Visa Lighting
Designer Lighting

Visa Lighting, recently named one of the best places to work by Milwaukee Magazine, utilizes its award-winning work environment to manufacture superior specification grade Architectural lighting fixtures. Since 1943 Visa Lighting has been manufacturing its products for the finest architects, designers, contractors, and lighting specifiers in the USA and abroad. Most products go into the renovation or new construction of any variety of businesses, organizations, and high-end residences. These products are designed and manufactured in Visa Lighting’s Milwaukee, WI plant. The facility is very versatile, as they manufacture most of their own parts, many times using CNC equipment. Various materials such as brass, aluminum, steel, stainless steel, copper, and acrylics are used to make the products. Visa Lighting also uses die-castings, sand-castings, and extrusions.

Mark Hastings, Engineering Manager at Visa Lighting, states that they employ SolidWorks “from start to finish in the development cycle,” starting with solids during the concept phase and using it to evolve the product through manufacturing. “We make extensive use of configurations in Solidworks as all of our products are features and options driven. The configurations are used at the part and assembly level. One assembly file could represent hundreds of combinations of options and finishes,” he explains. At times these assembly files are also used to create photorealistic renderings for literature, line drawings for submittals, and for programming CNC equipment on the shop floor.

“The ability to manage configurations was a driving factor for choosing Solidworks,” Hastings asserts, adding that “the sheet metal features also rate high on the scale for us.” Hastings was also impressed with SolidWorks’ intuitive features and menus, which provided a fast learning curve for implementation. The enhancements that SolidWorks adds every year continually “hit right on target for our needs,” he affirms. When looking into complementary software, Hastings is sure to look for the SolidWorks Gold Partner rating, trusting that these products represent the highest level of integration with SolidWorks.

Graphics Systems has been instrumental in assisting Visa Lighting with SolidWorks. “Graphics Systems has been very helpful in choosing, implementing, and training. We often attend their classes and work-out sessions to keep current in the software,” Hastings confirms.

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