January 2006
Information Provided By: Scott Koeffler, Senior Designer/CAD Coordinator
Go to eDrawing Images

Have you ever stopped to think about how products, machinery, and devices are created to move and function, when all you ever do is press a little button or it happens without pressing one at all? Ever ponder all those behind the scenes functions taking place to make a massive machine work? Oilgear does! They are the company that helps design projects like the Burke Briese Soleil movable sunshade atop the Milwaukee Art Museum or the hydraulics and electronics to operate the Ray Nitschke Bridge in Green Bay, WI. The Oilgear Company provides advanced technology in the design and manufacture of unique fluid power systems, pumps, and electronic controls and has become a leader in the fluid power industry.

With worldheadquarters located in Milwaukee, WI, Oilgear has been producing advanced technology since 1921. They have grown to over 600 employees across 15 operations in Canada, Europe and Asia.

So what keeps a company ahead of the curve with a competitive edge in a field needing high precision and fine detail? Simple, have a program that allows those functions to be filled and beyond, and for Oilgear, SolidWorks Office Premium was it.

Scott Koeffler, Senior Designer/CAD Coordinator and lead designer for Oilgear, used SolidWorks on a pilot program for a Large Forging Press Installation in Bedford Park, IL. Oilgear’s responsibility was to provide a turnkey system in which they where responsible for all hydraulic and electrical equipment and the installation of this equipment, along with all the piping and tubing connecting to the press. This included everything from the trench work in the concrete floor to running piping. They attributed a great portion of their success to using SolidWorks.

Oilgear’s first 3D CAD system was GE’s Calma, which they used from 1982. In 1987, they moved onto Euclid from Matra Datavision. They changed to SolidWorks in 2002 when an Oilgear vice president recommended one CAD system be used by all Oilgear offices for designing hydraulic systems and manifold blocks.

“SolidWorks has done everything we hoped it would and we hope to see more benefits out of it when all our offices are using SolidWorks. The area that has helped us most is with some of the functionality that you see in new CAD software that did not exist in our older Matra Software,” says Koeffler. “Things like Routing, Toolbox, and the ability to make configurations and eDrawings. We are making heavy use of eDrawings to send designs to customers for approval and we are currently working on a project where eDrawings will be used in sales presentations.”

Oilgear chose SolidWorks after evaluating other CAD software on the market. They looked at Inventor, Catia, SolidEdge, and SolidWorks, and met with each vendor. Based on Oilgear’s criteria of a 3D CAD system being cost effective, easy to learn, use a common hardware platform, and have local software support for all Oilgear offices, SolidWorks was the best fit for their needs. “Once we chose SolidWorks, we did an evaluation of the resellers available to us. We felt that Graphics Systems best understood our needs as a company, in that we are smaller with limited financial resources. Graphics Systems presented a solution that fit within our limitations,” attests Koeffler.

For more information on Oilgear please visit www.oilgear.com

All images compliments of Oilgear Company. The following machinary was created in SolidWorks by Oilgear and is being viewed in eDrawings.

>> View the full size eDrawings from Oilgear.

>> View the Oilgear eDrawing in Internet Explorer.

Click here to learn more about SolidWorks and how you can use eDrawings to share documentation with others.

The above images are of the Main Hydraulic Valve Manifold, which controls the flow and pressure of oil to the different components that operate the forging press. (left eDrawing, right completed machinery)
In the above images, Oilgear has nothing to do with the design or building of the forging press, but in the e-drawing we had to make a Solidworks model of the press so we could make it a part of our assembly and then run all the hydraulic piping and tubing to it. (left eDrawing, right completed machinery)
Hydraulic Pump Room (left side eDrawing, right completed machinery)
The above images are a Hydraulic Pump Room which contains the majority of the hydraulic and electrical equipment that was designed in SoildWorks and built by Oilgear. (top eDrawing, bottom completed machinery)

If your company is interested in becoming a Spotlight Customer
contact us by email or call 1-800-454-2233 x1117