Preservation of Data Ensures Stable Future

Helena Laboratories is a clinical laboratory instrument manufacturer. Its clients include major medical centers, small hospitals, large reference laboratories, and small private doctors’ laboratories. With hundreds of laboratory products and more than 40 registered patents, Helena continues to be a market leader in the design and development of new diagnostic tests.

In 2007, Helena switched from an aging 3D wireframe design tool to SolidWorks software, the popular computer-aided design (CAD) system from Dassault Systèmes Solidworks Corporation. Recently, Helena decided to redesign one of its most popular electrophoresis sample handlers. Applications for handlers are areas such as forensics, molecular biology, genetics, microbiology, and biochemistry. The issue was that replacement parts for the unit were becoming scarce and Helena needed to redesign it with new components.

Undertaking this and other major design work using SolidWorks seemed logical. However, recent press and blog posts from SolidWorks users that Dassault planned to remove the Parasolid software-modeling kernel from its SolidWorks product worried Helena.

Before the redesign projects could begin, Helena needed an answer on the SolidWorks kernel change reports.

Billy Oliver, a longtime SolidWorks user and design engineer at Helena, started reading in 2010 about SolidWorks moving to another modeling kernel. The veteran designer says Helena did not want to redesign its products in SolidWorks if the modeling kernel was changing. To understand the impact, he cites one of the products needing redesign contains about 2,000 unique parts at 12,000 pieces per unit.

“Our SolidWorks channel partner told us we would have to wait for details. The value added reseller (VAR) says SolidWorks had not told them anything; they knew about as much as I did from the SolidWorks blogs. Therefore, I called (SolidWorks); I needed to know. They confirmed the kernel change.

“We do not want to waste valuable resources, time, and money to keep implementing changes. It will be years before SolidWorks can convert into the Catia kernel,” Oliver says. “I do not want to have to redesign our products twice or stagnate for 10 years.”

Once there was confirmation of the kernel change, Helena switched to Solid Edge software. Helena now achieves 100% conversion of its SolidWorks and CADKEY software wireframe designs into Solid Edge and preserves its valuable data. There were added business and technical benefits too, such as the ability to upgrade to Teamcenter Express for product data management.
 

Synchronous Technology Dividend
Bob Sarrine, a long-time design engineer at the company, says most of Helena’s data remains in the old 3D wireframe format. “Redesigning it in SolidWorks was less than smooth,” Sarrine says. The issue was the complex process of history-based modeling.

He explains, “When we bought SolidWorks, I thought we should not have to design this way; it is not the way we think. When I picked up Solid Edge and synchronous technology, I got it, fast and easy.”

Oliver started working at Helena in 2007, shortly after the company bought licenses for SolidWorks use.

“Helena knew they needed to upgrade and they went with the SolidWorks marketing machine,” Oliver says. “It is all marketing. The hook was a lot of companies were using it, so it must be the best.”

Oliver notes, “Our two main engineers never really liked history-based modeling. It was clumsy for them. They thought it was excessively difficult. They get synchronous technology and they are excited about it. Bob (Sarrine) was going through some Solid Edge tutorials one day and was actually giggling. He would get frustrated when using SolidWorks tutorials.”

Sarrine says that after he had gone through a few Solid Edge tutorials, he decided to design an airplane structure containing a lot complex curves.

“I just push a button and boom, it is there. I do not see how this Solid Edge implementation can possibly fail,” he says.

Helena has 18 years’ worth of 3D wireframe design data that represents about 10 major products still in the market, and moving that data to a new CAD system is very important to Helena.

“Synchronous technology blew me away, especially the ease of importing CAD data like our 3D wireframe data,” Oliver states.
 

Helena products can contain 12,000 pieces per unit, with 2,000 of those being unique parts.

CAD Technology Leadership
In a recent post on the Dezignstuff blog, Oliver suggests that SolidWorks users should run not walk away from their software. He cites several observations from his research that ultimately led to the Solid Edge license purchase: “Solid Edge in the last three to four years has been working on a technological evolution while SolidWorks has been working on menu bar icons, shading, and colors. Everyone on this blog was complaining during the last few years about SolidWorks development, direction, and why they are not fixing bugs, just interface stuff, etc. The kernel change is going to be long and painful.”

Oliver notes several other comparisons that led to Helena’s switch: “There is more sophistication in Solid Edge than SolidWorks, sheet metal design, for example. You can tell Solid Edge is the original and SolidWorks is the clone, using Siemens PLM Software’s Parasolid technology that was not invented by SolidWorks. It (SolidWorks) has run into a dead end because they cannot use Siemens PLM Software’s synchronous technology. Solid Edge is leading the field in direct modeling with synchronous technology.”

Helena also had concerns about its CAD data management in the future with SolidWorks.

“We need a stable path for the next five to 10 years,” Oliver says. “We found that stability with Teamcenter Express and it is expandability to full-blown Teamcenter from Siemens PLM Software. The SolidWorks path seemed uncertain to us.”
 

Recently, Helena decided to redesign one of its most popular electrophoresis sample handlers.

Solid Edge
Plano, TX
siemens.com/solidedge

Helena Laboratories
Beaumont, TX
helena.com