Treske

The majority of Treske’s pieces are made to order, therefore getting designs right first time is critical to saving the business time and money. Before using SOLIDWORKS, it was not uncommon to find drawings of full size rods on the shop floor and the team using these to try and interpret more complex designs. The accuracy of this process was questionable and the interpretation dubious. The need for a 3D CAD package which could quickly output accurate drawings was identified.

The motivation for implementing a 3D CAD package was initially to act as a production aid – it needed to be quick and easy to produce not only the bespoke designs but importantly, the required drawings. SOLIDWORKS and Autodesk Inventor were considered as a solution. Without having any previous experience in 3D CAD, Treske requested demonstrations and asked the application engineers to perform a task which would be common in their workflow. After seeing the speed and ease at which this could be performed in SOLIDWORKS, Treske made their first venture into computer aided design, back in 2002. Treske have a long-standing and ever expanding relationship with SOLIDWORKS and partner products, including manufacturing aids such as SolidCAM and SigmaNEST. Mark Littlefair, Operations Director at Treske, comments “I have personally seen SOLIDWORKS improve over a 10 year period, the interface and continually growing enhancements following customer suggestions have impressed us greatly.”.

SOLIDWORKS surpassed all of Treske’s expectations and brought advantages in surprising ways. ‘SOLIDWORKS allows us to clarify the construction and assembly methods prior to manufacture as we can clearly see the final design in 3D.’ says Mark. The ease of use of the software and the simple modelling environment mean that from the concepts and design ideas, a very detailed and accurate model can be created quite speedily. The major advantage of using SOLIDWORKS is being able to capture exact levels of engineering detail. This has been, in one instance, useful for presenting to clients and helping with the understanding of their commisioned peice, showing them internal workings and wood grains. The second valuable advantage of having this level of detail within a 3D model is, once the physical product is made, the outcome is invariably always right, first time. From the finalised models, CAD technicians start to create Bill of Materials (BOMs), manufacturing drawings and output data for CAM programmes – ‘It is difficult to quantify how much time we have saved but we know that we could not operate without it now, it prevents mistakes and re-work occurring and has speeded up the shop floor understanding of what is required immensely’.

• Reduced re-work costs through quick and accurate generation of drawings
• SolidCAM works directly inside the SOLIDWORKS interface, making it familiar to the users and quick to set up manufacturing runs. 
• 3D is massively advantageous in presenting to clients to help with their understanding of their final product