SMC Automation AB – custom-designed valve cabinets with over 9,000 components in IRONCAD

About SMC Automation

SMC is the world’s largest manufacturer of industrial pneumatics. The industry is increasingly using pneumatics to automate manufacturing and assembly: solutions that are easy to use, relatively inexpensive, safe, and have a minimal environmental impact. SMC Automation AB is headquartered in Stockholm , with sales offices throughout Sweden, and has expanded its production capacity with development and manufacturing facilities in Riga, Latvia. Solidmakarna IRONCAD, support , and training are provided to SMC in Sweden, Denmark, and Latvia.

The Challenge

SMC’s business concept is to actively help customers select the optimal components and solutions. A valve cabinet can contain about a hundred components, selected from a inventory of over 9,000 items in 530,000 variants. These components must be optimally positioned within a limited space to facilitate installation and maintenance; hoses must be routed with the correct minimum radius; and everything must be documented in a 2D drawing with a complete bill of materials and clearly presented to the customer.

Why IRONCAD

IRONCAD It can be used for everything, including simple 2D pneumatic diagrams that can be overlaid on the assembly drawing. Components are dragged in from catalogs that are always displayed on the side of the screen; entire assemblies are managed in a single file; and users don’t have to worry about constraints. TriBall and 3D cut-and-paste further speed up the work.

How SMC Works Today

The sales representative creates a layout sketch at the customer's site showing where the outputs on the valve cabinet should be located, along with a diagram of the components. The documentation is then forwarded to the system layout department, where Pål Hallström and his colleagues build the cabinet in IRONCAD.

• Components are selected, sized, and placed in the cabinet directly in 3D
• Hoses are created as 3D curves between the connections, with different colors for different sections, so that the routing can be checked as early as the drafting stage
• Rendered images and a color rendering of the 3D model on the 2D drawing make the preliminary study compelling and easy to understand
• The entire 3D model is exported to a web format, allowing the customer to rotate the model in their web browser via a link
• After approval, the cabinet is assembled and tested for pneumatic and electrical functionality, ready for plug-and-play use by the customer

The result

Significant efficiency gains and major time savings, and SMC reaches the market faster. With 3D, it’s already clear at the design stage whether the hoses can be routed along a certain path, which eliminates unnecessary redesigns later on.

We use IRONCAD for everything, even simple 2D pneumatic diagrams. We’ve found that it’s far superior in terms of speed and ease of use compared to other 3D CAD programs. We’ve become more efficient and are saving a lot of time.

Pål Hallström, System Design, SMC Automation AB