Companies in the mechanical processing sector often receive CAD data from their customers. Now they are faced with the problem of having to transfer this data into their own system. To do this, they need suitable and reliable software for converting and, if necessary, repairing the incoming design data. This is also the case for Wilhelm Lippold Sonderwerkzeugbau und mechanische Bearbeitung. The company specializes in development and design, mobile 3D measurement technology, rapid prototyping and reverse engineering. Over the years, the craft business has been continuously modernized. After CNC machines and 3D CAD were introduced, the design tasks became increasingly complex. Wilhelm Lippold was now looking for suitable conversion software in order to be able to process supplied data.

Due to its close collaboration with an automotive manufacturer, the company had previously found itself in the situation of having to convert external design data from the Catia V5 CAD system for further processing in-house. At that time, the system was the one most frequently used by manufacturers. In the past, the transfer of external CAD data was often a problem due to a lack of compatibility. "We wanted to integrate a Catia converter directly into our SolidWorks," recalls Udo Gehrmann, Production Manager at Wilhelm Lippold. Camtex offered a solution to this requirement with its Datakit converter plugin.

However, as the data sets supplied became larger and more complex due to the details depicted, the Datakit converter reached its limits. "The software could no longer cope with the increasingly large data sets, and the results that could be generated no longer met the requirements that had grown in the meantime," says Gehrmann. Functionality is his top priority. "Software has to work flawlessly. A cheap solution is useless if it doesn't do its job. Nevertheless, price and performance must be in a reasonable relationship." Wilhelm Lippold therefore analyzed exactly which requirements had to be met and how a solution could be implemented within the defined financial framework.