ERIKS Efficiently Manages Over Half a Million 2D Drawings with DraftSight

A specialized industrial service provider leverages DraftSight and 3DEXPERIENCE to reuse drawings, improve its PDM, and connect to its ERP systems.

Challenge

Replace a disparate array of 2D and 3D design software tools, acquired through multiple acquisitions, with a common ecosystem that enables seamless access and utilization of over half a million legacy 2D drawings.

Summary

A comprehensive ecosystem encompassing DraftSight, SOLIDWORKS, and 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions was selected to replace disparate tools, with DraftSight providing core functionality for integrating over half a million legacy 2D drawings. This solution is part of a strategic roadmap for organizational integration with the 3DEXPERIENCE ecosystem. DraftSight's network licenses maximize user engagement and collaboration across the company.

Results

Access legacy 2D drawings
Expanded organizational access to CAD
Supports organizational roadmap
Common ecosystem of connected, integrated solutions

ERIKS offers a wide range of products and engineering services, as well as providing the expertise to help its customers improve product performance and reduce the total cost of ownership. “We are a multi-product specialist,” says Head of Engineering Job van de Sande. “This means that we deliver various components to different industries.” The company also adds part functionality to existing components, per customer specifications, or engineers’ parts from scratch. ERIKS has 5,000 employees in 15 countries with a base in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

The company experienced significant autonomous growth between 2005 and 2020, along with growth from acquisitions. Consequently, ERIKS ended up with a large number of various 2D and 3D computer-aided design software packages. With over half a million 2D drawings that the company still wanted to leverage, ERIKS desired a comprehensive product development solution.

“We picked one of the big ecosystems [Dassault Systèmes] to really cover all our needs for 2D, 3D, and simulation software. We are also transitioning step by step toward the 3DEXPERIENCE® cloud,” explains van de Sande.

— van de Sande, Head of Engineering

Leveraging DraftSight Across the Board

One of the key objectives for the company is to transition the massive number of 2D elements within the organization. “We have drawings from many, many years in the past,” notes van de Sande. “We still want to open these and have the useful functionality out of them.”

Related Resources

DraftSight has the core functionality of a good 2D package but also integrates with any past drawings that were made by other packages,” explains van de Sande. DraftSight also saves ERIKS money. “Thanks to the networking license structure, we're able to add a lot of users that use it perhaps once or twice every month. And, what’s very important for us is it's part of this bigger roadmap: migrating to the [cloud-based] 3DEXPERIENCE platform.”

DraftSight also integrates into the PDM system, enabling the increased functionality of a broad base of 2D users across the entire organization. “DraftSight really helps because it's a light product, and we can install it on any PC,” notes van de Sande.

Working Together More Efficiently

Van de Sande concludes, “In the next few years, we'll be transitioning to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, really enabling us to work together as an organization and also with customers. We'll also really put forward our PDM system and create component libraries. The last step is connecting all this to our ERP systems so that all the component libraries are also connected to the products and components that we sell.”