To talk the talk is easy, but to walk the talk is a different ball game. What I mean is that most software companies simply leverage big words to deliver their speech but little else to validate their claims. However with solidThinking you are assured that they deliver what the promise. For example, with the solidThinking Inspire, they promise to offer a common visual language for engineering and ID. This is what infant equipment manufacturer Evenflo have to say….
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Andy Davis, the Senior Design Engineer, Computer Aided Engineering at Evenflo, Inc. has this to say, “solidThinking Inspire shows the essential material that cannot be removed from a design. This helps you understand your design earlier and can be used as a common language between departments.”
To give you a background, Evenflo’s products include car seats, strollers, high chairs, play yards and activity products to meet the needs of children from birth to the pre-school years. “Safety is the key consideration in the design process. Ease of use is also important but costs must be controlled,” says Andy.
The challenge here was to make child safety simple with innovative and easy-to-use products through a combination of engineering and industrial design. The solution came in the form of a process incorporating solidThinking Inspire to generate early concept designs and assist the product co-development by engineering and ID departments.
I am sure you are keen to know the results of this implementation. Well here they are:
- Inspire provides a new way to look at part design
- It offers a common visual language for engineering and ID showing where structure needs to be
- Easy integration with current design tools and processes
- The creation of a design that is 25% lighter and more cost effective than the part it replaced without compromising safety
To cut a long story short, the initial Inspire results showed potential for a 30% mass and material reduction. The result also enabled some less measurable benefits. Firstly the engineering design team was able to see load paths for the design in Inspire before exporting to Pro-E. The team was seeking to improve on the boxy appearance of the current part, and the Inspire results provided a place to start the conversation with ID to ensure the delivery of style and function.
“The initial Inspire results showed potential for a 30% mass and material reduction…after styling we were still able to achieve a 25% improvement.
To sum it up, with solidThinking Inspire you can co-create cost-effective solutions.
