Case Studies and Videos

The Challenge

Mustad has been known for more than 100 years as the world's largest manufacturer of fish hooks. With 1000 employees and factories in Norway, Singapore, Philippines, Portugal, Brazil, and China, the company had sales of US$74 million in 2005. The company designed machinery with AutoCAD but found they needed a 3D CAD system to increase efficiency.

The Solution

After comparing SolidWorks CAD software and Autodesk Inventor, Mustad chose SolidWorks because they found it was a more developed 3D CAD software package than the competitor’s. In particular, the piping and sheet-metal functionality was much better in SolidWorks. The company has saved a lot of time in the manufacturing phase because SolidWorks CAD software has allowed them to streamline production methods. They can communicate with a laser-cutting subcontractor without any problems using DWG files, and internally they use SolidWorks® eDrawings files on a daily basis. When they compare their manual design methods to the ease and swiftness of SolidWorks CAD software, they can see that design process efficiency has increased enormously. For the number of products that 20 engineers used to be able to design in eight years, now just two designers can double that output in six years.