Increase Productivity with Design Automation
Design Automation Services
Automate repetitive tasks and free up time for your designers and engineers to work on product development and innovation.
Solid Solutions not only provide the software, product training and aid implementation but help customers understand, deploy and scale their businesses.
Key Benefits of Design Automation
Manually re-modelling and re-drawing the same but different designs every time? We help you implement powerful tools like DriveWorks and custom API solutions to automate repetitive engineering tasks, drastically cutting lead times and eliminating costly errors.
Eliminate Design Errors
Using a rules-based configurator can prevent non-compliant combinations and removing human error from repetitive tasks.
Cut Quoting Time
Provide accurate quotes and preliminary designs in minutes, not days, significantly boosting sales response speed.
Reduce Cost of Sales
Automation handles the documentation, allowing your highly paid engineers to focus on custom or innovative R&D projects.
Instant Manufacturing Output
Automatically generate all necessary production documents, including drawings, BOMs, cutting lists, and sales proposals.
Better Customer Service
Automated designs mean customers can immediately see what their order includes (e.g. BOM etc)
Seamless Integration
Link your configurator data with other critical business systems, including ERP, CRM, and PDM.
Ready to Automate?
Our experienced consultants are ready to analyse your process and show you exactly how much time and money you can save with a custom automation strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
The term Design Automation describes the process of speeding up repetitive and laborious tasks using software tools. In many organisations, such tasks are often found in the design department and can create production bottlenecks.
- Does your company create products that are the same but different?
- Do you have repetitive design tasks that could be automated?
- Could your products be defined by a set of rules?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then design automation could be a real benefit to your business.
Automation is most beneficial for products that are highly configurable meaning they have many variations based on options, dimensions, or materials but are built from the same underlying rules and components.
Examples include: custom cabinets, conveyors, heat exchangers, mechanical seals, enclosures, structural steelwork, and machinery with scalable dimensions.
DriveWorks is the leading commercial software used for design automation within the SOLIDWORKS ecosystem. Our service involves implementing DriveWorks to capture the intelligence of your existing models, define the configuration rules, and build the user interface (the form) that sales or customers use to configure the product. DriveWorks then automatically drives SOLIDWORKS to create the unique model, drawing, and BOM package.
Project duration varies significantly based on complexity. A proof-of-concept for a single, small product line might take a few weeks.
A full implementation covering multiple complex product lines and integrating with your ERP/CRM systems can take several months.
We begin every project with a Process Audit to provide a clear timeline and guaranteed Return on Investment (ROI) estimate.
Our approach to implementing design automation is always centred on customer enablement. The real benefit of design automation is unlocked when customers are able to configure and deploy the tools themselves.
Our involvement starts with helping scope and scale the projects, we then train key users and help deliver the first piece of design automation.
It is common for customers to then move on through their business processes to automate new tasks thereby saving themselves more time and money.
We offer both bespoke and configured solutions for companies that design and manufacture including other processes and departments within that organisation.
We are able to automate the push and pull of data into other systems such as ERP, PDM and CRM platforms. Furthermore, we can create macros that work within SOLIDWORKS and DriveWorks to manage data through post-generative tasks to speed up design task even further or to meet very customer specific needs.