Factory Design and Layout with the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection

If you’re the person that plans the layout of your factory, or how your equipment will be installed, it’s a fairly safe bet that you’re using an AutoCAD DWG file to document its current state. That highly detailed plan view is a work of art, meticulously detailed to a level that even if you are the only one that appreciates it, it’s that detail that has saved you on more than one occasion, so why would anyone consider anything other than AutoCAD for documenting your factory floor?

Hey, we get it. Autodesk introduced DWG over 35 years ago and it will continue to be your document of record for the foreseeable future. So, no this isn’t another attempt to move you to 3D layouts, this is a discussion about using the right tool for the right task so that you can make more informed decisions, more quickly.

Do to that, you need data, yet who has the time to turn your DWG into a 3D model? What if you could continue to work with 2D AutoCAD Blocks that when opened in the 3D space, automatically show the respective 3D model? Then combine that 3D design with the reality of the factory with laser scan data for clash detection. Analyze transportation and optimize the layout based on transportation between machines and station. Or analyze the efficiency of a change in factory flow before making it real? Because let’s be honest, you can’t make those decisions with that meticulously detailed DWG file alone.

With the Factory Design Utilities included in the Product Design and Manufacturing Collection, it’s not a choice between 2D DWG or 3D Factory layouts, you’ll use both. Creating a 3D model of your 2D drawing with Factory Design is easy, and the best part is that when the 2D DWG changes, the 3D model automatically updates, so you’ll have the choice to stay in the tool you are most efficient with.

We call this functionality the Factory Design Utilities. You’ll call it the “I just found a way to improve production output” utility. Either way, we think you’ll like it.