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Partnering for Construction & Manufacturing Digital Solutions

Success Story

Forge-based Product Configurator

Forge-based Product Configurator

Customer challenge

Today’s increasing demand for product customization represents a substantial shift from mass manufacturing to manufacturing for a market of one. Manufacturing companies face imminent pressure to provide vast arrays of singularly specific products, components, and machines. Customers expect to easily customize their orders with full confidence that the goods they are choosing fit their needs. Plus, they want their products to be cost-effective, simple to order, and quick to deliver. Typical 2D, paper-based ordering processes often fall short in the ability to provide rapid, flexible configuration. Time is wasted on inefficient communications, errors result in costly component remodeling, order processes are delayed, and product prices are incorrectly estimated. Manufacturers are increasingly turning to 3D models in attempts to refine and expedite the custom ordering process, but the creation of basic 3D models is time consuming.

Project goals

Climax wanted to optimize the product configuration process and offer configurator tools both to his dealers and end users. End users should be able to access easy-to-navigate 3D models of their desired products on any web browser and configure them with a few clicks, with no need for design knowledge or software downloads. The resulting 3D model then generates accurate and immediate quotations in response to each configuration, providing comprehensive information and insight into the costs of each configuration’s unique composition.

Solution

In response to this problem, Arkance Systems has developed the CS Configurator, which uses the power of the Forge platform to help customers offer flexible, accurate, 3D product configuration. The product has the added advantage of having both desktop and online variants, making it accessible not only to designers, but also to end customers who have no technical knowledge. Arkance Systems’ CS Configurator uses the Forge Model Derivative API to extract model data—supporting more than 70 different file input formats—from customers’ CAD software and brings it into the Autodesk Forge platform. The Design Automation API is used to export formats and generate outputs. And the Viewer API communicates natively with the Model Derivative API to extract model data and render models in 3D interactive models that are viewable on all web browsers.

Business outcome

End users now receive product documentation, and are able to download the 3D model of the selected configuration. Plus, CS Configurator automatically generates and delivers emails containing information on configurations to users. The whole process results in massive time savings by reducing almost entirely the back-and-forth communication between end customer, designer, and manufacturer—as well as eliminating time-consuming and costly component remodeling that previously occurred due to errors.

Conclusion

The solution is able to convert 70-plus formats into viewable, interactive, 3D, web-based configurable models and frees up time for designers to concentrate on product development, not 3D modeling. The solution also empowers the manufacturer to sell directly and easily to end customers.

Project summary

    Duration & delivery

  • 180
  • 2021-01-30

    Autodesk solutions

  • Forge
  • Inventor

    Services provided

  • Custom Application Development
  • Collaboration & Productivity
  • Workflow Documentation
  • Business Analytics & Reporting
  • System Integration
  • Technical Support

    Customer industry

  • Subtractive Manufacturing
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