AVF Group Limited

The Challenge

AVF Vector is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-quality wall mounts and floor stands designed to support the world's best entertainment systems. When the company needed to add more aesthetic styling to its products and to quickly design and bring into production a complete new range of products, it purchased SolidWorks 3D mechanical design software. Currently, AVF has a 40 percent share in the CRT support market, but only a 5 percent share in the emerging flat panel market. SolidWorks was employed to design a new range of products for this emerging market in the shortest time possible. In addition, the new market was more oriented towards design aesthetics and designing complicated shapes was required very time-consuming and difficult to perform in 2D.

The Solution

SolidWorks enabled the company to take design routes that were not attempted before because of development costs and time. With Photoworks, the company designer was able to propose and present innovative designs to the AVF's Board that would have been impossible to present in a believable way without the 3D rendering facilities. The SolidWorks 3D file export/translation capabilities enables the company to produce rapid prototypes and, ultimately, tooling directly from the 3D model files -- while eliminating the errors that are often incorporated as a result of translating from 2D drawing. SolidWorks SimulationXpress was very useful in finding the best design route to take in order to strengthen the volume/shape ration of a component, removing the necessity to mechanically test multiple designs.