Automating New Product Development for a Sustainable Future

Starting with the Right Foundation

When it comes to new product development (NPD), SOLIDWORKS® is one of the most widely adopted CAD platforms, offering engineers and designers a powerful set of tools to create, validate, and optimize product designs. With its intuitive interface and robust functionality, SOLIDWORKS is a cornerstone of efficient product design, enabling manufacturers to bring ideas to life faster and with greater precision. Below are just a few of the core features included in SOLIDWORKS for NPD:

• Intuitive 3D Modeling: SOLIDWORKS’ user-friendly interface allows engineers to quickly turn concepts into detailed, fully defined 3D models. With direct manipulation and parametric design capabilities, changes can be made quickly, improving iteration speed.
• Comprehensive Simulation: Engineers can simulate real-world conditions using built-in tools like stress analysis, thermal studies, and motion simulations. This helps to identify weaknesses early on, ensuring that the design performs reliably before physical prototypes are created.
• Collaboration & Data Management: SOLIDWORKS supports collaborative workflows with SOLIDWORKS PDM (Product Data Management), enabling teams to share files, track changes, and ensure seamless communication across departments.
• Design for Manufacturability (DFM): By integrating tools like DFMPro, SOLIDWORKS helps engineers design products that are optimized for efficient manufacturing, reducing costly revisions later in the process.

These capabilities make SOLIDWORKS an essential tool for companies looking to streamline the NPD process, reduce development time, and increase product quality. But even the most advanced designs can face challenges when it comes to manufacturability, sustainability, assembly, quality and more. This is where DFMPro can prove to be an invaluable tool.

Streamlining NPD with SOLIDWORKS®

Automating Design for Excellence

Design for Excellence (DFX) is a holistic approach to product development that considers multiple factors critical to the product’s success, such as manufacturability, quality, sustainability, and ease of assembly. Ensuring that a product design not only meets functional requirements but is also optimized for production, cost, and environmental impact is essential in today’s competitive and sustainability-conscious manufacturing environment.

DFMPro, an advanced design-for-manufacturability (DFM) tool, helps engineers automate the analysis of their designs for manufacturability, assembly, quality, and sustainability. By integrating DFX principles, DFMPro provides a comprehensive evaluation of a product’s design to identify potential issues related to production, materials, assembly, and environmental impact—all before the product moves into production.

Key Benefits of Automating DFX Checks with DFMPro:

• • Design for Manufacturability (DFM): DFMPro automatically analyzes designs for manufacturability, ensuring that the product can be produced efficiently using available tools and materials. It flags potential issues such as complex geometries, part tolerances, and materials that may increase production costs or complexity.
  • Design for Quality (DFQ): DFMPro incorporates design-for-quality principles, ensuring that the design is optimized for consistency and reliability during production. It helps identify factors that could lead to defects, quality control challenges, or increased variability in the final product. By ensuring that the design is optimized for quality from the start, manufacturers can reduce the likelihood of defects, rework, and warranty claims.
  • Design for Assembly (DFA): DFMPro evaluates the design for ease of assembly, ensuring that parts can be assembled with minimal effort, reducing labor costs and assembly time. This is crucial for reducing production costs, improving efficiency, and achieving higher throughput in manufacturing.
  • Design for Sustainability (DFS): As environmental concerns and sustainability practices become increasingly important, DFMPro helps engineers evaluate the environmental impact of their designs. It flags materials, processes, or production techniques that may be wasteful, energy-intensive, or harmful to the environment. By incorporating Design for Sustainability principles, manufacturers can reduce waste, lower energy consumption, and use more sustainable materials—critical for meeting sustainability goals and regulatory requirements.
  • Reduced Design Changes and Costs: One of the key advantages of automating DFX analysis with DFMPro is the significant reduction in the number of costly design changes later in the development process. Early detection of issues related to manufacturability, assembly, quality, and sustainability minimizes the need for redesigns and last-minute changes. This not only saves time and money but also ensures that the product meets the desired standards from the outset.

By incorporating DFMPro into the design phase, manufacturers can create products that are not only innovative but also optimized for cost-effective, high-quality, and sustainable production. The tool provides real-time feedback, empowering engineers to make informed decisions early in the design process, which leads to better, more efficient products that are easier to manufacture and assemble, have higher quality, and are more sustainable.

Accelerating NPD with DFMPro

Accelerating NPD in Manufacturing

By integrating CAMWorks with SOLIDWORKS®, manufacturers can further streamline the entire NPD process, from design to CNC machining. CAMWorks provides advanced capabilities that not only improve efficiency but also elevate product quality by automating CNC programming and enabling intelligence-based machining. Below are some of the ways CAMWorks enhances the product development cycle when used alongside SOLIDWORKS:

• Automation of CNC Programming with Intelligence-Based Machining: CAMWorks uses knowledge-based machining (KBM) to automate CNC programming with intelligence. By leveraging rules, templates, and feature recognition, CAMWorks automatically generates optimized toolpaths based on the design geometry and the material being used. This eliminates the need for manual input at each step of the CNC programming process, significantly reducing programming time and increasing throughput. Engineers and machinists can focus more on improving processes and less on repetitive tasks, further accelerating the overall NPD process.
• Associative Toolpaths: One of the most powerful features of CAMWorks is its associative toolpaths to the SOLIDWORKS model. This means that any changes made to the design in SOLIDWORKS—whether they’re minor adjustments or major revisions—are automatically reflected in the CNC programming. This associative link eliminates the need for time-consuming manual updates to toolpaths, reducing the risk of errors and speeding up the overall programming process. As designs evolve, the toolpaths evolve with them, ensuring the CNC machine is always working with the most up-to-date data.
• Improved Quality through Standardization: CAMWorks promotes quality through the use of standardized machining strategies, libraries, and toolsets. By automating CNC programming based on predefined parameters, manufacturers can ensure consistent machining quality across all parts. Standardization reduces variability in the machining process, leading to more predictable outcomes and fewer defects. As a result, manufacturers can produce high-quality products with greater confidence and less rework.

By using CAMWorks within SOLIDWORKS, manufacturers can create a seamless and integrated workflow that reduces the friction between design and production. This powerful combination accelerates the time-to-market for new products while improving manufacturing quality and efficiency. The automation of CNC programming, coupled with intelligent toolpath generation, ensures that product designs are turned into high-quality, manufacturable parts faster and more reliably.

CAMWorks Automation for NPD