What can ConfiCreate
help you with?

No models that need adjusting again for every variant.

DriveWorks drives SolidWorks models. That only works if the models have been prepared for it. Two things usually go wrong here: models in which equations already drive dimensions, and a series of models that are each built slightly differently.

Models made over the years by different engineers look the same from the outside and work completely differently inside. They are first rebuilt in one consistent way before anything is automated.

Work that is now done by hand for every order happens by itself, and without retyping errors.

This is where the time savings are. For each configuration, the 3D model, the production drawing and all the documents needed are generated automatically, with the right dimensions, the right parts and the right quantities.

It does not have to be one hundred per cent. If eighty per cent of the drawings are automated and the rest is done by hand, that is already a clear gain. For products with many exceptions, that is often the most sensible place to draw the line.

Fewer enquiries that have to go through sales and engineering.

Going online is a step further than a configurator for the in-house sales team. It sits outside the company, in the company’s own house style, and is used by people who do not know the product.

For the work on that front end, ConfiCreate has HTML, CSS and JavaScript knowledge in house. Work often starts internally, because the rules have to be right before a customer can get started with it.

Fewer questions beforehand, and fewer surprises afterwards.

With an online configurator, customers want to see what they are putting together. With Drive3D, the 3D technology from DriveWorks, they can rotate the product in the browser, in the colour and dimensions they have just chosen.

This is not a catalogue image but the actual configuration. What is on screen is also what SolidWorks later produces.

An order that goes from configurator to production without anyone in between.

A configurator that passes nothing on just moves the retyping elsewhere. The integration makes sure orders, item numbers, bills of materials and quotes end up in the systems already in place, right down to an SQL database.

This part requires knowledge on both sides: of DriveWorks and of the package it connects with. That makes it a hurdle, and it is precisely the reason not to treat it as a separate add-on.

A configurator that works as well in two years as it does now.

Products change. A new size is added, a supplier changes, a standard is tightened. The configurator has to keep up, and that is exactly when things go wrong if nobody knows how it was put together any more.

That risk is greatest with configurators built in-house. If the engineer who made it leaves, nobody holds that knowledge any more, and every change is put off until it can no longer wait.