On Thursday 22nd September 2016, Maria and Heather from the DriveWorks team hit the road to present at the Boston Area North SOLIDWORKS User Group meeting in North Billerica, Massachusetts.

As many of you located in America may know, this particular evening brought with it the promise of a budding new third-string quarterback for the New England Patriots starting in his very first official football game!

Not only did the Patriots win that night but there were also at least 50 people in attendance for the BANSWUG meeting. Everyone had a great time learning about SOLIDWORKS Visualize with a presentation given by Chris Mowatt of CAPInc.

Attendees also learnt about how SOLIDWORKS users can ‘Activate to Automate’ their designs with DriveWorksXpress.  Maria and Heather enjoyed speaking with attendees before and after the presentations and even had the chance to have a photo taken with the legendary Flat SWUGN himself.

“It’s always fun to present at SOLIDWORKS user group meetings, but there is something about presenting to a local group, such as BANSWUG, that makes it more near and dear to me. Thanks to Dan and Tom for having us there and I look forward to the next chance to visit with this group.” – Heather.

Get Involved!

Heather will also be attending the Western Massachusetts SOLIDWORKS User Group on 5th October 2016 with none other than one of the founding members of the Bacon Brotherhood – John Matrishon.

Registration is now open so sign up in order to secure your place and look out for more information on our events page!

Industries Desjardins have been in business for 145 years and are well established in their region. They were originally dedicated to producing farming equipment however they have since expanded and now also manufacture fuel tanks, oil separators and sawmill machinery.

Every piece of equipment manufactured by Industries Desjardins can be customised to meet specific requirements. They’re also fully configurable using a range of equipment and accessories.

How Did You Configure-To-Order (CTO) Before DriveWorks?

“Before we started using DriveWorks every sale needed countless hours of input from specialised technicians to import and modify CAD models and prepare the production drawings. It was time consuming so we needed to find a way to streamline the process.” – Serge Fournier—Design Project Manager.

The Benefits of Using DriveWorks

“DriveWorks provided the tools to keep our staff focused on high value tasks while the software handles the easy stuff. DriveWorks has helped to cut approximately 85% off the drawing time on an average project.

Our library of CAD models has decreased significantly and thus contributed to lower engineering maintenance time on our CAD database.

Merging our high volume products to DriveWorks helps us to keep our project lead time as low as possible while our staff are used more efficiently in other areas.”

Implementing DriveWorks

“DriveWorks software was easy to learn and the interface is very user friendly. We worked with DriveWorks and our Value Added Reseller, SolidXperts, who both provided great support for us throughout the implementation process.”

Time Saving Metrics

Previous system: countless hours
With DriveWorks: 85% reduction on drawing time

AJ Manufacturing is a lean, just-in-time manufacturer of some of the world’s best custom made commercial stainless steel HVAC products. They have a strong presence in the HVAC industry and continue to grow and diversify their product lines. Many of AJ Manufacturing’s products are featured in the world’s most successful hospitals, laboratories and commercial buildings today.

In 2004, Bob Haake, owner of AJ Manufacturing, wanted to incorporate new technology into their process. Later that year, they began using SOLIDWORKS in order to move their engineering and product design data away from 2D to 3D.

After realising the power of SOLIDWORKS, AJ Manufacturing began making smart models driven by design tables and equations. This significantly cut the engineering time associated with producing many of their custom, one off products that make them a unique supplier to the industry.

As their products and models became more complex, they began hitting the functional limits of SOLIDWORKS design tables and equations. Their search for a more powerful design automation solution for SOLIDWORKS led them to DriveWorks.

Integrating DriveWorks

Now DriveWorks has been integrated throughout their entire product delivery process. Not only are many of their products being driven by DriveWorks, but DriveWorks itself has become a bridge between ERP, engineering and manufacturing.

Utilising Core Functionalities

By utilising many of the core functionalities of DriveWorks Autopilot, AJ Manufacturing’s process has evolved from several manual intervention steps to near full automation.

By using built-in DriveWorks connectors, they are able to drive and automatically create specifications by leveraging existing data created by the ERP system. Once the ‘build’ information is collected, DriveWorks Autopilot goes to work and begins to build new specifications.

Specialised Plugins

Once DriveWorks Autopilot has completed the specification, a specialised DriveWorks plugin developed by AJ Manufacturing begins to dig through the assembly and collects the BOM information, such as:
– Part numbers
– Blank sizes
– Quantity
– Mass

After the plugin has interrogated the assembly or part, the information is then passed into a staging database table from which the ERP system can collect and leverage for reports and inventory control.

Results with DriveWorks

Once AJ Manufacturing’s projects are set up, functions that previously took a day or two to complete now take minutes using DriveWorks Autopilot.

Prior to using DriveWorks, their engineers spent many hours executing the minor tasks involved with custom products. These included renaming files, changing dimensional values, re-exporting manufacturing data and repairing file references from failed SOLIDWORKS Pack and Go functions.

“DriveWorks has saved AJ Manufacturing countless hours in production time alone.”

“AJ Manufacturing’s process, driven by the power and flexibility of DriveWorks, gives them a competitive advantage in bringing their customers higher quality, custom-made, just-in-time products, faster than anyone else in the industry.”

DriveWorks – an easy to use CPQ solution that provides seamless links between customers, sales and engineering.

Are your distributors or customers asking you for prices online? How would they respond if they could configure orders themselves online? Would it help you stand out from the crowd if you could use 3D to visually show them what to expect?

Our new CPQ for Manufacturing demo site DriveWorksLive.com will give you a good idea of what you could accomplish using DriveWorks software.

Configurable products are definitely the norm now in our personal lives. We’ve all seen, and probably used, the car or trainer configurators that so many recognized brands are using. Of course the business to business world, notably manufacturing, is now demanding this capability too.

Engineers who use SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software have been able to configure custom products using the DriveWorks add-on products for years. As the configurators are becoming mainstream, now sales teams want and need their own tools too. The good news is that DriveWorks software provides manufacturing companies with one collaborative solution, DriveWorks Pro, for both engineering and sales teams.

Product requirements can be entered online by anyone and at any stage in the sales to manufacturing process. As DriveWorks is a rule-based system, you can set up Team and User permissions, along with specific workflows, to keep your data safe and secure but highly accessible to those that you do want to interact with.

The examples on www.driveworkslive.com will give you a good feel for what is possible with DriveWorks. You’ll also see how our configurators are being applied across so many different industries.

If you visit the site be sure to enter your email address to receive various personalized quotes and documents – these are all sent automatically (again based on rules) via email, directly from the configurator.

On Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th September, Glen and Maria from the DriveWorks team will be heading to Coventry to take part in the annual K3 Syspro customer event.

K3 Syspro have a great agenda lined up which is full of bookable breakout sessions, consultant surgeries, customer speakers and much more!

The event is taking place at the Manufacturing Technology Centre, which provides an unparalleled environment for the development and demonstration of new technologies on an industrial scale which you’ll get the chance to explore.

Make sure you head over to the exhibition hall to say hi!

More information and the full agenda can be found here.

When?
Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th September 2016

Where?
The Manufacturing Technology Centre
Ansty Park
Coventry
CV7 9JU

Ever get tired of clicking that same sequence of buttons? Keyboard shortcuts can be a great way to speed up how you work, sometimes removing the need to click several times through a menu to get to where you want to.

10 Useful DriveWorks Keyboard Shortcuts

Below I’ve outlined 10 of the most useful DriveWorks keyboard shortcuts for speeding up the way you work.

So, now you know these keyboard shortcuts, why not give them a go and see if they can help you to work even quicker.
You may also want to check out the following Help File, which outlines all of the keyboard shortcuts that you can use within DriveWorks: http://docs.driveworkspro.com/Topic/InfoKeyboardShortcuts