1 July 2014 – Munich, Germany and Westford, MA, USA – Zuken announces manufacturing cost reductions through enhanced electrical design. The latest version of E³.series – Zuken’s industry-leading electrical and fluid CAD software – contains integration with B&R Automation Studio, data export for drilling and milling machines, XVL output for Lattice viewer, and enhanced support for Komax and eCl@ss. Support for harness families and harness derivatives within a single design offer time-saving benefits for the transportation sector.
Joachim Frank, Director of E³.series business, said: “Today, workers often need to manually interpret manufacturing documentation in order to assemble control systems. Now, with automatically-produced wires and step-by-step routing instructions, the need to read and interpret these documents is removed. This gives companies the option to retain assembly in-house, thereby reducing manufacturing outsourcing costs.”
Manufacturing process cost reductions
E³.series 2014A adds new and enhanced manufacturing features to reduce manufacturing costs.
- Manufacturing output for drilling and milling machines is automatically-produced by E³.CutOut. This uses drill hole and cutout definitions from the E³.series library to export data such as outlines, cut outs, drill holes and restrictions in standardized DXF format. Machining preparation time is reduced and accuracy increased.
- With enhanced Komax support, automatically-produced wire bundles mean assembly teams do not need to create and cut wires manually by referring to schematic drawings. Estimates show this leads to a reduction in assembly time of more than 50%.
- Lattice viewer support includes XVL format. This enables 3D panel viewing and animation in XVL Player from Lattice. With XVL Studio, users can generate animated, step-by-step assembly movies making the manufacturing process clearer and faster.
Enhanced automation
The new E³.PLC Bridge provides easy-to-use bidirectional PLC data exchange in formats such as B&R Automation Studio – widely-used in the machinery sector. B&R Automation Studio allows the controller, drive, communication and visualization to be configured in one environment, reducing integration time and maintenance costs. With bidirectional transfer of data, interaction between electrical design and software development teams is accelerated and data quality improved.
Advanced component data
Zuken’s new eCl@ss Advanced tool enables efficient download and read-in of electrical component data from the eCl@ss format into E³.series libraries. eCl@ss is the standard for classification and description of products for 39,000 product classes and 16,000 properties spanning all disciplines. eCl@ss Advanced, provided by component manufacturers, contains electrical component data to quickly create library components that are up-to-date and accurate.
Many options, one design
In E³.cable and E³.formboard, harness families and harness derivatives are supported within a single design, eliminating the need to handle different options of the same wire. Different wire lengths requiring specific properties can be handled within a single design and viewed and managed with fewer steps.
