INTERCONNECTS

China's largest manufacturer of textile weaving machinery has purchased 40 additional licenses of SolidWorks(r) 3D mechanical design software to meet increasing demand from international markets, SolidWorks announced today. China Textile Machinery Industry delivers products to customers 50 percent faster than before because it now has 130 SolidWorks licenses installed at its nine divisions throughout the country. SolidWorks replaces China Textile Machinery Industry's 2D drafting tools and a Unix-based 3D computer-aided design (CAD) system - both of which had drawbacks that affected design quality and production speed. The company expanded its SolidWorks deployment anticipating increased demand from foreign markets, where it will have to modify and customize its products to meet local needs and requirements. China Textile Machinery Industry has two main subsidiaries using SolidWorks. Jingwei Textile Machinery Group in Yuci, Shanxi province bought 90 seats of SolidWorks in 2002 to be installed in four divisions. The subsidiary also uses COSMOSWorks(tm) finite element analysis software to study how its massive machines will stand up to the rigorous demands of its customers' production environments. Shanghai Textile Machinery Group standardized on SolidWorks by installing 40 seats in its head office in Shanghai and in five divisions. Shanghai Textile Machinery Group uses SolidWorks software to design textile production equipment, including cotton spinning, chemical fiber, weaving, and finishing machinery. Together, these two divisions hold 70 percent of the Chinese textile market and export their products to 30 countries. "We chose SolidWorks because our engineers can learn to use it within two weeks, compared to the three months it took to learn our previous 3D CAD system," said Zhou Junyan, chief engineer of Shanghai Textile Machinery Group. "Our markets are competitive so we must design new products quickly to meet our customers' needs. SolidWorks software reduces our time to market by at least 50 percent." China Textile Machinery Industry's equipment operates in demanding, high-volume environments where a single machine can turn out one million square feet of fabric in a year. Working with reseller General Faith Int. Ltd., SolidWorks puts high-powered 3D mechanical design functionality and a full battery of communication and collaboration tools at every juncture of the design process, making it faster and more accurate. That speed and accuracy gets the company's products to market faster and with fewer design flaws. "Between the textile market's intensity, the company's increasing focus on exports, and the sheer volume its machinery has to crank out, there isn't too much margin for error in China Textile Machinery Industry's design process. Its engineers need fast, accurate 3D mechanical design tools and they don't have much time to learn them," said Ved Narayan, director of Asia Pacific operations for SolidWorks. "Between its design functionality and ease-of-use, SolidWorks excels in situations like this."