PTC: Ventilator firm delivers on time with CAD, content management

THE COMPANY: For more than 25 years, Venmar Ventilation in Drummondville, Que., has been a leading North American manufacturer of indoor air quality products for residential applications. It manufactures a full range of products, from kitchen range hoods and attic ventilators to filtration and ventilation systems.

THE CHALLENGE: Venmar needed an integrated 3D product design solution that would enable the company to quickly design and deliver the highest quality, most accurate digital models while also promoting best practices in design protocol to ensure compliance with industry and company standards. Additionally, the company wanted to enable multiple designers to work on the same product and the same assembly at the same time. And finally, it wanted a visualization tool for other people in the company who did not have the CAD software to enable broader collaboration.

THE STRATEGY: PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER 3D CAD software and Windchill PDMLink content and process management solution proved to be the best solution for these requirements. Venmar uses Pro/ENGINEER to explore new concepts, design new parts and develop new products.” With the software’s seamless Web connectivity, Venmar designers have global access to the resources, information and capabilities they need. Pro/ENGINEER also has high-fidelity digital models that have full “associativity,” which means that product changes made anywhere can update deliverables everywhere.

Venmar is also using PDMLink, a web-based solution that gives its designers the ability to work with multiple users on the same assembly. By checking the part or drawing in and out, everyone involved with a particular assembly has instant access to the latest iteration. Having centralized information enables collaboration between Venmar’s multiple users. Additionally, documented assembly workflows ensure that the appropriate people are assigned tasks and go through the approval cycle. Venmar has found Windchill PDMLink easy to understand, easy to use, and user friendly.

THE RESULTS: Among the benefits the company has received is a reduced time to market from 24 to 18 months and an ability to develop more products in the same time frame. In part, the product helps to achieve this by automating workflow for drawing approvals, and ensuring that documents cannot be overwritten, making it easier to track revisions. The connection Venmar has with PTC is beneficial to both PTC and Venmar, as well. “Our overall relationship with PTC is a good relationship,” Venmar CAD administrator Marc-Andre Verville says. “PTC wants to help, and they want to make sure we get the most out of their product.”