Amphenol is one of the largest manufacturers of interconnect products worldwide. The SineSystems subsidiary uses SolidWorks 3D CAD to design cable assemblies. The engineering department utilizes seats of SolidWorks 3D CAD to quickly design new assemblies. Downstream marketing and documentation processes have been impacted by the change from a 2D design package to a 3D CAD package because general-use downstream authoring tools do not support 3D CAD data.
Brett, Marketing Coordinator, is responsible for timely delivery of product catalogs. On-time delivery was hampered because the 3D models were only usable by trained SolidWorks experts working with expensive 3D CAD software. In effect, marketing was required to work directly with engineers to render images for use in the manuals. Rendering a single image could typically take a few weeks to accomplish. First, time with the engineer had to be scheduled. In addition, a few iterations were often needed because the view rendered by the engineer did not match the needs of marketing. This inefficiency led to SineSystems to consider how the 3D model, locked up in engineering, could be leveraged downstream.
When QuadriSpace was implemented for illustration creation, Brett was able to get the right image in 10-15 minutes as opposed to working with engineering over a few weeks. “Implementing QuadriSpace helped jumpstart the creation of the biggest catalog we have put out,” stated Brett, “there was a huge time savings and we were able to utilize informative exploded views to an extent that was previously impractical.” SineSystems is exploring the further use of QuadriSpace to create interactive 3D PDF documents to improve communication with customers.