Miller Formless makes short work of service manuals with 3DVIA Composer

With nearly four decades of experience, Miller Formless knows that when it comes to working with concrete, saving time is extremely important. The company, based in McHenry, Illinois, has been manufacturing concrete slip-form paving equipment for road, curb, barrier, and sidewalk construction since 1970. That’s why the company recently purchased 3DVIA Composer to create content for its parts and service manuals and develop 3D interactive assembly instructions more efficiently and cost-effectively.

“We purchased 3DVIA Composer because of the interface with SolidWorks, which is so smooth and seamless; it works extremely well.”

Jim Szamlewski,
Vice President of Manufacturing and Engineering, Miller Formless Company

Prior to 3DVIA Composer, technical illustrators at Miller Formless Company relied on a competitive solution that was difficult to use and time consuming. “The interface between that tool and our CAD system was very cumbersome,” says Jim Szamlewski, vice president of Manufacturing and Engineering.

“We purchased 3DVIA Composer because of the interface with SolidWorks, which is so smooth and seamless; it works extremely well.” Before adopting 3DVIA Composer, technical illustrators at Miller Formless had to wait for engineers to convert their design data into STEP format before they could begin working with it in their former technical illustration tool. Now, with 3DVIA Composer, technical illustrators can easily pull their SolidWorks CAD data directly into 3DVIA Composer in a single step. This saves time for both the technical illustrators and the engineers, who can now focus on design rather than on providing data for documentation.

“With 3DVIA Composer, the 3D data is easily accessible to the technical illustrator, and so is the bill of material information,” Szamlewski said. “With 3DVIA Composer, the bill of material information is available automatically.” But speed and efficiency aren’t the only benefits Miller Formless realized when it moved to 3DVIA Composer. The solution is also fast and easy to learn and fun to use. Just two weeks after installing the software, technical illustrators at Miller Formless were generating content using 3DVIA Composer and enjoying improved productivity. “Our technical illustrators are actually excited about having this product to do their job,” Szamlewski said. ”This has translated into even more productivity for the company”.