NHP Electrical Engineering Products PTY LTD is Australia's largest distributer of low Voltage industrial switchgear and Automation products. In order to support sales and provide value add, NHP also develops solutions to suit the Australian Market.

Many of these solutions involve mechanical assemblies and the ability to design such systems in house is highly valuable. Like many others designers, NHPs Engineering Department had traditionally used the 2D "3rd angle projection" method whereby the draftsman has to carefully update all views when any change is made. In addition, "collision detection" is subject to human error. Even with the utmost care, the use of this method has often resulted in fundamental errors which are only detected during the building of design prototypes. This clearly results in wasted time and money.

NHP was introduced to the world of 3D modeling by Mr Rob Patterson, the local distributer of IronCad. Mr Patterson was able to quickly demonstrate the advantage of IronCad in rapid design modeling, and most importantly, clear visualization of the design model on screen. Following the demonstration, Mr Patterson provided NHP with a fully functional 30day trial installation of IronCad and readily accessible support. During this time NHP was able to develop a new project to approval stage, with none of the previous errors present when the prototype was built.

NHP subsequently purchased an IronCad licence, and Mr Patterson provided in house training of NHP Development Engineers to expert level. NHP now has the ability to rapidly develop designs through prototype stage to approval avoiding the previous fundamental errors which wasting time and money. In addition, IronCad can seamlessly export files in the traditional 2D formats for archiving and interchange with others.

David Maxwell, Testing and Evaluation Manager