Supplier Collaboration
At Matrix Automation Group eDrawings Professional allows for better communication and collaboration with suppliers and fabrication vendors. The company designs and fabricates custom automated machinery for assembly, packaging, and production operations in the automotive, pharmaceutical, and food processing industries. Richard Higgins, Vice President of Engineering, spoke with SolidWorks Express about eDrawings Professional.

How does eDrawings Professional support supplier collaboration?
"Communication is paramount when outsourcing engineering work to any firm. Using SolidWorks^® eDrawings Professional software, any company can review, rotate, zoom in on a design, and make comments, even if they don't have SolidWorks. We send eDrawings of our detailed machine parts and assemblies to our fabrication suppliers to streamline quoting and manufacturing of machinery parts."

What impact have the new features in eDrawings Professional had on your business?
"Mark-up is helpful because it further refines the feedback process with suppliers. Suppliers can mark up the drawing with questions related to manufacturing and use the measuring tool to pull any dimensions they may need. Suppliers no longer need to call for a missing dimension, which can hold up the job. If they have questions, they can simply mark up the drawing and send it back. eDrawings saves time by minimizing the need to travel to a supplier's shop to explain 2D paper drawings."

Does eDrawings Professional help you to eliminate design errors?
"SolidWorks software itself decreases technical design errors to almost zero. eDrawings Professional becomes important when designs are characterized as 'overall ergonomic design' and 'proper machine functionality' – in other words, the 'bigger picture' or overall machine concept. In the past, less efficient means, such as meetings and presentations, have been used to achieve a successful design. eDrawings is a more efficient means of eliminating conceptual and functional errors."

Customer Presentations
Automation Tooling Systems, Inc. (ATS), a global leader in the design and manufacture of turnkey automated manufacturing and test systems for the automotive, computer/electronics, healthcare, and consumer product industries, leverages eDrawings Professional to facilitate the communication of design concepts with customers. Paul McDonnell, ATS Mechanical Design CAD Coordinator, spoke with SolidWorks Express about eDrawings Professional.

ATS designs and manufactures custom machinery, such as the SuperTrak machine shown here. The company uses eDrawings Professional to accelerate design reviews and improve customer communication.

How does eDrawings Professional improve communication with customers?
"ATS has three on-site projection rooms for presenting design concepts and SolidWorks animations to customers. However, for situations in which it is inconvenient or unfeasible for customers to travel to our offices, eDrawings provides an efficient means for presenting design concepts to customers."

How have the new features in eDrawings Professional affected customer communications?
"In the past, it always came down to a blueprint drawing which was very dependent on the customer's ability to read a blueprint and visualize a 2D drawing in 3D. eDrawings allowed us to include 3D models and animations, but the new mark-up and advanced viewing features in eDrawings Professional allow us to save additional time and improve the accuracy of customer communications. eDrawings Professional improves communication between ATS and customers at the detail level, using mark-up to provide real-time feedback, and also provides for better visualization of components at the system level. It basically saves additional steps encountered in using just the eDrawings viewer."

Have you noticed any performance improvements in eDrawings Professional?
"Yes. eDrawings Professional handles large assemblies of more than 4,000 to 5,000 components, producing files of 4 or 5 MB, more efficiently than previous releases."

ATS uses eDrawings Professional to illustrate and communicate design concepts and capabilities for both customers and prospects. Here, ATS shows how its automated assembly machinery operates in a fully automated manufacturing plant.

3D Systems Corporation uses eDrawings Professional to communicate designs for its laser sintering systems with customers and suppliers.

Most customers use eDrawings Professional for product development. Are there other applications?
"eDrawings Professional is not limited to just product development. It can be used to improve communication related to manufacturing processes as well. For example, when one of our suppliers wants to suggest a change or an improvement, they simply send an email requesting a mark-up-enabled eDrawing, which then becomes part of our Engineering Change Request (ECR) package. The eDrawing becomes part of the documentation needed to support an engineering change order and helps us to make manufacturing changes quickly, easily, and cost-effectively."