Radview - Intranet Drawing Distribution System

• Introduction
• Features & Benefits
• Case Studies

Sheet metal sub-contractor Alar Engineering has gained several benefits from introducing the Radan RadView drawing viewing system onto its shop floor. One of them was well expressed by one of its own CNC turret punching machine operators.

`It saves me having to go along to the engineering office every time I have a production query.'

The company's founder and managing director Alan Soulsby puts the other side of that coin. He points out that the engineering manager and his programmers who run the Radan CADCAM system are now less frequently interrupted by operators with queries. Either way it is valuable production time saved.

Alar Engineering is situated in the eastern outskirts of Cardiff and specializes in large-batch sheet metal cutting, bending, fabrication and powder coating. Amongst its customers are manufacturers of electronic gaming machines, gymnasium equipment, refrigeration, car parking and lighting products.

The company, which employs 55 people, has three Radview terminals on the shop floor, each housed in rugged cabinets. One of them also has its own printer with which operators can take temporary copies of what they see on the screen.

In addition to the shop floor stations, the drawing viewing system can also be accessed from the computers that are used to run the company's production management system. And of course, it is also available at the PC workstations which run the Radan CADCAM on which the original 2D and 3D drawings are generated.

Bringing shop floor drawing queries to the engineering department is only one of the inefficiencies that Radview has eliminated. Perhaps more important is that the system ensures that only the latest version of any drawing is seen or is allowed to circulate in printed form on the shop floor.

`All drawing or design changes go through our engineering office to ensure that the latest drawings are produced. This means that when operators call them up on RadView they will see only the latest issues of those drawings.'

There is the added advantage that there are no issued paper drawings to go missing. This was sometimes a problem when component production relied on paper drawings being issued from the engineering department along with routing documents.
 
As Alan Soulsby explains:

`We often start bending parts before we have completed punching the batch, and if it's a very long running job we might even have begun welding. When there was only one paper drawing issued with the route card the worst thing that could happen was it got lost, locked in cupboard perhaps.'

Now with Radview five or six people can be working on a job at different stages. Each will pull down the same latest drawing onto a terminal screen for viewing or printing.

`We let them print copies off because you can't set up a punch or press brake just from the screen. But when the drawings are finished with they are destroyed.'

Radview is a versatile viewing system. It enables drawings viewed on the terminal screen to be zoomed in on for close examination of details, just as they are in the engineering department. They can also be accompanied by other documents such as route cards, and tooling and setting instruction.

Radview is the latest addition to Alar's Radan system which was installed in its original form running on Unix workstation back in 1992. Having then selected Radan as the best CADCAM system available, it has continued to expand its use since. It has recently changed over to PC workstations to get the speed and capacity of the latest computer technology. 

Today the three Hewlett Packard PC workstations are used to run 2D and 3D Radraft, Radpunch, Radprofile and Radbend. These are the software products needed to process customers' drawings and prepare the CNC programmes for the company's three Amada turret punching machines and one Amada laser profiling machine.

All three Radan workstations are linked to these machines by direct numerical control (DNC) which enables setters and operators to pull down job programmes to dumb terminals along side their machines.

It's a far cry, says Alan Soulsby, from his early experiences of NC, when programmes were held on hand-punched paper tapes filed away in cardboard boxes and when a programme could not be proven until it was run on the machine.

When formed in 1981, aided by the Welsh Development Agency and Welsh Office, Alar Engineering deliberately set out to exploit CNC machine technology. Today in its factory, on two adjacent sites, components are cut and formed and fabricated in steel, including stainless, aluminium and Zintec.

Mostly it's thin gauge material from 10mm downward. It has even laser cut shims as thin as 0.3mm. Most of the work ends up being powder coated and for this the company has a purpose-built electrostatic conveyorized powder coating line that will handle parts up to one metre high and two metres long.

Having the CADCAM system linked to the punching and laser cutting machines by DNC, as well as to the production management system, the company has gone most of the way to implementing a comprehensive information technology system within the factory.

The use of internet and e-mail extends this integration to its customers, so that all the major ones now routinely supplying drawings electronically in DXF or IGES formats. It has proved a very useful facility when dealing with overseas customers.

The ease with which the Radan system can be interfaced both with machines and with other computer systems is also seen by Alar Engineering as an important plus factor for the future. Its latest turret punching machine, the very fast Amada Vipros King, is soon to have automated sheet load and unload capability. When installed this too will be interfaced with the Radan system.

One spin-off for Alar from implementing Radview has been that as a result of setting it up in the mildly-hostile environment of the shop floor, it decided to develop its own product. This is the Alarcase cabinets for housing shop floor computers and terminals.

The case is made in two parts with the top half designed to protect the desk-top computer or monitor, with a built-in drawer for the keyboard and a shelf for the mouse. The base unit will house a tower computer casing or printer. Both halves are lockable. Alan Soulsby sees that these could be the first of a range of Alar's own sheet metal products.

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