My name is Jeff Liggett, I work for PTM Corporation, the AEC division. We make large prototype sheet metal parts for the automotive and other industries. We use SpinFire right from the beginning of every project all the way through inspection.

We start with our estimating department. It's a great tool to bring all the data in, all different CAD formats, whatever information we get, and it's easy for our estimating team to evaluate, measure, and get all the information out of the CAD files of materials and whatnot. From then the engineering is pretty obvious. It's a great translator, it's a great quick tool if you don't want to get into a complicated CAD system to view things.

From there we design tools, we design fixtures, and we inspect everything. We have laser cutting machines and we find that SpinFire is useful in all these areas. When we design a tool, our pressroom people have SpinFire. They can open all the tools, they can measure things, we can collaborate and see what we want to do differently. He's at his desk and you're at your desk, and you can have a conversation both looking at the tool. So that's great in that department.

We have a build department that welds. We have robotic welding, manual welding, and we weld pretty large assemblies together. A SpinFire file is available for all of our welding fixtures with the parts and the welds in them, and all the guys on the floor know how to use SpinFire. There are stations around the build department where they can have an advantage over using flat 2D prints by calling up a SpinFire file of the job they're working on. Rotate, zoom, measure, so they can know exactly how this assembly is supposed to be welded together.

In other departments where we build fixtures, we almost forgo prints completely. We have a large television screen. They call their jobs up on the screen. I always like to say it's like 3D Ikea directions. They can put these things together, they can tell by the tree on the side what details they're working with and where they go, and it's great.

After that all these parts and fixtures need to be inspected. The inspectors can call up the parts, they can check and make sure the hole sizes are correct, they can measure things, they can get get tolerances from prints supplied by customers. All the information for every job can be available to almost anybody on a software that's easy to use, easy to teach, and everybody's on the same page.

So, that's how we use SpinFire here, and I'm glad we have it.