CNC Configuration Automation

Customer background
IES was approached by a high-end, custom yacht manufacturer with highly evolved and efficient design processes. Their motivation was to quickly and accurately build custom furniture. They needed a partner that understood manufacturing processes, CAD automation, and CAM interoperability.

Problem
They model their furniture components in SolidWorks and use a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) program for generating the CNC code. However, to configure the parts properly in SolidWorks for the CNC program required a CNC configuration with specific features and properties. Creating the configuration was a time consuming, error prone process that was increasing their design time and introducing errors during manufacturing and installation.

Solution
First, the customer outlined a list of enhancements that would streamline or automate their CNC configuration generation. This included three categories:

• Non-CNC configuration automation items.
• CNC configuration specific automation items.
• CNC geometry verification items.

Next, IES captured their ideal modeling practices and incorporated them into a SolidWorks add-in. The add-in interface was completely native and fully interactive. Interactive verification processes allowed users to correct errors in real time and resume processing. Automatic feature creation and advanced geometry recognition algorithms were used to automatically detect and finish end-boring and edge banding operations.

Benefits

• CNC configuration creation was completely automated.
• Undercut errors and suppression errors were automatically detected and reported.
• Configuration specific properties were automatically managed and updated.

Results

• Design time was reduced allowing their designers to be more productive.
• Product quality was improved - downstream manufacturing, assembling, and installation errors were minimized.