Apic Yamada finds dynamic modelling solves large assembly change problems

Apic Yamada, which designs and manufactures metal moulding systems and production equipment for the likes of Toshiba, Matsushita and Sony, first used 3D CAD for engineering analysis on 3D virtual prototypes in order to improve design quality. That became one of the keys for its product development processes, not least because flexibility is critical to an organisation that has to respond to frequent customer-driven design and specification changes. However, Apic Yamada says it also needed faster processes, so it wanted to enable any team member to pick-up and change any part of a design at any time – and on evaluating CoCreate OneSpace Modeling alongside several history-based 3D CAD systems it found CoCreate met all its requirements. Yoshinari Hosaka, senior engineer for the System and Technology Management Group at Apic Yamada, cites the following benefits: the flexibility to include unexpected, client-driven design changes at all stages of development; designers can freely explore new and creative designs by using dynamic modelling-based 3D CAD software; and lightweight history-free models provide high performance for large assembly design. “I was impressed with how easy it is to use CoCreate’s dynamic modeling 3D CAD software. OneSpace Modeling is very user friendly and simple to learn,” he says.