CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
30 April 2008
IMplementation Investments
Autodesk Announces Unverferth as Inventor of the Month for April 2008
Autodesk, Inc. announced that Unverferth Manufacturing Company, Inc. (Unverferth), a leading provider of agricultural equipment and machinery, has been named as the Autodesk Inventor of the Month for April 2008. By using Autodesk Inventor mechanical design software and Digital Prototyping technology, Unverferth has been able to virtually design, explore and interact with a pioneering series of soil tillers before its agricultural tools are built.
Inventor has also enabled the company to adapt its products to the soil conditions of different geographic regions with minimal time and cost, thanks to the efficiencies that Digital Prototyping enables. Engineers were able to design specific tillage components, specify their ranges of motion, and use the kinematics built into Inventor to simulate components in action. By checking for interferences, engineers have been able to immediately detect a problem, and again modify designs and animate models to reflect the investment associated with building, and rebuilding, multiple physical prototypes.
Supporting Low Impact Farming Practices
Tillage is the process of digging up soil to prepare it for agricultural purposes, such as planting crops. Disturbing the soil in this manner releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to environmental issues such as global warming. Unverferth has been able to support the growth of the more environmentally friendly "conservation tillage" movement by delivering innovative farm equipment that tills soil with minimal surface soil disruption, which reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
"Using Inventor to create a single 3D digital model that can be leveraged throughout the entire product development lifecycle has been extremely beneficial for us," said Steve Hilvers, a project engineer at Unverferth. "We can use digital prototypes to virtually explore a new product or customize an existing product, without having to expend time and money on physical prototypes. As a result, we're making better, more complex products than ever -- products we'd never have dreamed of designing a few years ago, that will have a positive impact on the future of farming."
This increase in innovation has allowed Unverferth to increase the number of new designs brought to the market by 50 percent while lowering the number of physical prototypes it needs to build by 75 percent, helping ensure that a steady supply of cutting-edge agricultural machines are available to maintain the momentum of the conservation tillage movement.
About the Autodesk Inventor of the Month Program
Each month, Autodesk selects an Inventor of the Month from the more than 700,000 users of Autodesk Inventor software, the foundation for Digital Prototyping. Winners are chosen for engineering excellence and groundbreaking innovation. For more information on Autodesk Inventor of the Month, contact IOM@autodesk.com.
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