In a recent project we had the pleasure of working with Cancoil Thermal in a very interesting Design Automation project. Cancoil is one of the fastest growing manufacturers of commercial refrigeration products in North America. The team at Cancoil prides itself in its ability to design and manufacture products specific to its customers needs. In this project we helped Cancoil Thermal reduce the product development times of their finned tube coils by automating key areas of their design process. Here are some interesting notes about this project.

The project began with a customer’s needs analysis. This is a very important step that is done to gain an understanding of the customer’s business. Interviews were held with Cancoil’s team members in order to identify their requirements and to outline their design process. In addition to this, some of Cancoil’s previous designs were reviewed in detail. The needs analysis was instrumental in helping us develop a design automation solution as well as a comprehensive implementation plan.

Here is a list of Cancoil’s requirements:

·    Consistent and repeatable design approach by all designers

·    Solution must capture design rules and generate new designs

·    Solution must be implemented in a relatively short period of time

·    Use existing software (in this case, SolidWorks and DriveWorksXpress)

·    Avoid custom programming and code maintenance

Three (3) possible solutions were considered to automate the design process:

1.   To create a custom VB.Net program that uses the SolidWorks API

2.   To create an Excel Design Table in SolidWorks

3.   To develop a rules-based solution using DriveWorksXpress

Option 1 was discarded since the customer wanted to avoid the additional costs and maintenance that come with a customized programming solution. Option 2 was also discarded since Design Tables are used to create new configurations and the customer needed to create new independent models for each new design. We chose Option 3 since it met all of the customer’s requirements (e.g. it did not require additional software and did not require programming). In addition to this DriveWorksXpress gave the customer an upgrade path (i.e. they could in the future upgrade to the full version of DriveWorks for additional automation and functionality).

The next step was to develop the new design process. During the interviews we found out that the design of the End Plates followed very clear rules. This prompted us to decide to use DriveWorksXpress to automate the design of the End Plates. We then decided to use standard SolidWorks tools to semi-automate the design of the tubing and other components, since they had rules that required more flexibility. The following new design process was completed:

1.   Create a new Coil assembly

2.   Generate new End Plate design using DriveWorksXpress

3.   Add Library components such as tubing using SolidWorks Smart Mates to the Coil assembly

4.   Create Header Subassembly using the Library

5.   Generate Manufacturing drawings

Here is a flow diagram of the process:

Once the process was developed the next step was to test it in order to ensure that the new designs were generated quickly and accurately. To do this we re-engineered several existing designs to see how much faster we could generate them with the new process and also to ensure that there were no errors. All of our tests showed that the new process was not only faster but that it greatly reduced the chances of making mistakes.

After the testing was concluded the new process was officially implemented at Cancoil. This new automated design process resulted in several benefits to Cancoil such as:

·    Design tasks that previously were very time consuming are now streamlined via a Rules-Based System (e.g. the End Plate Design)

·    Designers can quickly generate and release Manufacturing Drawings for production

·    Previously the design process took 2 days; now with the Design Automation Solution it takes 4 hours to complete a design. A 75% reduction in time.

To see how your company could also benefit from design automation please feel free to contact us.

- by Joseph Vera