2009 Contest Winners

Description: The rechargeable polisher design features a very easy-to-use, ergonomic contoured handle. The polishers charging dock provides the user with multiple attachments that can be used with various colored shoe polishes. Simply push the polisher down onto the desired brush or buffer and the "press and lock" system leaves hands clean and shoes looking like new.

How SolidWorks helped: SolidWorks helped to maintain our design intent especially with the integrated rendering capabilities.

Design Time Saved: Reduced design process by 30%

Product Quality Improvement: Reduced errors by 15%

Design Cost Saving: Lowered costs by about 15%

Design tools: SolidWorks Professional, PhotoWorks

Description: CADmech's bicycle features the Photon Aerobar, a sport specific handlebar design used primarily in triathlon. Triathlon is a race of swimming, biking and running. In the bike portion of the race, the rider is alone as an individual on the course and does not ride in a pack as with classic road racing. As such aerodynamics plays a key role in the efficiency of the racer. This unique aerobar design allows the rider adjustability in the positioning of the extended bar through its central interface to the base bar. It also incorporates electronic shifting accessible in the aero position, which minimizes cables and complexity.

The carbon fiber injected low-drag aerobar provides an incredibly strong and lightweight design. Custom brake levers finish of this design by making the Photon Aerobar a unique and innovative addition to the sport of triathlon.

Design features:

• Carbon fiber injected low-drag aerobar
• Adjustable carbon fiber extension for aero position
• Integrated electronic shifting
• Custom brake levers

How SolidWorks helped: Using advanced features in SolidWorks software, several concepts of the product were explored quickly and efficiently. The advanced surfacing features in SolidWorks made exploring complex surfaces easy and allowed design flexibility when making changes. The Photoview 360 rendering package was so intuitive that it allowed the concept to be rendered as a photo-realistic finished product in a matter of hours.

Design Time Saved: Reduced design process by 30%

Design tools: SolidWorks, PhotoView 360

Description: SolidWorks has proved itself to be an exceptional design package for modeling mechanical equipment. The mechanical design team at SNC-Lavalin Fenco has utilized it to fully develop an Industrial processing plant for the production of Sulphuric Acid. The design of a Sulphuric Acid Plant varies depending on many factors including the method of generating acid, production capacity, site constraints, and client specific process requirements.

For this project our client required a sulphur burning plant that would produce 300 metric tones per day (MTPD) of Sulphuric Acid (H2SO4). Elemental Sulphur commonly available as a by-product of oil refining is burned in a specially designed furnace to capture heat and SO2 gas that is turned into usable steam and sulphuric acid.

All mechanical equipment which includes the SO2-SO3 converter, hot interpass heat exchanger, cold interpass heat exchanger, drying tower, final absorbing tower, interpass absorbing tower, tail gas scrubber with a reverse jet Inlet barrel, and a sulphur furnace were modeled using SolidWorks software. The ducting layout for the 845m2 plant was also produced to help fully visualize the entire plant design.

How SolidWorks helped: The sulphuric acid industry has been in existence for over a century. During this time it has been making a steady progression in the use of various technologies, materials advancements, and design improvements to reduce costs, improve safety and minimize the environmental impact of operation. While the designs of acid plants are evolving, all design advancements need to satisfy codes and standards and must meet specific process requirements. As a result many parts and features are used multiple times but with slight modifications from project to project. The SolidWorks configuration tool allows us to modify parts by configuring them to satisfy multiple distinct assemblies, without having to remodel parts. This feature along with the simplicity of the SolidWorks interface has proven to save mechanical design time by up to 50%.

Establishing a design library using SolidWorks Workgroup PDM has allowed the core design engineering group to develop, store, and share standard parts while continuing to produce project specific assemblies. Development of this design library has required a significant investment of time. However the benefits of this investment are being realized as it allows more time to be spent on innovation and creativity in our overall plant as opposed to remodeling and reworking of standard parts. In general SolidWorks and SolidWorks Workgroup PDM has proven to improve our mechanical design efficiency and allowed our team to increase the amount of time dedicated to design innovation.

Design Time Saved: 50%

Product Quality Improvement: Significant reduction in errors

Design tools: SolidWorks Professional, PhotoView 360