Babcock & Wilcox moves to 3D CAD for generation

Steam generation equipment manufacturer Babcock & Wilcox is joining the ranks of those switching to 3D CAD software. It will use SolidWorks for all design of fossil-fuel burning equipment for commercial power generation and industrial plants. The firm is moving to 3D modelling not only in the design of its new boilers, but also for service and replacement parts projects for its retrofit market. It has purchased 110 seats of the software for its HQ in Ohio and its other US manufacturing facilities. The firm says it expects the software to lead its transition from 2D to 3D. It wants the migration to cut through the difficulties, delays and errors it and many others regularly face, that result from thousands of independently created 2D CAD drawings, in its case for every boiler project. As many as 20 drawings are needed for each sub-assembly, so with 2D, as designs evolved and engineers made changes, they’ve had to manually ensure that each reflected those changes and note their impact on the rest. 3D software from the big three vendors is robust, open and fast, enabling designers to make model changes, and automatically transfer those and their impacts to all associated drawings. Babcock & Wilcox says it will also continue to use knowledge-based engineering (KBE) tools to drive product design. As it moves to the next-generation environment, it says it will use software from SolidWorks partner Navion to build applications that ensure company standards drive the designs and design processes. Says Norm Smith, manager of CAD support operations: “The graphical output from these rule-driven applications will be 3D models… We chose SolidWorks … because it is an established, innovative product that has an architecture very open to integration with other applications.”