3D PDF is a Home Run, and Any Company of Any Size Can Afford to Implement It

Beyond 3D Podcast with David Ewing of Aras Corp – 3D PDF is a Home Run, and Any Company of Any Size Can Afford to Implement It In this episode of the Beyond 3D podcast, David Ewing from the Aras Corporation talks about how he and his team implemented a 3D PDF strategy for a project while he was at B/E Aerospace that ended up saving hundreds of hours, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it was so simple and effective, that using 3D PDF has now become the standard on nearly every project. "Yeah, this had a very big customer in Boeing, but the spend was very, very low. We also started with a relativity complex problem. This is something really, in my opinion, it's a home run project. You're a small company, you make widgets that you supply to some other company, this is a great opportunity to streamline your engineering process. You can actually remove some of the drafting steps and go to a 3D PDF. You're getting extremely accurate data in there, machinable, in fact, that's surfacing that are extremely accurate. Now that ... as the consumer of that drawing, whatever customer that you supply to, they don't need to have views that you would typically fret over in making a drawing. They can rotate the model and create as many views as they want. It's an infinite type thing. Think of the component modeling and drafting, this is a perfect fit. It's a home run, and it's really a straight forward project. I don't like to use words easy and impossible, the absolutes, it's just work.” Dave Ewing’s challenge to our listeners: “I've always thought that if you put a smart team together, they'll come up with some great ideas, that they can take a look at what you do. My challenge would be pick a couple folks in your organization to take a look at where some opportunities might be. Go adopt something and drop some money on it. It takes a little bit of investment to make this happen, whether it be starting with a simple drawing, or some type of documentation, and the biggest bang is really getting that 3D in there. I would say your simple piece part drawings. Go do it. This is not hard. It's not necessarily easy. You just got to work through it. This fits right into any PLM system. Granted, Aras has it built right in. Day one, we bet on it. This is the right way to go, but hey look, our brother in the PLM industry, they supported also. You don't have to be on Aras. Siemens supports it. Go off and do it. Pick a project, go do it. I would highly suggest an agile methodology so that you can start small, get some quick wins, and iterate on it, and keep refining it until you get to something and say, "Hey, we're done." Then you generated this win and energy and a better business process. That energy, now you can run with that. You've got a whole bunch of people saying, "Now they're pulling on the rope. Hey, I've seen this work. Now can we do X, Y, and Z?" That's powerful because now you've got people all bought in across the organization and that's huge. Go do it.” Free Trial of Tetra4D Enrich: http://www.tetra4d.com/ Learn more about Aras Corporation: http://www.aras.com/ To read the full podcast transcript, visit http://blog.techsoft3d.com/blog