Bretford

Since 1948, Bretford has been committed to producing high-quality products that add value to people's work and school experiences. Bretford designs and manufactures commercial furniture, serving the contract furniture, audio visual, school and institutional markets. They employ 600 people at two factories in the O'Hare district of Chicago.

Clarence McDonald, Design Engineer, describes Bretford as a "market driven furniture company focused on adding value through good design, high quality, and supporting technology." SolidWorks Office Professional 3D CAD is a key component of that supporting technology. McDonald and the other designers use the software for new product designs.

Prior to SolidWorks, the Bretford designers used AutoCAD and Mechanical Desktop. However, they realized things needed to change when Bretford formed a design partnership with SolidWorks user Formway in New Zealand. It took almost 4 months to convert the SolidWorks drawings to their standard AutoCAD system when incorporating the first product line, Free, into their engineering documentation.

SolidWorks has helped us in using configurations and design tables based on offering many different sizes of the same product lines.

Clarence McDonald, Design Engineer

When considering the decision to switch CAD software, they looked at Think3 and SolidWorks. However, because of the high usage of SolidWorks among other vendors in the industry, Bretford ultimately chose SolidWorks. McDonald cited ease of information transfer and less prototyping for size variances as reasons for their decision. He explains, "We can quickly look at different configurations for customers' needs. SolidWorks has helped us in using configurations and design tables based on offering many different sizes of the same product lines."

They answer calls in timely fashion and always have the answers for our needs.

Clarence McDonald, Design Engineer

Bretford also takes advantage of 3D ContentCentral, the free resource from SolidWorks, to locate 3D components to add to their designs.

Graphics Systems has helped Bretford make the move from AutoCAD to SolidWorks successfully. Bretford enjoys working with the technical support staff. They are able to send files via email so tech support can see an example of what it is they are having problems with and then can discuss it further over the phone. Minh Nguyen adds, "They answer calls in timely fashion and always have the answers for our needs."