Autodesk customer success story Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

3D design has allowed us to explore numerous engineering applications that otherwise would have been handled by specialized suppliers. We simply could not have designed and manufactured critical components like the cardanic ring for the Seaway project had we not had Inventor and a complementary FEA program like ANSYS DesignSpace to accomplish the task. —John Rauscher

Systems Engineering Group Leader Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

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Project summary

Bosch Rexroth Canada (Rexroth) is a partner

company of Bosch Rexroth GmbH, the

worldwide leader in drive-and-control solutions.

Using the powerful visualization capabilities of

Autodesk® Inventor® software, Rexroth secured

a five-year project to modernize the locks of the

St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation

(SLSMC) on the Welland Canal portion of the St.

Lawrence Seaway (Seaway), a 2,038-mile

shipping artery that connects the St. Lawrence

River from Canada to the five Great Lakes in the

United States. Using Autodesk Inventor, Rexroth

is designing hydraulic systems for the canal in

3D, and as a result, the company is seeing

dramatic reductions in design times and drawing

errors.

The right key for new locks Autodesk software helps Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp. win lucrative Seaway project—and improve customer lead times

COMPANY

Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

LOCATION

Ontario, Canada

SOFTWARE

Autodesk Inventor® Autodesk Inventor® Professional Autodesk® Vault Autodesk® Design Review Autodesk® DWF™ Viewer AutoCAD® Mechanical AutoCAD® Electrical

The company has been able to pass these

savings on to the Seaway in the form of

improved on-time deliveries and timely

responses to design changes. To streamline

reviews, Rexroth’s customers leverage the free

Autodesk® DWF™ Viewer to share and print

designs while internal reviewers use Autodesk®

Design Review to mark up, and then roundtrip

design iterations back into the original Autodesk

design software. Rexroth is using Autodesk®

Vault data management software on select

projects to easily manage design work in

progress. With an eye to the future, Rexroth

plans to widely adopt Autodesk Vault to help

automate its release process, track engineering

change orders, and ultimately integrate with the

company’s enterprise resource planning system.

Image courtesy of Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

Autodesk customer success story Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

The challenge

When business increased in late 2003, Rexroth

added staff to meet the demand. Despite hiring

more designers, Rexroth was experiencing a

downward trend in drawing accuracy. Not

wanting to jeopardize its mission to provide

superior-value products and service to

customers in a profitable manner, the company

knew change was imminent. Around the same

time, Rexroth’s management team had

presented the organization with a set of goals,

including mandates to improve delivery reliability

to customers and minimize rework and material

waste in all areas.

Rexroth knew that to achieve its goals, migrating

from 2D to 3D design software was a must—not

only to improve its design creation, but also its

production processes. When Rexroth was invited

to bid on the SLSMC project, Ben Gilmore, the

company’s project chief designer, jumped at the

opportunity to move from a 2D AutoCAD®

solution and put Autodesk Inventor’s 3D

capabilities to the test. “Our design team used

Autodesk Inventor to create animations and

renderings in our proposal that helped us gain

the Seaway’s confidence,” explains Gilmore. “By

using Autodesk Inventor to create 3D drawings,

renderings, and animations, we convinced the

Seaway to change its standard from AutoCAD to

Inventor for the project.”

CAD Administrator Martin Eberhard adds, “In

reality, the SLSMC standard was still AutoCAD.

We needed software that would give us 3D

visualization, but also enable us to convert the

drawings into true DWGTM files after the designs

and documentation were complete. This was

very important to the Seaway.”

In its decision to adopt Autodesk Inventor,

particularly for the SLSMC project, Jim Lambert,

design engineering manager, says, “We saw

clearly that we could leverage Autodesk Inventor

for the Seaway project to do designs that we

wouldn’t have attempted without a 3D system—

all while reducing errors and decreasing design

times.”

The solution

By choosing Autodesk Inventor, Rexroth has

been able not only to streamline the design

process, but also increase the details included

on its designs and improve visualization for

everyone from customers to the shop floor.

What’s more, the software transition was

smooth. Rexroth had felt the pain of adopting

new software and platforms before, so ease of

use was very important. “When we migrated

from 2D to 3D, we had a lot of doubters,” says

Eberhard. “But we rolled Inventor out in stages

with proper training and those same guys are

coming back to me now and saying, ‘I can’t even

imagine going back to 2D.’”

Before Rexroth adopted Autodesk Inventor, the

company produced all of its designs in 2D, often

experiencing the medium’s limitations. “We had

trouble visualizing designs,” says Lambert. “For

in- stance, the last project we did in AutoCAD

involved a complex fabrication. We had a really

tough time describing what the piece would look

like to the fabrication shop.”

Eventually, the team modeled the frame in

Autodesk Inventor so they could show in 3D how

the fabrication shop needed to build the

weldment. “The shop gained a clear

understanding of the design by viewing the

model in a 3D environment, allowing them to

fabricate the weldment much quicker,” adds

Lambert. “In this way, we’ve been able to

leverage 3D down to the manufacturing shop

floor. “

Changes 50 percent faster, errors reduced

Its Autodesk manufacturing solution has

facilitated Rexroth’s design changes, an

important benefit for the SLSMC project in

particular. Now, Rexroth’s designers are able to

make changes and distribute new drawings

immediately.

“We used to make changes in one view in

Image courtesy of Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

With Autodesk, we have tools to visualize and adapt to changes, keep our errors down to a minimum, and provide customers with what they are expecting— and more. —Ben Gilmore

Project Chief Designer Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

Autodesk customer success story Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

AutoCAD, but they weren’t updated in another

view,” explains Lambert. “Now, we know that

when one feature changes on a model, every

drawing that relates to that feature will be

automatically updated.”

With design changes made easier, and rich

visualization showing complex design details

more effectively, Rexroth has been able to

reduce design errors. Lambert explains, “We

deal with a lot of complex shapes that are

difficult to envision, which can lead to problems

like interferences and incorrect dimensions. 3D

helps us address these issues. With Autodesk

Inventor, we can see removal areas and

interferences between parts. It shows complex

shapes, such as hoses, that are true to life, so

we can design around them. We now have very

few errors on all the projects we design and

engineer within our systems group.”

Sometimes, the shop floor may even see or

suggest a way to do things differently, and they

can adjust designs on the fly. “With Autodesk

Inventor, we are making changes at least 50

percent faster than we were in 2D,” says

Lambert.

Saving money with FEA analysis

When Rexroth designed in 2D, finite element

analysis (FEA) on critical components was a

difficult manual process. As a result, it was a

challenge to ensure the most cost-effective

design. This would have been particularly

problematic for the SLSMC project, where the

company designed many critical components

facilitating the opening and closing of the gates

and water valves from concept to finished

product. Complicating matters, the SLSMC

project required special materials to combat the

potential for corrosion.

By taking models directly from Autodesk Inventor

into ANSYS® DesignSpace®, from Autodesk

Global Preferred Partner ANSYS, Inc., Rexroth

has been able to do its own FEA. And when they

have to test a single part, Rexroth’s engineers

use the FEA capabilities powered by ANSYS

DesignSpace within Autodesk Inventor

Professional. “By doing FEA ourselves, we

haven’t had to over-design on the SLSMC

project,” says Lambert. “We know exactly what

an assembly will withstand under load based on

the material we have available. This makes for a

very cost-effective design.”

The design and FEA capabilities of its Autodesk-

ANSYS solution has also given Rexroth the

confidence to branch out into new areas: the

designing and manufacturing of cardanic rings

and the supporting pillow block structures for the

Canal’s new miter gate hydraulic cylinders. After

receiving a higher than expected quote from its

normal supplier, Rexroth decided to use

Autodesk Inventor to model the design in-house

and utilize ANSYS DesignSpace to test it.

“Autodesk Inventor gave us confidence to do the

cardanic rings ourselves,” says Lambert. “In the

end, we produced a more streamlined design

and realized a better than expected reduction in

costs. Autodesk Inventor allowed Rexroth to

move directly from the design stage to

production, without the need for expensive

prototypes.”

Improving the design review process

Rexroth has also looked to its Autodesk

manufacturing solution to share designs for both

internal and external review. The SLSMC uses

the Autodesk DWF Viewer, free software that

allows users to easily view and print data-rich 2D

drawings and 3D models in the DWF format, to

review every new unit Rexroth designs.

“It has helped the customer tremendously to

visualize the design,” says Lambert. “Our

customers can toggle the visualization of

individual components of our 3D assembly either

on or off, directly inside the DWF viewer, thus

gaining a full understanding of the overall

assembly and design intent. Once a satisfactory

Image courtesy of Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

Image courtesy of Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

Autodesk customer success story Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

Autodesk, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, DWF, DWG, and Inventor are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2013 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

rendering is achieved, the view can be saved as

a screenshot, allowing them to communicate a

required design change clearly via redline.”

Internally, to streamline reviews, Rexroth is

using Autodesk Design Review software, which

provides an all-digital way to review and mark up

2D and 3D designs without the original creation

software. The assembly shop is outfitted with

workstations to review assemblies and mark up

the DWFs, suggesting new pipe routes and other

changes. “Instead of having to look at a flat

drawing and try to picture in your mind where

you may have potential problems, it’s right there

in front of you,” says Bob Van Vliet, assembly

shop manager.

Adds Lambert: “We like Autodesk Design

Review so much that we’ve actually purchased

extra licenses to offer to large customers free of

charge. This allows our customers to be involved

heavily in the design from concept to finished

product, giving them the ability to visualize,

disassemble section, redline, and measure the

actual 3D model. As a result, we drastically

improve communications between the clients

and ourselves, ensuring the motion control

solution that we propose is exactly what they

want; nothing more, nothing less. This in itself

sets us apart from our competitors.”

Looking ahead

To help it manage its design data, Rexroth has

implemented Autodesk Vault software to

manage its work-in-progress data on select

projects. The company plans to roll out the

solution more widely for release process

automation, engineering change order tracking,

and bills of materials (BOMs) management.

“Right now we have an inadequate document

management system that consists of asking one

another, ‘Can you close a drawing?’” says

Lambert. “It’s very important that we have a

secure system that facilitates collaboration and

design between designers. So, our plan is to

import all of the SLSMC and legacy data into

Autodesk Vault. We’d also like it to connect to

the SAP system we’re implementing.”

With Autodesk Vault, Rexroth hopes to keep its

managers better informed about project status

and improve project workflow. “There are a lot of

hard copies we are now stamping and signing,”

says Lambert. “We’re looking to Autodesk Vault

to help managers find out the status of a project,

what documentation has been released to the

shop, and what components are completed. We

want to do electronic sign-off on hydraulic

schematics, which are the foundation of

everything we build.”

The result

Rexroth’s teams have reached new heights of

production, creating more drawings and

releasing more projects to the shop floor than

ever before. With the same amount of staff,

Rexroth produced twice the number of drawings

in 2005 than it did in 2004.

“Despite the increase in the number of drawings,

our design team has reduced its average

monthly non-conformances by 46 percent,

shaved drawing errors by 25 percent, and

increased drawing accuracy by 7 percent,” says

Lambert. “To top it off, we’ve estimated that

design times have decreased by over 50 percent

compared to projects we’ve done using

conventional 2D AutoCAD. Using Autodesk

Inventor, projects that once took over 1,000

hours to produce are now being generated in

half the time and with far more detail than we

ever dreamed possible in the 2D world.”

Thanks to the incredible 3D visualization Rexroth

now enjoys, the company also has been able to

eliminate piping with machined modules.

Lambert explains, “Using the 3D visualization of

Autodesk Inventor Professional, we produced

machining and fabrication drawings to our exact

specifications, ensuring fit, form, and function

were proofed in the engineering office and not

on the manufacturing floor. If we’d used our old

piping method, we’d have spent 15 to 20 percent

more in material and labor costs.”

Autodesk Inventor software has also enabled

Rexroth’s marketing department to virtually

eliminate the cost of photographing products.

“We give them animated prototypes,” says

Lambert. “When our marketing department sees

the renderings, they can’t believe their eyes.

We’ve received rave reviews.”

Rexroth’s General Manager of Industrial

Hydraulic Systems, Dino Paladino, sums up the

success of the Autodesk Inventor

implementation this way: “There is no point in

obtaining the latest 3D design technology unless

there will be a significant return on investment

(ROI). Inventor has certainly provided a

significant ROI, by allowing our design

engineering team to design systems efficiently

and with less errors and lead time.”

Gilmore says, “With Autodesk, we have tools to

visualize and adapt to changes, keep our errors

down to a minimum, and provide customers with

what they are expecting—and more.”

For more information on Autodesk software, visit

Image courtesy of Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

Using Autodesk Inventor, projects that once took over 1,000 hours to produce are now being generated in half the time and with far more detail than we ever dreamed possible in the 2D world. —Jim Lambert

Design Engineering Manager Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.

Image courtesy of Bosch Rexroth Canada Corp.