Rimpull is a major manufacturer of earthmoving vehicles for the mining and construction industries. They have implemented a SolidWorks solution for product design that has helped them obtain faster time-to-market and the ability to create more complex vehicles. The disruption in the engineering department led to bottlenecks downstream. Service manuals were created by combining a number of manually created parts pages. Because documenters did not have tools to leverage the 3D directly, Rimpull would execute the following process for every part page:
A typical manual would contain more than 300 pages of information generated in this fashion. It took a day of effort to create two pages.
Scott is responsible for engineering support activities and documentation. Using QuadriSpace, he developed a process that allowed new parts pages to be created in literally minutes. Scott describes the process as “import, print, done”.
By creating a template with a 3D view on one page and a bill-of-materials on the other, parts pages are created by simply importing the most recent 3D design. The template automatically creates a suitable bill-of-materials and Scott simply positions the view as desired using a mouse. If callouts or exploded views are required these are easily added in the QuadriSpace software, no SolidWorks is required. The pages are ready to print. This process takes 10 – 60 minutes [versus days] depending on the need for exploded views or callouts.
“By using our CAD files directly, “ Scott summarized, “QuadriSpace made it easier and faster to produce manuals.”
An additional benefit of using QuadriSpace is the ability to publish the same document into multiple deliverable formats. Rimpull currently delivers printed manuals but is exploring how to better leverage a 3D PDF version of the parts documents that would allows consumers to rotate, pan and zoom the 3D model, or click parts in the parts list to highlight them in the 3D view.