POLYRACK TECH-GROUP is the leading German manufacturer of packaging solutions for electronic equipment. The company produces both standard and customized electronic packaging systems, including subracks, cases, industrial PC applications, and plug-in-modules. Customers use POLYRACK products in the communications, broadcast, security, defense, transportation, utilities, and medical industries, as well as in test and measurement environments.
POLYRACK has used SOLIDWORKS design and electronics cooling simulation tools for several years to make its development processes more efficient. Recently, POLYRACK identified the need for a new design solution for quickly modeling design concepts to support faster proposal development as well as a means for improving collaboration with global customers.
“We need to sketch quick ideas and design concepts to share with customers during proposal development,” Development Manager Bernd Knab recalls. “I saw a YouTube video about a new product from Dassault Systèmes called SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design. We create a lot of design concepts in the early stages of a project, so we were naturally interested in the software.”
Knab signed up for the SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design Lighthouse Program, which provides the opportunity to use the software in production as part of prerelease testing. POLYRACK’s involvement in early usage testing of SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design software, the first SOLIDWORKS solution on the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform, confirmed Knab’s belief that the software would help the company streamline the development of early design concepts, enabling POLYRACK to shorten its sales cycle, compress development time, and accelerate time-to-market.
“Creating early 3D concepts to support proposals can take a couple weeks using traditional CAD,” Knab notes. “These concepts need to be more than just rough sketches and require some early validation of motion and stresses. We were particularly intrigued with the capabilities of SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design for simulating the movements and relationships of parts, as well as for validating structural performance.”
QUICK CONCEPTS ACCELERATE TIME-TO-MARKET
With SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design, POLYRACK not only has realized time savings during initial conceptual design but also throughout product development, helping the company enjoy a 10 to 20 percent reduction in time-to-market. “SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design enables us to make design decisions faster,” Knab explains. “Using the software’s single modeling environment, we can more quickly secure customer approval of concepts and decisions on prototypes. Since acquiring SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design, we’ve been able to cut initial design development from two weeks to two days.
“These time savings allow us to bring designs to production faster and ultimately deliver products to market in less time,” Knab continues. “By saving time during the early stages of development, we need fewer steps. Prototyping occurs much earlier, and we need fewer prototypes. SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Design lets us find the most suitable path for a design and reach production more quickly, which helps us shorten time-to-market.”