Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc.
Innovative Lighting Fixtures and Faucets

Since its founding in 1975, ETC (Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc.) has become a world leader in entertainment and architectural lighting equipment.  ETC's innovative lighting systems and equipment bring life to venues of all types and levels around the globe, including: themed parks, opera houses, TV studios, performing arts centers, casinos, malls, museums, restaurants, houses of worship, schools, and more.  With increased demand and global expansion, ETC needed a way to quickly increase design output to meet a growing demand and to easily manage 1000's of custom designs.

In 1997 ETC was using a 2D CAD modeling package and instantly realized the long-term and immediate benefits the company would see by migrating to a 3D CAD package.  Dean Wampfler, ETC Drafting Supervisor, explained: “One of the reasons we picked SolidWorks was the user interface.  The learning curve was very simple; within a day we had people modeling parts using sheet metal and surface modeling.”  ETC especially utilizes SolidWorks' advanced modeling, surfacing, and sheet metal features to assist their in-house sheet metal shops with die-casting and plastic injected modeled parts, and stampings. 

ETC's engineers design between 6,000-7,000 custom metal drawings per year.  Due to the large amount of custom files, it was important for ETC to adopt a CAD package with a strong product data management (PDM) system.  Dean Wampfler, explained, “When going to 3D, it is very important that you find a strong data management system to go along with your 3D modeling package.  SolidWorks' data management package, PDMWorks, is extremely easy to use.”  Wampfler explained that SolidWorks allows them to effectively manage all their files within PDMWorks and change things at a “very rapid pace.”

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