Ray Morrogh, a TriMech Solutions Consultant, covers the enhancements this year that focused on an improved user experience in many ways, including UX updates, auto ballooning 2D cabinets, and filters in electrical 3D. The way changes can be implemented has also been improved with enhancements like removing manufacturer part data when deleting or replacing a component, changing the lengths of multiple rails and ducts simultaneously, and allowing for previews of changes when aligning 3D components

During this SOLIDWORKS Electrical On-Demand Webinar, you will learn:

• Auto ballooning in 2D cabinets
• Shortening lists using ranges
• UI/UX improvements
• Changes to Electrical 3D

Sawyer Gara, a TriMech Elite Applications Engineer, discusses SOLIDWORKS Toolbox and its integration into SOLIDWORKS PDM. He begins by familiarizing attendees with the SOLIDWORKS Toolbox and discussing the benefits of using it as opposed to manually creating standard hardware. From here he covers how to tell SOLIDWORKS PDM to manage our Toolbox and recognize where it lives. After telling PDM to use our Toolbox, we can then configure SOLIDWORKS to use that shared location! Finally, he touches on some key settings within PDM to ensure the Toolbox integration is successful and to ensure future upgrades go off without a hitch.

During this SOLIDWORKS PDM On-Demand Webinar, you will learn:

• Overview of SOLIDWORKS Toolbox
• Setting Up Toolbox within PDM
• Configuring SOLIDWORKS to use the correct Toolbox
• Key Settings when Working within PDM
• How to Update the SOLIDWORKS Toolbox

From design and prototypes to production, finishing and assemblies…get the instant answers you need at this show.

The show dates this year are March 27-28, 2024.

Why you should attend the Design-2-Part Trade Show

This event is complimentary and will help you to:

• Shorten Supply Chain
• Discover New Materials
• Improve Quality
• See New Technology
• Reduce Costs
• Accelerate Delivery
• Get Tighter Tolerances
• Find Second Sources

So come out and see what TriMech can do for you. We will be in booth 226/228. We hope to see you there!

Who exhibits at a D2P show?

The exhibitors are regional and national contract manufacturers and job shops who offer manufacturing and service capabilities in more than 300 product categories for the metal, plastics, rubber, and electronics industries.

Who attends a D2P show?

The attendees are manufacturing engineers, design engineers, manufacturing management, and purchasing personnel involved in outsourcing decisions for parts & services. The attendees come from small to large companies and are looking for manufacturing services.

Is there a cost to attend?

No, registration and admission is free. For your convenience, it is recommended that you pre-register online in advance of the show.

Watch as TriMech Elite Applications Engineer, Sawyer Gara, walks us through the How SOLIDWORKS Electrical and PDM integration tool. SOLIDWORKS PDM is a powerful CAD-aware data management tool that can handle almost anything you throw at it and SOLIDWORKS Electrical is our best-in-class electrical schematic design tool that is integrated into Electro-Mechanical Design Process.

Traditionally, our SOLIDWORKS Electrical Designs have lived solely outside of our vault and short of using the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Viewer, most of our team did not have visibility to the projects. Now there is a direct integration for SOLIDWORKS Electrical to work with our SOLIDWORKS PDM Vault.

During this SOLIDWORKS Electrical and PDM On-demand Webinar you will learn:

• How it all works
• Key options during the set up process
• Things to keep in mind
• Where do we go from here

As previously mentioned, things can start to get a little complicated when it comes to bridging. We look at an example of automatic bridging, and examine issues that may arise, demonstrating how to deal with them in the process. This will help to highlight the differences between manual and automatic bridge creation.

Client Success Analyst, Jesse Deane, shares his knowledge of the terminal strip editor and helps you gain confidence when implementing bridges.

During this SOLIDWORKS Electrical On-Demand Webinar you will learn:

• Terminal strip editor overview
• How to add bridges within the editor
• How to add bridges within the schematic
• Automatic vs. manual bridging

Included in the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Symbol on-demand webinar

Alaa Hosn, helps us understand what each SOLIDWORKS Electrical Symbol passing type means and how they behave. To show this, we modify a symbol to reflect each of the passing types before numbering the attached wires to see how they are impacted.

In addition to symbol passing types, we deomonstrate how easy it is to number wires in SOLIDWORKS Electrical. The wire number can be modified to display the information necessary for any wire. An example will be provided on how to modify the wire and equipotential formulas to reflect the preferred callouts.

During this Webinar you will learn:

• The different symbol passing types (information transmission)
• How to set up signal-passing symbols
• How to number/renumber wires
• Customizing your wire labeling standards

The company has helped thousands of customers shred plastics, metals, wood, construction debris, white goods, tires, medical waste, green waste, e-waste, and office paper. Headquartered in Cambridge, Ontario, Shred-Tech also has facilities in North Carolina, England, and Thailand, and works with distributors in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan.

Since its founding in 1980, Shred-Tech has leveraged the latest design and manufacturing technologies to spark innovation. For example, Shred-Tech’s introduction of the Mobile Document Shredding Truck in the early 1980s revolutionized the document shredding industry and fueled the company’s rapid growth, making Shred-Tech the largest shredding-truck manufacturer in the world.

In keeping with the company’s commitment to innovation, Shred-Tech upgraded its development platform from AutoCAD® 2D design tools to the SOLIDWORKS® 3D mechanical design system many years ago. However, according to Controls Engineering Group Lead Rob Taylor, while the company’s mechanical design function performed well using SOLIDWORKS mechanical design tools, electrical designers struggled to use AutoCAD mechanical tools to create schematics of electrical panels for the company’s products, resulting in time, accuracy, and cost issues.

“I joined the company to help streamline the development of electrical schematics,” Taylor explains. “We were simply not efficient using AutoCAD mechanical drawing tools to develop electrical schematics, and we experienced significant inconsistencies in BOM [bill of materials] information and drawings. I was brought in to implement SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics software, a package that I had never used.”

As a former EPLAN® and AutoCAD Electrical software user, Taylor says he was initially unsure that SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics was the best solution for Shred-Tech. “I had no experience with the software, so I was a bit skeptical at first,” Taylor recalls. “But once I did some research and started playing around with it, I became convinced that management had made the right choice. When it comes to electrical design, SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics is the cat’s meow.”

Faster BOM Generation with SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics

Upon implementing SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics, Shred-Tech immediately realized productivity gains in both schematics layout and electrical system BOM generation, cutting the time required to produce the latter from a full week to just a few hours. “SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics cuts down on ordering time because we can generate BOM information more quickly,” Taylor notes.

“Before we implemented SOLIDWORKS Electrical, it used to take five days to generate the BOM because we had to finish all of the drawings to manually create the BOM,” Taylor says. “With SOLIDWORKS Electrical, we can generate the BOM in about four hours. Whenever you can reduce the time it takes to complete a task from a week to four hours, you’re streamlining the process. And because SOLIDWORKS Electrical is easy to use, we can utilize junior-level designers to complete tasks that required a senior-level designer in the past.”

Shred-Tech Electrical Schematic

Minimizing Errors and Reducing Footprints

Not only is Shred-Tech faster at generating BOMs and creating schematics with SOLIDWORKS Electrical, BOM and drawing content is much more accurate, further streamlining product development. “Before we implemented SOLIDWORKS Electrical, we experienced huge numbers of errors in both the schematics and BOM information,” Taylor recalls.

“The accuracy of our schematics and related information has improved dramatically, prompting us to redo all of our past schematics with SOLIDWORKS Electrical,” Taylor continues. “In developing our electrical panels, we used to err on making them bigger to account for potential errors. Because the accuracy of our schematics is so improved, we’ve been able to reduce the size of our panels by 10 percent overall, which saves our customers money by reducing the cost per square foot on the factory floor.”

Automating Wiring and Cabling

Building upon the success of the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics implementation and working with an integrated mechanical/electrical design platform, Shred-Tech is planning to further streamline its development process by leveraging the automated wire and cable routing capabilities of SOLIDWORKS Premium software. “Now that we’ve sorted out our time and accuracy issues with SOLIDWORKS Electrical, we’re planning to use SOLIDWORKS Premium software to automate the routing of wiring and placement of cable harnesses during a major revamp of our mobile products line,” says Taylor.

“Working with a harmonized platform like SOLIDWORKS for mechanical and electrical design enables us to achieve additional efficiencies, like leveraging automation tools such as Routing, to continually improve and accelerate product time-to-market,” Taylor says.