Client

A manufacturer specializing in fabricated aluminum extrusions. The client's aluminum profiles have played a key role in numerous product innovations and applications within the building, construction, and industrial sectors. With a strong commitment to customer service excellence and unmatched extrusion capabilities, the client's production facilities serve many of the United States' largest and most respected manufacturing companies.

Existing challenges

Due to the pivotal role that user experience and real-time costing play in today's manufacturing market, providing products that cater precisely to the target customers' needs is crucial for commercial competitiveness. The client noticed that the existing quotation process did not provide access to real-time costing which their customers were demanding. As the result, the client identified a series of challenges that hindered their business growth and customer satisfaction, including:

• Creating designs was complicated and time-consuming for the customers.
• Unclear customer requirements with poor details led to design errors.
• Customers often requested modifications to their designs.
• Missed fasteners in designs required manual and time-consuming adjustments, increasing costs and effort.
• Quote preparation time was laborious and expensive, often taking up to 5 days. Designers and engineers analyzed customer data, even resorting to napkin sketches to clarify requirements, then create, change, and confirm designs, calculate necessary materials, and so on.
• Low win rates and lost profit.

To facilitate the quotation process, the client developed an add-in for SOLIDWORKS® integrated design environment aimed to capture end users' ideas. However, it did not solve all the problems:

• Not all customers possessed the required SOLIDWORKS knowledge, limiting their ability to use the add-in effectively.
• Customers had to purchase SOLIDWORKS licenses, causing financial barriers and reducing accessibility.
• When dealing with large assemblies, there were performance issues, which could cause delays in the design process.
• The final design creation remained time-consuming and complicated.
• The add-in had limited functionality that lacked crucial features, such as keeping the parts catalog up to date, calculating the final BOMs, and automatically adding secondary machining services to components.

Looking for a service provider with extensive knowledge of various CAD systems and expertise in engineering software development, the client selected AMC Bridge to craft a seamless solution that would not only address the above-mentioned issues and streamline their operations but also elevate their customers' satisfaction to new heights.

Gigantic leap forward

Being provided with a generic structure of the existing client's solution and a set of required manufacturing features, AMC Bridge developed an intuitive web-based 3D editor. This brand-new application enables 3D design of projects from prefabricated aluminum extrusions and components and provides instant project quotes.

Based on a custom technology stack, including C++, OPEN CASCADE®, WebGL™, Node.js®, and React.js, the solution provides the following benefits:

1. Global software availability. A web-based integrated CAD solution requiring no licensing or special hardware.
2. Comprehensive product catalog. The solution features an up-to-date product catalog encompassing various items, machining services, and their respective prices.
3. Efficient assembly creation. A user-friendly interface facilitates assembly creation and validation, enhanced by a snapping mechanism and various helpers. Even customers new to aluminum extrusions can swiftly create prototypes.
4. Automated fastener placement. The solution automates the placement and validation of fasteners in assembly connections, streamlining the manufacturing process and reducing errors. Customers can benefit from real-time BOM calculations and receive instant quotes during project design.
5. Seamless STEP file export. A project can be effortlessly exported into an assembly STEP file, empowering engineers to re-use ready designs for manufacture and assembly (DFMA).
6. Simplified collaboration. The solution enables fast and easy project creation, facilitating further reviews and seamless collaboration among project members.

The released functionality includes:

• A user-friendly interface and project design workflow
• A comprehensive catalog of extrusions and components
• An intuitive 3D editor for creating custom designs
• Automatic guided snapping of extrusions and components
• Automatic validation of extrusion connections
• Automated fastener placement and validation within connections
• Automatic calculation of machining services
• Real-time BOM calculation
• Manual BOM editing
• Effortless and accurate measurements
• Flexible options to export and share a BOM or project for future use in other CAD systems
• Easy project submission and collaboration
• Management of user roles and accounts

Universal snapping mechanism: a key to success

The client required a system that would enable customers to effortlessly create designs from prefabricated aluminum extrusions and components and automatically calculate BOMs. To achieve this goal the project was implemented in two phases:

1. Definition of the technical UI/UX requirements. The AMC Bridge team started with requirements collection and formalization into the development specification after official project start. At this stage, the AMC Bridge team conducted extensive research on possible system design options and consulted with the client to ensure a flawless user experience.
2. Development of a prototype solution. During the active development stage, the team regularly deployed the developed features to the client's server and presented deliverables of the developed functionality at weekly sync meetings with the client, daily meetings with different project teams, monthly demo meetings, and summary reports. The QA team conducted smoke, functional, sanity, and regression testing to verify the correct operation of each newly implemented feature.

The AMC Bridge development team's proactivity, initiative, and consistent suggestions of better solution options and technologies for the project led to the successful adoption of numerous functionality improvements, including:

• Basic validation of connections (assembly validation). Administrators can specify rules for every component and fastener combination. The rules include mounting to specific series, components, end faces, or slots of extrusion profiles. The software automatically places fasteners in valid connections while alerting users if the rules are not met. It ensures faster design reviews, simplifies customer education, and boosts confidence in design validity.
• Alignment of components mounted to extrusion profiles. Snapping points alone did not solve the problem of correct component-to-extrusion-profile orientation because of different component geometries, purposes, and use cases. To address the issue, the team introduced automatic axis alignment so that components mount correctly on extrusions. No complex geometrical analysis is needed, making the process hassle-free for the entire catalog.
• Sharing projects and adding revisions. The AMC Bridge team expanded project-sharing options to cater to different user roles, promoting seamless collaboration. Whether a customer sharing a design with a distributor, a distributor seeking customer feedback, or a manufacturer collaborating with a distributor, everyone involved can add changes and initiate revisions. Streamlining the review process allows for simplifying project management.

While working on the project, the AMC Bridge team identified the following challenges:

• A restriction on the use of third-party solutions
• An extensive product catalog of parts with different geometries and usage
• The need for an intuitive viewer with validations so that any client's customer can use it without errors
• An effective snapping-point process
• A need to preview the project in a 3D viewer and produce final CAD drawings for engineers

The team overcame those challenges by implementing the following solutions:

• A custom visualization solution developed from scratch.
• A universal snapping mechanism for connecting parts of different types. Snapping data is set via 3D Sketch in SOLIDWORKS, exported as a CSV file, parsed by the software, and stored in the metadata of each 3D model.
• Designing user-friendly workflows for placing resizable parts, highlighting, and validating connections, suggesting applicable fasteners, automatically calculating machining services, and so on.
• Synchronization of part transformations in the 3D viewer and geometric kernel and storing of machining commands executed during the export in a STEP file.

Project outcomes

The collaboration between the client and AMC Bridge resulted in the creation of a powerful and intuitive application that exceeded expectations. The client achieved a multitude of benefits, powering their business to new heights.

First, due to the snapping-point solution, the application drastically reduced the time to generate project quotes, eliminated design errors, and lightened the work of in-house designers by automating many design tasks.

Moreover, the user-friendly interface and enhanced user experience simplified the design creation process for the client's customers, which led to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, an improved client win rate, and consequently, overall growth in sales volume and the company's success.

A great advantage of the software is that AMC Bridge developed it from scratch using modern technologies but without third-party tools that require payment. Thus, the client owns the IP rights for the solution, which allows them to customize it according to their specific needs, integrate it with other systems, and maintain full control over its evolution. This maximizes the value and benefits derived from the software.

Completing the project with such results and within the agreed time frame, AMC Bridge earned the client's admiration and gratitude. The client's representatives particularly noted the AMC Bridge team's dedication, effective communication, and meticulous attention to detail.

About AMC Bridge

AMC Bridge is a trusted software technology partner for engineering, manufacturing, and construction enterprises, whether they are actively pursuing AI-driven digital transformation or only beginning to recognize its potential. We help organizations to move beyond experimentation and achieve consistent ROI by delivering production-ready software and end-to-end solutions for their transformation journey.

CAD/PLM/BIM, data integrations, AI-enabled features – and deploy them with monitoring and lifecycle management so they remain reliable over time. Our services include assessing data readiness; preparing and unifying product and project data; and embedding AI into the workflows teams use every day. With 25+ years of industrial software expertise and deep ecosystem partnerships, including Aras, Autodesk, Bentley, Dassault Systemes, PTC, Siemens, Tech Soft 3D, and others, we empower enterprises to move confidently from experimentation to operational AI at scale. For more information, visit amcbridge.com.

All third-party trademarks belong to their respective owners. For more details, please refer to the Third-Party Trademarks list on the Privacy and legal notices page.