Sergei Polyak, ALPHA CAD CEO, explains how the ALPHA CAD team uses C3D Toolkit to quickly and efficiently develop applications for low voltage switchgear and implement the functionality of auto-generating quotations for complex engineering products.
Let me tell you how the ALPHA CAD team uses the C3D geometry kernel to improve its solutions for a better user experience. We’ve used just a tiny fraction of C3D Toolkit’s capabilities. Nevertheless, even this tiny fraction has enabled us to achieve impressive results, so the project deserves special attention.
Fig. 1. ALPHA CAD lines of business
Since the 1980s, ALPHA CAD has been engaged in CAD development. We mostly focus on automation systems and power equipment for a wide range of industries. We also develop customized solutions.
We have customers across diverse sectors. Let me share our exciting experience with two iconic customers. Remarkably, they both approached us with the same problem.
Many companies that custom-build complex, expensive equipment are likely to encounter this problem. In our case, it was an electrical engineering project: low voltage switchgear. What’s that? Suppose you’re building a factory. It has a lot of heavy-load consumers. Each of them needs a dedicated power cable. In other words, a large, thick power cable enters the factory and then splits into several dozen thinner cables. To do this, you put a cabinet with protector trip relays, and the cables come out of it. This very cabinet is called a “low-voltage switchgear”. To custom-make it, you, as the customer, document your requirements. The most important document is the single-line diagram. The diagram contains the components to be installed in that cabinet and their specifications. When you need an LV switchgear, you make a single-line wiring diagram, send it out to several prospective contractors, and expect their answers indicating the price, design, and lead time.
Fig. 2. How we generated quotations before our partnership with C3D Labs
Now let’s look at this from the manufacturer’s viewpoint. You have received a specification from the customer, and need to prepare a quotation. But you lack some information. In real life, you have to design the product, and for this, every manufacturer needs a design team. These engineers receive custom specifications and design the product as quickly as possible to make a quotation. This is where the contradiction lies. On the one hand, the quotation is needed ASAP: the one who applies first is most likely to win the order. On the other hand, the answer quotation must be accurate. If the error margin is too large, you end up with an overpriced proposal and fail. In the opposite case, you may win the bid, but find yourself in the red. It works like this: when you order something, you send your request for proposal to ten suppliers, and just one of them wins the order while the other nine waste up to 90% of the product development efforts.
Two leading Russian electrical equipment manufacturers approached us with this very issue. One of them is DKC. Today, DKC is one of the largest manufacturers of cable supports and low-voltage equipment in Russia and Europe.
Fig. 3. ALPHA CAD approach to the DKC project
Together with the customer, we developed the requirements for the software. The product was intended to eliminate the manual work of the DKC designers. That is, the customer would independently build a single-line diagram, and provide initial data as texts, and the software would automatically design the final product. The deliverables would be standard: drawings, BOMs, quotations, and thermal analysis reports. The task was clear. We analyzed the business processes and found out how to turn them into algorithms.
We followed some basic principles. At the customer’s request, we developed a Windows desktop application. The key input data are the models of the cabinet and the components inside. We were asked to use the DWG format. Back then, Teighafrom the Open Design Alliance was the best choice for handling this format. So the story is not only about the C3D geometry kernel, as we also have other solutions to compare.
Fig. 4. DKC project results
We implemented the algorithm and the database. The RAM Cube application operates as intended. It is now available on the DKC website. You can download and try it. Specify the initial data and single-line diagram. The figure also shows the front view of the cabinet. A 3D model and BOM are also generated.
It seems fine, but once a project is completed, you always want to identify its pros and cons and see what can be improved. We had sufficient information to analyze the project results.
What did we find? Originally, we wanted the 3D models of the components to be the only source of information. Our approach was to generate a complete 3D model of the product for subsequent manual design refinement. Primarily, it is a manual rearrangement of the components. In other words, once the draft cabinet configuration is available, the designer drags and drops the components between the cabinet sections, or adds a section. We call it “manual configuration”. First, we wanted to do it in 3D, but it turned out that the manufacturer’s 3D models of the cabinet components were too large and detailed. It was almost impossible to rearrange such models in 3D. The performance with large assemblies (10-15 cabinet sections) was ridiculous. Mid-project, we had to propose an alternative. The solution was obvious: use 2D projections where a front view is sufficient. It was quite a workable solution, but then it turned out that Teigha cannot make projected views automatically. As a result, the design team had to manually generate all these front, top, and side views in AutoCAD, and then link them to the 3D models in the database. This process had to preserve all the orientations and constraints. Due to unavoidable human errors, it took a considerable amount of time. Nevertheless, we achieved the result, and the application worked.
When we moved on to the next customer with an identical problem, we built on the experience gained and made a number of important decisions at the very beginning.
Fig. 5. ALPHA CAD approach to the IEK project
First, we offered a web application, not a desktop one. Nowadays, no one needs to explain the advantages of web-based apps.
They eliminate a lot of problems at once. First, it is operating system-agnostic. It has been highly relevant since 2022, as customers have been switching from Windows to other operating systems.
Secondly, there are no issues with the app or database updates, and no need to regularly deploy new releases at the customer site. Now only we maintain the database and the application. The customer just opens his browser and starts designing.
Thirdly, the customer can use any hardware without compromising performance. PC specs are critical for desktop applications. Another point: the manufacturer has access to all the customer projects for marketing purposes. The marketing team knows what their customers are working on and what they need.
Another important decision was to change to a CAD-neural format. We replaced DWG with STEP. This resulted in abandoning Teigha. We needed a new component to support STEP. We chose C3D Modeler and C3D Converter and have never regretted it. The STEP support was conveniently available out of the box. There was no more need to manually generate projected views of the components.
What obstacles did we face? None. It was even easier than we had hoped. We received not only high-quality documentation but also ready-to-run code examples. When we explained the problem we wanted to solve using C3D Toolkit to the C3D Labs team, they immediately provided us with a sample code. Moreover, C3D Toolkit's performance in modeling and other operations exceeds that of competitors.
There was just one minor issue. Since the deliverable was a drawing, we planned to create the product composition in model space, add drawing annotations and a title block, and then convert it to DXF. It turns out to be quite inconvenient. Therefore we applied an open-source component for adding drawing annotations to DXF. C3D generates only the front view.
Fig. 6. IEK project results
The FORMAT app was launched in 2024. You can try it on the IEK website.
We are very pleased with the C3D component and the comprehensive support for it. We will continue our efforts. So far, we’ve been using in-house visualization libraries, but now we are considering the capabilities of C3D Web Vision.
C3D Toolkit is a great tool to solve the original problem: to auto-generate quotations for complex engineering products.
Fig. 7. The new quotation process with C3D Toolkit
It is a common approach: analyze the product design workflow, document and automate it, so the customers will receive their correct quotations on time.
Sergei Polyak,
CEO,
ALPHA CAD
