April 2005
Info Provided By:
Clarence McDonald
All images are legal property of, and proprietary to,
Bretford/Formway.
 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.
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.”
 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.”
For more information on Bretford, please visit www.bretford.com.
All images are legal property of, and proprietary to,
Bretford/Formway.
All images are legal property of, and proprietary
to, Bretford/Formway.
If your company is interested in becoming a Spotlight
Customer
contact us by email
or call 1-800-454-2233 x1117
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