Customer Case Study | TopStart Trailers

3DEXPERIENCE CATIA Cloud Evaluation Case Study - Topstart Trailers

We speak with MEMKO Aerospace engineer Julian Gonzalez Escalante regarding a new client he supported to evaluate the transition from 2D design to 3D design using 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA on the Cloud.

“Topstart is a family business in the south east of Melbourne that designs and manufactures trailers for carrying cars as well as semitrailers.”, said Julian Gonzalez Escalante. “My project was focused on the car carrying trailers. All products are designed, engineered and built in Melbourne. It is a really interesting business and great story. The business commenced after the founder was dissatisfied with the car carrier he purchased because of the damage caused to cars during transport.”

About TopStart Trailers

TopStart Trailers are an Australian company and a two generation family business. They are one of the most prominent car carrier manufacturers in Australia producing innovated engineering design for more than 28 years.

Learn more about TopStart Trailers: www.topstarttrailers.com.au

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Tell us about the project

Julian: Topstart like many companies design and manufacture in 2D and wanted to assess 3D design. They tried a few different solutions and were always interested to try 3DEXPERIENCE because of an international case study involving a car carrying manufacturer. The 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud is a great way to evaluate 3D design – firstly, because you don’t require any IT staff or infrastructure; and secondly, because Dassault is offering excellent ‘try before you buy’ offers for their Cloud based solutions. For a small entry level cost to access the 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud platform you can try any of their solutions at no charge.

How do you maximise the opportunity within just 3-months?

Julian: That’s where MEMKO comes in. We help clients identify what they would like to achieve in the 3 months and then provide support, initially with some training to get started, and then by regular Q&A hands on video conferencing sessions. It is important to identify a scope so that you can measure the outcome and equally important not to be too aggressive.

What was the scope of your project?

Julian: The client chose to complete a full 3D model of one of the car carriers. We used the Assembly Design App to locate and manage all the components of the trailer in a very proficient manner whereby the entire design is based on a main skeleton, which is made up of parameters, planes and lines. This provided a freedom in terms of the movability of the components of the system, which allows for easy integration of design changes and accelerated design of other future designs for similar model trailers.

By using Part Design and Generative Shape Design we have been able to reproduce all the required components that make up the full structural integrity and safety of a car carrier trailer in a parametric manner, which means that any late design changes or particular customer requested customisations are now very easy to be integrated.

Taking advantage of the Drafting App capabilities, we have been able to produce detailed 2D drawings of the main subassemblies with all the manufacturing specifications and required notes for production. The 2D drawings are linked to the main 3D model, which means that any late design changes will only need an update of the affected views to see the changes in the 2D drawings.

Lastly, revision and version management control is a highly important feature of the control of every design. By using the Lifecycle Collaborative Management App, we have been able to control the revision number of a part in order to capture their different types so that if needed, they can be used in the future. Similarly, we created branches, revisions and duplicates of the main model for different customers, so that whenever there is a new design for a new customer there is already a solid base to start the design from rather than starting from scratch.