With rapid growth and an expanding team of designers, Australian defence product engineering firm Daronmont Technologies was looking to further improve process efficiency with automation of design document and file management.

Manual processes and disconnected workflows resulted in a lot of time spent working with CAD files and publishing export file formats for production. And in manufacturing, design delays can have a flow on impact on orders, production, and deliveries.

Adding to the challenge were compliance and security problems. If multiple staff wanted to access the same dataset there was limited security or access control structure, opening the possibility of files being modified without an audit or revision trail.

Ensuring that the published data was created based on the latest CAD design is crucial for Daronmont.

Improved File Handling Was An Immediate Goal

With multiple people working on developing the product design, the team at Daronmont called for a better approach to structure and automate design export assets.

For example, if a team member needed to process more than 100 files, exported in a mix of formats, it was a largely manual process taking upwards of eight hours depending on the complexity of the files.

A more modern, less time-consuming system that leveraged the existing Vault Pro database for file handling was the clear goal. 

John Dineen, Senior Draftsperson and Drawing Manager at Daronmont Technologies, said using Autodesk brings many time, quality and data control benefits; however, revision control of product design documents is a must in a multi-user environment.

Design Consulting Stepped In With Automation

As an Autodesk customer, Daronmont Technologies has been designing unique products for some time and uses the Vault Pro product data management solution to extend automation throughout the business.

The company worked with the Design Consulting team to implement custom automation tools for data management and job processing alongside Vault Pro.

Design Consulting Managing Director, Damien Jovica, said manufacturers like Daronmont Technologies have a good opportunity to use automation to improve what they already have.

“We integrated our JP-Pro app to automate file management, making file export processing on multi-page documents less manual and time-consuming,” Jovica said.

JP-Pro provides a mix of automated and manual (on demand) publishing options to export a range of file types, including pdf, dxf, step and parasolid.

In addition to JP-Pro, a Visio plug-in for Vault was used to synchronise AutoCAD Electrical schematics and Visio Shape Data to Vault Properties. This eliminated the need to manually enter and map the data in Vault for Visio files, thus saving time and reducing errors.

Automation Workflow Is Essential For Modern Manufacturing

The resulting business outcome for Daronmont Technologies was an immediate improvement in efficiency and a significant decrease in operating costs.

With a modern manufacturing automation workflow, staff are less burdened by manual file handling and this new level of efficiency enables faster product development and more creativity.

“Design Consulting worked with us to ensure their apps worked in a way that helped our entire business,” Dineen said.

Daronmont are also benefiting from improved document control compliance and enhanced security.

“Adding automation to manual workflows has delivered instant results for defence contractor Daronmont Technologies,” Jovica said. “By making use of Autodesk and our add-ons the company has saved time and money and reduced its exposure to errors.”

Daronmont Technologies is now better positioned to innovate faster across its engineering portfolio.

Download the full case study here.

About the client

• • Daronmont Technologies

• • Adelaide, South Australia

Autodesk Solutions

• • Vault Pro™

• • Autodesk Inventor Pro™

• • AutoCAD™

Product Training

• • July 2021

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