vaulting for tracking which 15 or so

users at any one time might have files

checked out. The ability to “lock out” others

from doing anything but viewing a file while

it’s in use by a designer on a local drive was

appealing.

The kind of housekeeping that goes along

with a multi-user shop is something that

Chris Lajoie, a Fall River, MA-based CAD

Administrator with Lightolier, is also familiar

with. Lighting fixture design is a true multi-

A U T O D E S K V A U L T

www.autodesk.com

user environment, he says, where one design-

er might begin a job but quickly move on to

something else and leave other design

stages to another team member.“Autodesk

Vault respects Autodesk Inventor’s project

files,” he says. “It recognizes and utilizes all

the links that Inventor files create. Most other

file-management products can’t handle

those relationships.”

Lajoie, with six seats of Inventor in-house,

admits that he and fellow designers have

found Autodesk Inventor’s built-in project file

ability to be a bit cumbersome, but not a

major issue. With Autodesk Vault, however, file

management at his company would be much

more stable, he says.

Kate Cole, an Upland, CA-based Lead Staff

Engineer with UVP, was eager to take part in

the gunslinger to see what might be new with

the vaulting technology. Designers of ultravio-

let light sources and lab products used in the

biotech industry, her company was already a

truEVault user and happy with the product.

“When we first heard that truEInnovations

might be shutting down, I admit we were con-

cerned,” she says.“We had already tried one

file-management product that didn’t perform

the way we needed it to. Then we gave

truEVault a try. It was easy to install, very intu-

itive to use, and it was truly a vault, keeping

our drawings secure, and helping us avoid

check-in/check-out conflicts. But then we

heard that the company had been acquired by

Autodesk, and we were relieved.”

As a veteran user of truEVault, Cole didn’t

see that many differences in the Autodesk

Vault product. She did note an improvement

in workflow and editing. She also had some

suggestions for future improvements.“We’d

like to be able to delete individual versions of

a file,” she says.“The database can build up

really fast. Being able to select the versions

you no longer need and then delete them

would be a nice feature.”

That request was seconded, with a bit of

Retain previous versions of your design. All versions

of a file are stored in the vault with the user's name,

notes, file relationships, and date for rapid searching

and review.

The Autodesk Vault Explorer offers a rapid search

engine so users can quickly and easily locate files

and “Where Used” information based on any criterion

listed in the property data such as part number, type,

filename, and more.

A U T O D E S K V A U L T

manufacturingsolutions 9 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

variation, by another veteran user of truEVault,

Andrew Banchieri, a Senior Mechanical

Engineer at InVision Technologies. His compa-

ny designs X-Ray screening equipment for air-

ports.“File sizes haven’t been too much of a

problem for us so far, but they could be,” he

says.“We might go through 50 versions of a

design. Maybe the first 40 we won’t look at

again. It would be nice to be able to select

those and archive them and free up the

space.”

Banchieri also cautions potential users of

the product against being fooled by its ease-

of-use into a sloppy approach to housekeep-

ing. At his company, it became clear right

away that they needed to create file-naming

conventions that would keep the vault uni-

form. He also recommends that CAD adminis-

trators get some staff training for the product

so that it can be used as efficiently as possible.

That caution was echoed by Duracell’s

Duprey.“The vault’s information is only as

good as what’s stored in it, and how it’s

stored,” he says.“You need to take some

time to assess how to move it into your

existing workflows if you want to get the

most from it.”

The Developer’s NotepadOne of the key phrases that kept being

repeated throughout the gunslinger was

“good solid first step.” That was what Autodesk

wanted to hear because Autodesk Vault is

meant to be exactly that—a simple-to-install,

easy-to-use file-management environment

that moves users in the direction of low-cost,

easy-to-maintain product lifecycle manage-

ment. The feedback, such as the need for ver-

sion archiving or deletion and the need to

scale up the number of simultaneous users,

was considered valuable input by the

Autodesk development team.

And now that the gunslingers have had

their time with the product, subscribers to

Autodesk Inventor Series 7 will be next on tap,

as Autodesk Vault is made available at no-cost

to Autodesk Inventor Series and Autodesk

Inventor Professional Subscription Program

customers.

Autodesk Vault is just a first step, admits

the Autodesk team, but a crucial one for

Autodesk PLM.

Users can easily manage Autodesk Inventor files

within the Autodesk Vault.

A U T O D E S K V A U L T R E S P E C T S

A U T O D E S K I N V E N T O R ' S P R O J E C T

F I L E S , R E C O G N I Z I N G A N D U T I L I Z -

I N G A L L T H E L I N K S T H A T A U T O D E S K

I N V E N T O R F I L E S C R E A T E .

— CHRIS LAJOIE, LIGHTOLIER, FALL RIVER, MA

AUTODESK INVENTOR IS A POWERFUL

TOOL to have on any design team. Whether

you’re a part designer or someone who works

with assemblies of thousands of parts, you can

do most of the 3D modeling you need to do

with this product.

Autodesk has thought of Inventor as a

“technology platform,” says Amy Bunszel, the

Product Manager for Autodesk Inventor

Professional 7—a new product released this

summer. Autodesk Inventor Professional helps

manufacturers optimize their design groups

by providing every member of the team with

the key tools they need to get their job done.

“At some point on a typical design team,” says

Bunszel,“a team member might need a spe-

cialized application for completing a particular

portion of the design, such as pipe routing, for

example. A complex assembly might involve

pipes of varying diameters and the different

pipes might be associated with pressure levels

they can safely handle.”

Bunszel notes that when this happens now,

Autodesk Inventor users typically go to a

third-party program for their specialized

needs, which can be expensive and can also

require learning a new interface and changing

the way the designer thinks about the design.

The scenario changed this summer when

the Manufacturing Solutions Division intro-

duced Autodesk Inventor Professional 7.

Autodesk Inventor Professional 7 combines all

of the applications found in the Autodesk

Inventor Series together with a collection of

specialized applications for key members of

the design team. One of the first applications

built into the product is 3D piping.

Developed in-house, it enables users to build a

Introducing Autodesk Inventor Professional 7 for Design Team Specialists

www.autodesk.com

T E C H N O L O G Y F O C U S

AUTODESK INVENTOR PROFESSIONAL

T E C H N O L O G Y F O C U S

manufacturingsolutions 11 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

library of pipes that span size and load

requirements. The piping models have the

intelligence to consider design rules such as

“do not use any pipe with a 45 degree slant.”

And the models are also associative so that

when larger or smaller components are con-

nected to them in an assembly, the pipes auto-

matically make the necessary size adjustments.

In upcoming releases of Autodesk Inventor

Professional , notes Bunszel, in addition to in-

house development, the company will be

leveraging acquired technology. The Linius

Technologies assets acquisition is a good

example. The specialized 3D cabling and wire

harness design and documentation capabili-

ties that it brings to customers are a perfect fit

with the Autodesk Inventor Professional devel-

opment strategy.

Without tipping her hand toward naming

off future offerings, Bunszel indicates that a

goal of Autodesk Inventor Professional is to

enable the design team to handle many spe-

cialized requirements such as cable and wire

harness design and schematic diagramming,

without having to purchase additional appli-

cations. And with technology such as vaulting

and file management, acquired with the

truEInnovations assets acquisition, our goal

with Autodesk Inventor Professional is to take

the power of such assets further, such as scal-

ing up for use in large companies with heavier-

weight vaulting needs.

In case you’re doing mental calculations

and noting that the total costs of Autodesk

Inventor Professional could make a prohibitive

dent in your company’s budget due to the

costs of each specialized application, don’t

overwork your calculator. The Autodesk

Inventor Professional team has worked from

what they’re calling a “perceived value” pricing

model to arrive at a reasonable price for the

product.“In general, you can think of Autodesk

Pipe models are associative and intelligent, automati-

cally adjusting to fit different sized components and

pressure requirements.3D wire harness design, utilizing industry-leading

technology from the Linius Technologies acquisition,

will soon be a part of the Autodesk Inventor

Professional user’s tool chest.

T E C H N O L O G Y F O C U S

www.autodesk.com

Inventor Professional as the cost of Autodesk

Inventor Series plus that of one or two special-

ty applications,” says Bunszel.“We want to

deliver a larger palette of applications to man-

ufacturers, but we also want to contain the

price and build-in the kind of value you

couldn’t equal with separate add-ons.”

Design team specialists—the people

responsible for the power train of a project or

electromechanical modeling—will now be

able to keep their part of the design on the

same Inventor platform utilized by their more

generalist team members. The efficiencies this

will bring to the team in time saved and learn-

ing curves shortened will translate into the

kind of ROI no company can afford to ignore.

“We’ve got a lot in store for Autodesk

Inventor Professional ,” says Bunszel.“We’ll be

revealing more of it this summer, so stay

tuned.”

Autodesk Inventor Professional allows full control of

tubing and piping through the usage of styles.

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YOU MAY NOT TRAVEL TO CHILE that often,

but if you were to go there and visit a mine

about 200 km north of Santiago, you’d

encounter the Los Pelambres copper mine

and be able to see first-hand one of the

largest, most complex conveyor systems in the

world. Conveyors run from the open-pit mine

site at 3,200 meters above sea level to the

concentrator site 11 km south and at a drop in

altitude to 1,600 meters. Twelve kilometers of

the conveyor had to be designed to run

through a tunnel in a mountain, and the total

installed power is 25,000 Kw.

You can bet that this project presented

quite a design challenge to Krupp Canada,

specialists in behemoth-sized materials han-

dling machines. But according to Senior

Mechanical Engineer Baird Nielsen, a 13-year

vet of the company, Krupp has built its reputa-

tion on executing such one-of-a-kind design

challenges. Such tasks have become almost

routine.

Take for example a double roll crusher—

or in layman’s terms, a rock crusher—the com-

pany recently designed. It can reduce 14,000

tons of rock an hour from chunks greater than

3 meters in size to about sixteen inches in size.

That’s a record over their first double roll

crusher, designed by Krupp in 1992, which

could handle 4,600 tons of rock an hour.

The design/build costs of these multiyear

projects typically run anywhere from

$6,000,000 to $80,000,000 in U.S. dollars, notes

Baird. As the largest material-handling design

company in the world, the company considers

design efficiency a premium and has chosen

AutoCAD Mechanical as its workhorse design

tool. Krupp Canada has 25 seats of AutoCAD

Mechanical 6, which it utilizes for all phases of

design except structural analysis.

“We utilize AutoCAD Mechanical quite a

lot,” says Baird.“When we installed it, we were

able to get rid of a lot of LISP routines because

it had so much functionality built-in—things

like nuts, bolts, shapes, and edit tools. It’s pret-

ty much foolproof. Things go in on the right

layers at the right scale; text comes in at the

right size. From a CAD management point of

view, it’s easy to set up a standards template

and have people use it—which means consis-

AutoCAD Mechanical Helps KruppCanada Excel at Unique,World’s-Largest, One-of-a-Kind Designs

W E U T I L I Z E A U T O C A D M E C H A N I C A L

Q U I T E A L O T . W H E N W E I N S T A L L E D

I T , W E W E R E A B L E T O G E T R I D O F A

L O T O F L I S P R O U T I N E S .

B E S T P R A C T I C E S

manufacturingsolutions 15 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

tency between drawings. From a design point

of view,” he continues,“AutoCAD Mechanical

saves an incredible amount of time. And the

BOM is quite useful.”

Krupp handles all of the design and engi-

neering for these projects, which are built by

various other groups. The company has

worked on about 6,000 such “unique” projects,

some of the larger ones requiring three or four

project managers and a cycle time of two or

more years. Some 35 mechanical and structur-

al engineers and designers work in Krupp’s

field office of Calgary, Canada, where Nielsen

is based. Krupp’s parent company, headquar-

tered in Germany, has other field offices in the

U.S., South America, Australia, South Africa,

and India.

Krupp Canada’s Business Challenge> REDUCE DESIGN AND ENGINEERING TIME.

> REDUCE COSTS OF DESIGN.

THE SOLUTION: implementing AutoCAD

Mechanical. Doing so, Krupp Canada

> Saved design time.

> Kept all views, annotation balloons, and BOM

always synchronized.

> Reduced errors by automating repetitive tasks.

> Achieved faster design changes.

BOTTOM LINE, Krupp Canada

> Realized a 20 percent reduction in design time.

> Enjoyed a 20 percent increase in productivity.

Krupp Canada has a reputation for designing "largest

of its kind" equipment, such as this ship loader, the

largest on the West Coast of the U.S.

View AutoCAD Mechanical

Technical Demonstration

C U S T O M E R S U C C E S S E S

Morganite Cuts Costs and Cycle Time with Autodesk Inventor

www.autodesk.com

DUNN, NC-BASED MORGANITE, INC., is a

subsidiary of The Morgan Crucible Company

headquartered in Windsor, UK. Founded in the

late 1800s and now with 150 companies oper-

ating in 35 countries, The Morgan Group is a

world leader in supplying carbon brushes and

brush tube assemblies for automotive and

industrial applications. Each time you start up

your car, raise or lower power windows, vacu-

um a carpet, turn on a blender, or run a lawn-

mower, you are very likely using the kind of

brushes and commutator components that

Morganite produces.

However, being a world leader in the manu-

facture of these components doesn’t mean

there’s no competition to worry about.

According to Shepard Hockaday, Morganite’s

Vice President of Engineering and New

Product Development,“Even though our

product is equal to or better than our

competition’s, high tooling costs and long

cycle times have been a problem.”

To address the problem of rising costs and

lengthening cycle times, Morganite recently

utilized Autodesk Inventor as it went after a

lucrative project. A major automotive company

needed a new type of commutator designed

and prototyped during a very small window of

time. The company gave Morganite two weeks

from its first look at the design needs to come

up with a proposal. Using Autodesk Inventor

they were able to put together the proposal

and to show that they could deliver a proto-

type in 29 days as opposed to the eight weeks

that such a design-to-prototype project would

typically take.

Morganite won the contract—the biggest

in its history—and was able to cut its design

cycle by 50 percent and its production costs

by 20 percent. The results had a profound

impact on Morganite’s business relationship

E A C H T I M E Y O U S T A R T U P

Y O U R C A R , R A I S E O R L O W E R

P O W E R W I N D O W S , V A C U U M A

C A R P E T , T U R N O N A B L E N D E R ,

O R R U N A L A W N M O W E R , Y O U A R E

V E R Y L I K E L Y U S I N G T H E K I N D O F

B R U S H E S A N D C O M M U T A T O R

C O M P O N E N T S T H A T M O R G A N I T E

P R O D U C E S .

manufacturingsolutions 17 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

C U S T O M E R S U C C E S S E S

with the automotive client.“They were so

impressed that they came back and asked us

to do three more projects,” says

Manufacturing Engineer Mon Vonkchalee.

DWG Compatibility and Ease of UseMorganite’s transition to Autodesk Inventor

was relatively painless because of Inventor’s

compatibility with DWG files and its ease-of-

use. Morganite has been a long-time user of

Autodesk products and had many 2D legacy

drawing files that needed to be utilized in its

design. Autodesk Inventor’s ability to use

spreadsheets to drive and modify designs

meant that decades of intellectual data were

preserved and moved forward. But much of

the reduction in cycle time that Autodesk

Inventor helped Morganite engineers achieve

also stemmed from the product’s ability to

eliminate the need for engineers to re-create

designs from 2D paper drawings. This allowed

them instead to work directly from three-

dimensional models. The greater accuracy of

the 3D models meant less human-error and

more costs savings, says Hockaday.“We’re talk-

ing reduced scrap, reduced time by which to

train employees, and just overall higher quali-

ty product.”

In addition to the after-contract costs and

time reduction, Morganite applauds the visu-

alization capabilities of Autodesk Inventor,

which helped the company land its lucrative

automotive contract in the first place. This was

an area of the product that first caught their

attention as they worked with Autodesk

reseller Cadre Systems. Inventor allows the

creation of animated models that can be

played on any desktop PC through a media

player.“We’ve found this to be the best-selling

tool we have,” says Vonkchalee.

According to Richard Morsch, Director of

Operations in the Commutator Division,

Morganite’s initial investment in Autodesk

Inventor paid for itself in just two months. The

company is now considering Autodesk

Inventor for the Morgan Group’s other loca-

tions.“I think it will help us integrate our dif-

ferent factories so that we are doing things in

the same manner around the globe,” he says.

“It has opened up a new group of customers

for us and a whole new product market.”

For more information on Morganite Inc.’s

products and services, go to

www.morganite.com.

Morganite is a world leader in the design and manu-

facture of carbon brushes, brush assemblies, and com-

mutator components used in the automotive industry.

View Morganite Online Video Low | Med | High

View Autodesk InventorTechnical Demonstration

T E C H N O L O G Y F O C U S

www.autodesk.com

Why use DWF?

For every one of you who creates a design,

there are 10 or more people who need to view

your design work, some of whom have little

CAD expertise. DWF file format enables small-

footprint creation and distribution of designs

in a format easily “consumed” by people

downstream.

What’s the history of DWF?

When DWF was first being developed six or so

years ago, PDF was in its infancy. In both cases,

researchers were working on a way to save

files in a compressed format for easy viewing

via use of viewers on PCs and via the Web. In

the case of DWF, Autodesk created a format

that would take advantage of true design data

and produce a format that would allow view-

ing, markup, and plotting to scale, all with free

viewing technology.

Does DWF eliminate the need for paper?

DWF makes no attempt to eliminate paper; it

merely rearranges where paper might be nec-

essary. Take a complex mechanical assembly,

for example. You might work on a design, then

print out paper copies of the design work, and

distribute them via FedEx or some other mail

service to team members at another location

at a remote manufacturing facility. Such paper

printing and shipping can incur quite a bit of

costs. DWF allows the same design material to

be saved to a compressed file format and digi-

tally distributed to your team. Team members

might then decide to create paper printouts,

but that’s up to them. They could also rely pri-

marily on their digital DWF copies for sending

markups and comments back to you or anoth-

er project member. You are obviously going to

save on shipping costs, but a big ROI here is

the reduction in cycle time and cutting out

many of the construction errors associated

with longer cycle times.

AUTODESK DEVELOPED THE DESIGN WEB FORMAT™, or DWF™ file, some six years ago now.

Originally called “Drawing Web Format ,” the product has changed markedly over its relatively

short life and will be the repository of substantial R&D effort going forward, according to

Autodesk’s Tony Peach, Director of Viewer and DWF Strategy. The technology allows you to save

your design work in a view, Web, and print-ready format for sharing with team members and oth-

ers inside or outside of your company who might need to view and mark-up scalable, plottable

design files. There are some ambitious development plans on the table for DWF, so here’s a Q&A

look at this technology tracing its roots and outlining its future.

Design Web Format Q&A

T E C H N O L O G Y F O C U S

manufacturingsolutions 19 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

How is DWF different from PDF;

which is better?

PDF has its place and works very well for 8 1/2

by 11 written documents, spreadsheets, and

the like. However, if you want to deal with an

E-size drawing, for example, and still maintain

measurable accuracy, PDF does a poor job of

this, but it’s what DWF was created for. In

addition, you can save multiple drawing sets

into one DWF file and those documents can

be printed out without the necessity of addi-

tional plotting files. Creating DWFs is free,

viewing them (with Autodesk Express Viewer)

is free, and printing vector-based files is accu-

rate and trouble free. DWF continues to have a

considerably smaller footprint than PDF.

What is the future of DWF?

We’ve made a decision to devote substantial

resources to growing and improving DWF. As

of the AutoCAD 2004 and Autodesk Inventor 7

releases, most of our products publish to the

new multi-sheet DWF 6.0 file—all other prod-

ucts will include this support within the year.

The technology, both the DWF toolkit and the

Autodesk Express Viewer (APIs and developer

kit) will remain open and free and available to

outside developers for inclusion in their tech-

nology. With the recent release of Volo View 3,

you are able to view, redline, and markup

multiple sheets saved to one DWF file. As we

move forward with our development strategy,

we will dramatically improve publishing

capabilities from within every Autodesk

Design tool as well as enable you to have the

capability to include much richer data—

such as metadata, 3D, animations, and so on—

within a DWF file.

For information on DWF, Autodesk

Express Viewer, and Volo View,

visit the following Web sites:

www.autodesk.com/dwf

www.autodesk.com/viewers

DWF allows you to publish multi-page drawing sets

to one DWF file. The recipient can then plot one or

all of the drawings in the set without the need for

plot files beyond the DWF.

B E S T P R A C T I C E S

ALSTOM Power Uses Synergis Adept to Shorten Cycle Times, Boost Reliability

www.autodesk.com

A WORLD-LEADING MANUFACTURER of

steam condensers for the power industry,

ALSTOM Power Inc., Heat Exchange Division,

operates in a competitive industry that stress-

es quality products brought to market in ever

decreasing cycle times—it’s a familiar story.

Meeting these market demands, however,

under such competitive constraints is no small

challenge.

One of the ways Easton, PA-based ALSTOM

rises to the challenge is through its design

tools, says Dave Breiner, the company’s

Supervisor of Drafting and CAD. ALSTOM uses

Autodesk Inventor to design its steam con-

densers as 3D models.“We chose Autodesk

Inventor because its parametric capabilities

allow us to create ‘base model’ assemblies,” he

says.“We can quickly generate these models

by filling in key dimensions and variables in an

Excel spreadsheet. The base models are then

further developed to reflect each individual

design. More importantly,” says Breiner,“the

completed model allows us to visualize the

complex internal components of our

condenser to check for alignment, fit, and

interferences.”

But ensuring the quality and reliability of

designs is just part of the challenge ALSTOM

faces in order to achieve a competitive edge.

Also crucial is the effective management of

multiple copies and versions of an assembly

during the product-development cycle—a

task for which ALSTOM designers rely on the

capabilities of Synergis Adept.

In a recent situation, three employees had

to model a complete condenser in order to

run a finite element analysis, Breiner explains.

“Each modeler had a particular section to

model, then had to sign in all the parts and

assemblies into the Synergis Adept document-

management system. At the end of the proj-

ect, we assembled the entire condenser using

Adept to pull all the assemblies and parts

together. Adept helped us succeed with this

project,” he says,“by handling and tracking all

the relationships of parts, assemblies, and

drawings.”

Before implementing Synergis Adept to

manage the design process, drawings were

stored on ALSTOM’s network. When drafters

B E S T P R A C T I C E S

manufacturingsolutions 21 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

needed to find a drawing, they would go to

the folders on the network and start work on a

particular drawing without being confident

whether it was approved, being revised, or

even completely up-to-date, notes Breiner.

With the active development environment

necessary to ALSTOM’s success, tracking

revisions and maintaining project control

is crucial.

The decision to move to Synergis Adept,

which the company made in 1997, was immi-

nently logical, given that the product worked

seamlessly with AutoCAD and Autodesk

Mechanical Desktop —ALSTOM’s primary

design software at the time, and now more

recently with Autodesk Inventor. And imple-

menting the 23 licenses necessary for

ALSTOM’s projects took just more than a

week. After an in-house demo of only a few

hours, ALSTOM staffers were able to begin

using Adept immediately.

Another strength of Adept and one impor-

tant to ALSTOM’s business is that the program

helped ALSTOM conform to ISO regulations.

And now the product is helping the company

ensure that division staff outside of design

and drafting also have access to important

data.“With all of our drawings in electronic

format,” says Breiner,“we no longer have to

produce a set of hardcopy drawings to store

for record or to use as ‘go-bys.’ Every drawing

that we create is immediately available at our

desks using the built-in 2D/3D viewer in

Adept. Now people throughout our company,

such as Manufacturing, Quality Control, and

Marketing have access to the most current

documents so they can have their questions

answered with a few mouse clicks.”

For more information about ALSTOM Power

Inc., Heat Exchange Division, go to

www.alstomenergysystems.com.

For more information about Synergis Adept,

go to www.synergis-adept.com.

This image depicts an ALSTOM "TPND Axial

Condenser."

This image depicts an ALSTOM "TPVD Down

Condenser."

T R A I N I N G A N D E D U C A T I O N

Getting the Most Out of Your CAD Investment

www.autodesk.com

IN THE PAST 20 YEARS, technology

advances have upped the ante with every

passing year on the skill-level that you design-

ers and mechanical engineering professionals

are expected to master. And that’s just to be

moderately productive, never mind the

amount of knowledge required to achieve

expert status and maximum productivity. For

the past two decades, Autodesk, as one of the

key leaders in developing design technology

for the desktop, has admittedly added to your

knowledge requirements by producing

increasingly sophisticated software tools that

are needed to help you tackle the thorniest

design issues. This is especially true in the

complex areas of manufacturing and mechan-

ical design.

If Autodesk stopped at just delivering tech-

nology and left you to your own devices, the

situation would be problematic at best. Third-

party trainers and educators would need to

first learn the technology themselves and

then rush to help you achieve proficiency,

which would obviously not be an efficient

means of knowledge transfer. It is with your

efficiency in mind and awareness of how

important it is to you to see a speedy return

on your investment dollars that Autodesk is

committed to developing training materials

and courseware to help you shorten the learn-

ing curve and maximize your productivity.

“Typically, without going through any train-

ing, a new user of CAD technology utilizes

about 25 percent of the product’s power,” says

Rak Bhalla, Autodesk Technical Marketing

Manager.“But with well-designed training,

much more of the product’s features and

capabilities are highlighted in a way that helps

users become more productive much faster.”

Courseware for All Training

Environments

Autodesk develops courseware for use by its

resellers in their training programs, as well as

by CAD specialists at technical schools and

colleges. Courseware is also available for self-

paced instruction, from introductory to more

advanced material. And if your internal train-

ing department wants to launch full-scale

internal training, Autodesk courseware sup-

ports that approach as well. But when possi-

ble, Autodesk recommends that you take

instructor-led training through the reseller

channel because reseller training focuses on

exactly what you need.

“The first choice for training should always

be a reseller,” says Bhalla.“Autodesk works

very closely with the reseller channel to

ensure that courseware and training are made

available to them as part of any major release.

That way, resellers are always up-to-date with

the latest materials and have first-hand experi-

T R A I N I N G A N D E D U C A T I O N

manufacturingsolutions 23 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

ence with the new courseware

materials.”

This same material that re-

sellers draw upon is made avail-

able to commercial customers,

technical schools, and colleges

so that trainers from all areas have consistent

specialized curricula from which to draw.

An Autodesk Courseware Sampler

As an illustration of timely courseware,

Autodesk only recently acquired the assets of

VIA Technology and its wiring and diagram-

ming technology. But you can already take a

two- to three-day course in VIA Wiring

Diagram Fundamentals. The course focuses on

how to build intelligent ladder diagrams and

panel layouts and how to leverage this intelli-

gence. After completing the course, you will

be able to easily navigate the interface, build

ladder-wiring diagrams, extract basic electrical

reports, including BOMs and PLC reports, and

create an electrical controls AutoCAD tem-

plate drawing.

In fact, the Autodesk Inventor courseware

recently won awards of excellence and merit

from the Society for Technical Communication

for 2002-2003.

Other new courseware topics include

migrating from AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop,

or Pro/ENGINEER to Autodesk Inventor;

Autodesk Inventor Installation

and Setup; AutoCAD Mechanical

2004; and Autodesk Inventor

Essentials, Levels I and II.

These courses focus on new

users as well as existing

software product users.

To help resellers reduce their preparation

time and focus on delivering more training

courses, Autodesk develops instructor materi-

als, so that the entire course is easy to use. In

addition, student workbooks with tutorial CDs

and many supporting exercises are used to

reinforce classroom instruction.

Whether you get your training through a

local high school, college, authorized

Autodesk training center or reseller, the crucial

thing, notes Bhalla, is that you don’t undercut

the maximum value of using technology by

overlooking the need to invest in training.

“Customers realize ROI on their software

investments much more quickly by ensuring

that designers and internal staff are well

trained to work to maximum efficiency,” says

Bhalla.“Our charter is to create the best mate-

rials and training support possible to help cus-

tomers achieve that goal.”

For more information about reseller training

and Autodesk training courseware, go to

www.autodesk.com/training.

R E A D E R S ’ G A L L E R Y

www.autodesk.com

PORTFOLIO

Send us an image you created in

Autodesk Inventor or AutoCAD

Mechanical software.

For consideration, simply submit an

email with "Manufacturing Solutions

Gallery Image" in the subject line to

[email protected].

Please include your name, your

company name, a brief description of

the design, the software used and an

image in JPEG, BMP or TIFF format.

Join Your Colleagues in The Gallery

The models displayed in this issuewere created by students atPennsylvania College ofTechnology in Williamsburg,Virginia using Autodesk InventorV6 in a Design forManufacturability class whichconcentrates on freeform model-ing techniques.Assistant Professor J.D. Mathersubmitted a number of creativeand well executed designs by hisstudents—unfortunately we werelimited in space.

C U R R E N T E V E N T S

manufacturingsolutions 25 S U M M E R 2 0 0 3

Autodesk 2004 Industry SolutionsSee the new AutoCAD 2004 and the new Autodesk 2004 Building,

Manufacturing and Infrastructions Solutions. This new generation

of products and services were designed to help you create, share,

and manage digital design data throughout a project's lifecycle

better than ever before.

Each year Autodesk and our partners sponsor

numerous events for design professionals—

events that provide a unique opportunity to

learn more about Autodesk, our innovative

products, and our future direction.

Find a Manufacturing Solutions Partner Event

Online Registration Now Available

Step up to Autodesk University® 2003 where you'll find a variety of

informative classes and workshops to improve your productivity

and opportunities to share best practices with others in your field.

Register now at www.autodesk.com/events.

Reseller LookupLocate an Authorized Reseller in your area. Autodesk sells most of

our software solutions through Authorized Autodesk Resellers—

industry experts who offer consultation, training, support and

other related services to help you meet your business objectives.

Lisa [email protected]

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SubscriptionsIf you would like to request a subscription to ManufacturingSolutions or add a new emailaccount, please go towww.autodesk.com/onlinemagazine

Manufacturing Solutions is a quarterly publication of Autodesk, Inc.Publication services provided by the ContractPublishing Group of CMP Media LLC.

All material copyright © 2003

600 Harrison Street San Francisco, CA 90417415-947-6000www.cmp.com

R E A D E R R E S P O N S E

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© Copyright 2002, Structural Research & Analysis Corp. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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*As compared to AutoCAD 2002. Measurement is a preliminary indicator based on automation testing over a controlled network. Results are approximate and are subject to error and change. Product information and specificationsare subject to change without notice. Autodesk, Inc. provides this information as is, without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. Photo courtesy of Au Xiao Min. Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, and AutoCAD are registeredtrademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. ©2003 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Introducing AutoCAD 2004. With 52% smaller files, you’ll get work done like never before.

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