From Paper to Models in Two Weeks
Only about six months ago, Rick Stephens' experience with CAD had been limited to playing around with a few home design products for his own personal use. As a computer consultant for Croft Trailer Supply, Inc., the Kansas City manufacturer of various types of flat bed, utility, and equipment trailers (see figure 1), Stephens had never done any formal drafting. Croft would either handle the drafting and design tasks in-house, or contract with an outside engineering consulting firm. Everything was done with pencil and paper.
Making a Change
Then around early June of 2004, the company came to Stephens and asked him research, recommend and then learn a 3D CAD program. Croft's goal was to improve the automation of their business. "I had an idea of what we needed in terms of CAD features, so I did some research," Stephens recalls. "Of course everyone knows of AutoCAD, so I looked at AutoCAD LT because of its low price point. I also briefly investigated SolidWorks, because it is well-known in the MCAD industry."
After further research, Stephens heard about Alibre Design™. "It has a price point around that of LT and seemed to have many of the features of SolidWorks, so I focused my attention on it," he recounted.
Stephens noted that during his evaluation period, the sales representative was very helpful and knowledgeable. "I thought, if this is the level of expertise of the sales team, I could only imagine how good the technical support would be," he said. "Sure I was a little skeptical - at that low price I was concerned that there had to be a major hole someplace. However, we went ahead and made the decision to purchase Alibre Design Professional. Well, I have used it almost every day since and haven't found any holes."
No Training Equals…Productivity!
For someone who received no professional training on the product and has no engineering/drafting background, Stephens went very far, very fast. After only two weeks, Stephens reports that he was already feeling productive, a testament to the program's ease of use. He also credits this rapid rise in productivity to Alibre's excellent support, which was available both over the phone and via the program's integrated collaborative web capabilities. In a few short months, Stephens had already built the company's utility trailer line in Alibre Design (see figure 2). He is looking forward to creating the lawn and garden line of trailers as well as other miscellaneous components that are still on paper.
He also sees productivity increases elsewhere at Croft. For instance, the company had many drawings that weren't fully detailed or had been done in millimeters instead of inches. Some had barely legible hand-scribbled notes on them. "If we were busy and needed to bring in extra welders for instance, we would lose the productivity of one of our full-time workers while he instructed the new guys, simply because the drawings weren't clearly annotated. With Alibre Design, these types of communication problems are no longer an issue."
He mentioned that his favorite modeling tools are the Helical Boss and the Sweep Boss, which makes it easy to build springs and other components that have to go out for bid, as seen in figure 3. He also discussed how compatibility with other applications hasn't been a problem, as he frequently imports files from AutoCAD users and then exports them without any hitches.
Stephens mentioned that not only was the Return on Investment extremely fast with Alibre Design, but he believes there is a potential to pick up new work in the area of custom trailers. "Because it is so easy to change the key aspects of the product, we can now quickly modify a standard design for a customer, thus creating a custom trailer," he noted. "This will save us time and enhance the service that we can provide to our customers."
Conclusions
"We jumped in with both feet, and I'm glad we did," Stephens mentioned. "With 3D modeling and communication tools that were not available before, we are realizing productivity gains we didn't think were possible. It shows that even a 65-year old company can learn new tricks," he concluded.
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Figure 1 - One of Croft Trailer Supply's offerings; shown here is their 5X8 utility trailer.
Figure 2 - Rick Stephens modeled the trailer shown in figure 1 in Alibre Design after using the program for only about one month.
Figure 3 - Powerful modeling tools such as the Helical Boss allows users of Alibre Design to easily create the components they need.
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