Böwe Bell + Howell, a leading manufacturer of automated mail-processing systems, faced significant challenges with their existing 2D design tools and later with Autodesk Inventor 3D software. The company needed to increase design productivity and accelerate large-assembly development. However, they encountered stability issues with Inventor, including the loss of drawings and data, which hindered their progress. Additionally, their former system struggled with handling sheet metal, weldments, and fasteners, which are critical components in their products. These challenges prompted Böwe Bell + Howell to reevaluate their 3D CAD solution in mid-2005.

Transform an innovative pressed-fruit water bottle design that was created for a college design project into a viable manufacturing company. The brothers noticed that their college classmates were infusing water using the same inefficient method of submerging fruit in infuser bottles. After testing infuser bottles, they noted that while they helped them to drink more water, the infused water lacked flavor. Instead of releasing fruit juice into the water, infuser bottles did the exact opposite: The fruit absorbed water, bloated, and created a mess that had to be cleaned out later, without ever releasing the flavorful juice inside. This experience led to the idea for a water bottle with a twist dial on top, which operates a press inside. By turning the dial on top, users press the juice from fruit and its flavor directly into the water.

RWDI needed to automate the manual process of locating and installing pressure sensors (taps) in their wind-tunnel test models. This process was labor-intensive, requiring drilling holes and gluing sensors by hand, which was time-consuming and costly. The firm aimed to streamline this process to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve the accuracy of their wind-pressure studies.

3DMP faced the challenge of providing customers with realistic 3D and interactive content in their marketing deliverables. Traditional methods of creating 3D content were time-consuming and often lacked the ability to develop additional features. The company needed a solution that could handle very large and complex models, allowing them to create accurate and interactive 3D representations of products. This was crucial for meeting the growing demand for product-focused communication and realistic 3D representations.

Mary Kay Inc. needed to improve design visualization to ensure that sales, marketing, creative, and international colleagues could fully imagine new cosmetics packaging concepts. This would prompt more input, engender greater buy-in, and produce quicker approvals and faster development. The existing SOLIDWORKS design software was efficient for designing products but had limitations in helping key team members grasp design concepts from CAD imagery or 2D drawings. This led to delays in creating physical models and slowed down the approval process.

ProEdit faced significant challenges in producing technical manuals efficiently and cost-effectively. The traditional methods of creating product illustrations were time-consuming and expensive, involving either back-and-forth interactions with clients to interpret CAD files or the manual illustration of photographs and prototypes. This process hindered ProEdit's competitiveness and ability to meet tight product launch deadlines. Additionally, there was a growing need to deliver instruction and assembly information over the web, which the existing methods could not adequately address.

POLYRACK TECH-GROUP needed to streamline the development of initial concept designs to shorten the sales cycle, compress development time, and accelerate time-to-market. The company identified the need for a new design solution for quickly modeling design concepts to support faster proposal development and improve collaboration with global customers. Traditional CAD methods were time-consuming, taking a couple of weeks to create early 3D concepts that required some early validation of motion and stresses. This inefficiency was a bottleneck in their development process, leading to delays in securing customer approvals and decisions on prototypes.

Lower solar power mounting-structure costs through the development of a more cost-efficient solar panel rack-mounting system for retail store applications.

Establish and grow a startup smartphone accessory products company through fast, effective new product design and production to support newly launched smartphone models more quickly than the competition.

ZAMAK design needed to create realistic 3D renderings of innovative industrial design concepts quickly and easily for presentation to clients, promotion of new concepts, and marketing of products. The firm previously used the Keyshot rendering package but found it inefficient and lacking in quality. They required a solution that was fast, easy to use, and capable of producing high-quality, photorealistic renderings for a variety of projects.

When Brayton Energy began developing environmentally responsible energy technologies in 2004, they needed a design platform that allowed engineers to design, analyze, and show innovative gas turbine applications within compressed development cycles. The company required a CAD system that could take them from concept to production in a streamlined, highly visual way. Given that they were breaking new ground for gas turbine technology, they needed to test and simulate the performance of their systems in software before investing in actual production. The CAD system had to be an extension of their operations, enabling quick movement without wasting time on retraining with various software applications from different vendors.

Brayton Energy needed a design platform that would allow engineers to design, analyze, and show innovative gas turbine applications within compressed development cycles. The company required a CAD system that could take them from concept to production in a streamlined, highly visual way. They needed to test and simulate the performance of their systems in software before investing in actual production. Additionally, the CAD system had to be user-friendly to avoid wasting time on retraining with different software applications from various vendors.

Greentown Labs, a leading business incubator for start-up companies focused on clean technology, faced the challenge of advancing and accelerating product development for its member start-ups. These start-ups required access to advanced design, simulation, and visualization tools to speed up their technology R&D and commercial product development. The incubator needed to provide these resources without imposing significant financial burdens on the start-ups, while also fostering a collaborative environment where innovative solutions to energy and environmental challenges could be developed.

PFlow Industries, Inc., a leading manufacturer of vertical lifting systems, faced challenges in automating their engineer-to-order process. They previously used AutoCAD 2D design tools combined with a product configurator and proprietary software, but sought a more efficient solution. The goal was to leverage existing CAD model data and design configurations to generate new designs automatically, reducing errors and increasing efficiency.

Establish an efficient product development and manufacturing capability to create products and offer services that generate self-sustaining revenues to support its mission of providing educational, training, and job opportunities for people with disabilities.

Sunfire GmbH aimed to accelerate the development of innovative, clean energy systems for off-grid power and heat generation, industrial gases and fuels production, and energy storage. The company needed to integrate mechanical design and electrical design workflows and connect product data management and enterprise resource planning systems. This integration was crucial to streamline design workflows, reduce the number of prototypes, and accelerate development. The challenge was to produce prototypes more quickly and make necessary changes to both mechanical and electrical components in a unified system.

Remmele Engineering, Inc. faced increasing complexity and diversity in automated systems, which highlighted the limitations of their existing 2D CAD tools. The company needed a more advanced design platform to handle new product-to-market ventures, innovative production processes, and pioneering manufacturing techniques. The goal was to improve communication, quality, and speed in the concept proposal, development, and production processes.

The challenge was to enable 10th-grade students in France to learn English, electronics, mechanics, and computers by building a robot and participating in international robotic competitions. The school aimed to provide students with a broad view of all subjects by exposing them to multidisciplinary educational projects. The objective was to participate in international robotic competitions, many of which take place in English-speaking countries. The project required the integration of various subjects, including English, science, and technology, to ensure students could communicate and exchange information effectively.

Robert Elwell established PROCAD TECHNOLOGIES to leverage his experience in plastics engineering and injection-mold tooling development to help clients resolve mold-tooling issues, accelerate tooling cycles, and streamline production processes. The company needed a robust 3D design and analysis solution to quickly identify tooling issues and optimize molds for production. Elwell had tried various 3D design and analysis solutions over his career but preferred SOLIDWORKS software for its intuitiveness and value for the price. The challenge was to find a solution that could provide the necessary tools to help clients overcome injection-mold challenges and shorten production cycle times.

As a leading supplier of scientific instruments and vacuum technologies for life-science and industrial applications, Varian, Inc., faced the challenge of having no standard CAD platform across its product development and manufacturing facilities worldwide. This lack of standardization led to inefficiencies, increased costs, and difficulties in collaboration. Following a corporate reorganization in 2000, the new CEO set a goal to bring all Varian product design groups onto the same CAD platform to streamline processes, increase productivity, and foster collaboration. The task of standardizing on a single CAD system was assigned to Layne Howard, who was then the manager of Varian MRI Systems Mechanical Engineering and Design Group. The team evaluated several CAD systems, including AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop, Autodesk Inventor, CADKEY, Pro/ENGINEER, and SolidWorks software. Despite initial resistance and concerns from the team, the evaluation process revealed that SolidWorks software was significantly ahead in terms of capabilities compared to other options.

Develop and optimize telescope stabilization, a tracking camera, and interface systems for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a flying observatory. The challenge was to create a system that could operate effectively in the stratosphere, where conditions are harsh and the need for precise stabilization is critical. The team needed to standardize on a common 3D design platform to facilitate collaboration and development, especially given the involvement of multiple disciplines and international partners.

Steam Machines, Inc. (SMI) faced the challenge of needing advanced design analysis tools and a cost-effective design platform to streamline their product development and manufacturing process. The company initially used Pro/ENGINEER CAD software but found it lacking in computational flow dynamics (CFD) capabilities. SMI needed a solution that could support every step of their product development process, from conceptual design to manufacturing, while also reducing costs and improving efficiency. The company aimed to innovate their closed-circuit rebreather (CCR) diving systems, making them more affordable and accessible to a wider market.

NEXX Systems, Inc. faced challenges in managing the increasing volume of 3D assembly and component design data due to its growth. Traditional file management techniques were insufficient, leading to slow, error-prone processes and a backlog of engineering change orders (ECOs). The company needed improved efficiency, accuracy, and control in handling its design data and ECOs. They began researching available product data management (PDM) systems to address these issues.

Burlington Technologies, Inc. faced significant challenges in managing design revisions, file confusion, and incorrect data problems while developing high-pressure aluminum die castings for the automotive industry. The transition to 3D solid modeling in 2006 created an opportunity to implement a product data management (PDM) system to control workflow and ensure accurate design revisions. The company needed a solution that could integrate seamlessly with their existing SolidWorks 3D CAD system, automate workflows, and eliminate design errors.

The project aimed to create a spinal implant that could restore intervertebral height in patients suffering from various spinal conditions such as degenerative intervertebral disc disease, vertebral fusion, spondylolisthesis, herniated disc, osteoporosis, and spinal stenosis. The challenge was to develop an implant with a porous lattice that promotes osseointegration and vascularization while matching the mechanical properties of bone. Additionally, the design process needed to be efficient and error-free to reduce time-to-market and ensure high-quality outcomes.

The U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) faced the challenge of reducing the weight and production time of a CubeSat bus, which traditionally required machining of nearly 150 parts. The conventional design demanded tight tolerances and close quality control, creating 150 potential points of failure. The goal was to develop a structure that fulfills all design requirements and can be manufactured using a repeatable process.

LightForce Orthodontics faced a significant challenge in scaling their operations due to the time-consuming design process of their patient-specific dental braces. The legacy CAD software they were using lacked the ability to track the progress of the multistep design workflow, making it difficult to repeat workflows quickly and error-free. This bottleneck in the design step was preventing LightForce from expanding their business and meeting the growing demand for their custom dental devices. Additionally, training new employees on the advanced software was proving to be tricky, tedious, and time-consuming, further hindering their ability to scale efficiently.

Impact Footwear aimed to create customizable flip flop sandals that could be easily personalized by consumers and manufactured on-demand with minimal human intervention. The challenge was to develop a mass customization business model that could scale economically while keeping operational costs low. This required fully automating the design generation and order placement processes, developing foam-like lattice structures to mimic traditional footwear materials, and leveraging additive manufacturing to minimize inventory and stay flexible in product development.

The engineers of Puntozero faced the challenge of redesigning the cold plate of the power electronics in Dynamis PRC’s electric race car for additive manufacturing. The primary issues identified were the non-uniform flow near the curvatures of the duct and the insufficient heat transfer surface area. These problems needed to be addressed to optimize the cooling efficiency and overall performance of the race car's power electronics. The team aimed to create a more efficient cooling system that could handle the high-performance demands of the Formula SAE Electric competition.

ADDITIVE INTELLIGENCE, DMG MORI’s additive manufacturing design consultancy, was tasked with maximizing the stiffness-to-weight ratio of the head of the robotic end-effector while improving handling precision and reducing manufacturing costs. A key design requirement was to keep the external form factor of the component unaltered. At the same time, the robot head had to house the embedded channels of the pneumatic system and the end effector’s electrical components.