DriveWorks (Gold Partner Product of SOLIDWORKS)

DriveWorks is a powerful and feature-rich design automation software tool. It started its journey back in 2001, and has been a GOLD Partner Product of SOLIDWORKS for many years.

https://www.solidworks.com/partner-product/driveworks-pro

If you’re in the SOLIDWORKS Community, you might have heard of this product before and perhaps seen its “-Xpress” version inside SOLIDWORKS (DriveWorks Xpress was added to every license of SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD since 2007).

For anyone who has used DriveWorksXpress inside SOLIDWORKS, you will understand that it can help tremendously in automating your design process. Simply setting up a rules-based project once, you would be able to run and generate infinite variations of your models.

Although having a variety of automation capabilities and functionality in its Xpress version, it is still a very much watered-down if you compare it to DriveWorks Solo & DriveWorks Pro.

In total, there are three tiers of DriveWorks software products:

1. DriveWorksXpress (included inside SOLIDWORKS)
2. DriveWorks Solo (separate add-on to SOLIDWORKS)
3. DriveWorks Pro (separate add-on to SOLIDWORKS + choice of modules)

These can be used for design automation, product configuration, business process automation, and as a CPQ (configure price quote)/sales configurator solution.

Let’s look at DriveWorks Pro:

Main Features

• Powerful Design Automation
  SOLIDWORKS can be easily automated with DriveWorks Pro. You decide what you want sales people and customers to be able to configure and create, such as Dimensions, Features, Custom Properties and Drawings. You create ‘rules’ with understandable Excel style syntax, no custom code or programming knowledge is required.

• Create an Online Sales Configurator for Desktop, Mobile and Tablet
  Improve your sales and marketing with a custom Online Product Configurator. Allowing your sales people, distributors and customers to directly specify new variations of your product on a device of their choice will reduce the time it takes to respond to customer enquiries and will help you win more business fast.

• Modular – Add Functionality and License Types
  Whether you are an engineer looking for a Design Automation solution or a company wanting to provide Product Configuration and Guided Selling for your own teams, distributors and dealers, DriveWorks software is modular and scalable so you can set up and use the products to your advantage and at your own pace.
• Configurable and Customizable Interface
  DriveWorks incorporates its own Form Designer making it very easy to create great looking forms and interfaces for entering product requirements.
  Your interface can be customized to match your corporate branding and even embedded in your own website.
• Generate Multiple File Types
  DriveWorks has the ability to create Documents such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or HTML files for use as Quotations, Covering letters, Delivery Notes, BOMs, etc. Whenever a SolidWorks Part, Assembly, or Drawing is generated, DriveWorks can also save the model or drawing in a variety of other formats, for example, eDrawings, DXFs, PDF and so on.
• Integration to other Company Systems
  DriveWorks has been built so that it is easy to pass data to and from other company systems; ERP, MRP and CRM. Information does not need to be manually re-entered on the form and this in turn helps to save time and cut down the potential for costly errors caused by mis-typing.

Key Benefits

• Time Saving – Reduce Repetitive Tasks
  By automating repetitive tasks, DriveWorks Pro saves time. It frees up engineers and sales teams to concentrate on more interesting, valuable and productive tasks.
• Respond Quickly to Sales Enquiries
  DriveWorks Pro enables engineers to re-use engineering and CAD data to automatically generate a custom Quote, Covering Letter and a Bill of Materials.
• Increase Speed/Accuracy of Output and Response to Customers
  It is ideal for any business involved in order-specific designs. DriveWorks will generate Manufacturing Drawings, 3D Models and Sales Documents accurately and automatically.
• Fast Response to Customer Enquiries
  Dynamic quotations to match customer’s individual requirements can be quickly created in response to enquiries. These can all be based on the company’s rules to ensure manufacturability and profitability targets are met.
• Anytime, Anywhere
  Set up DriveWorks as a Configurator that can be used on a Desktop, mobile or tablet. Use it locally or in a browser (Chrome, IE, Firefox) to configure order-specific designs.
• Reduce Cost of Custom Designs
  With DriveWorks you put the best methods and processes of your best engineers in to your configurator. You capture the rules and know-how; then next time you specify a variation of your design, you can let the computer do the calculations and repetitive work.
• Valuable Sales and Marketing Tool
  Generation of 3D Models and 2D Drawings enables the customer to quickly ‘see’ their product as they order, and so aids the sales process. Online capabilities and 3D app extends the configurator “to anytime” and “any device”.
• Important Aid to Quality Control
  Because the results are based on your rules, calculations and logic, they are consistent and accurate, reducing the risk of costly errors.

If you have any further queries on DriveWorks solutions for your SOLIDWORKS products, feel free to contact us at support@seacadtech.com