Czech design firm prospers with Solid Edge

Miroslav Rusinak

Solid Edge delivered the design and documentation functionality Miroslav Rusinak needed to complete an innovative and award-winning office building.

Miroslav Rusinak uses Solid Edge as a primary catalyst in its rapid growth both at home and abroad.

Open borders create demand for services

Founded in 1996, Miroslav Rusinak (MR) has quickly risen to become one of the top mechanical design and engineering firms in the Czech Republic. Company officials attribute their rapid growth to the superior skills of its engineers, with a special emphasis on their Solid Edge experiences. In fact, they see the engineers’ skill with Solid Edge as a highly marketable commodity. With the Czech Republic being a newly elected member to the European Union, labor costs are still relatively low. Combining these low labor costs with its engineering expertise, Miroslav Rusinak is actively promoting itself as an off-site engineering resource, with an emphasis on its expertise in Solid Edge, to attract business from international organizations looking to outsource their CAD needs.

While it has been successful in capturing business from around the world, Miroslav Rusinak competes very well in its home country as well. One of its largest domestic projects to date was to redesign the avionics and instrumentation panels for all the airplanes of the Czech military. Utilizing Solid Edge, MR engineers were able to successfully change the designs for the panels to bring the planes into accordance with NATO standards. In effect, using Solid Edge on this project allowed Miroslav Rusinak to assist the Czech government in meeting the requirements for joining the European Union.

Cold war era building given ultra-modern face lift

Another high profile project in its home country, and possibly company’s most visually stunning design to date, was to redesign the façade of a drab “prefabricated” building for the Northern Moravia Gas Company in Ostrava. The glass façade that Miroslav Rusinak engineers designed spreads on all axes as it rises into the sky; it has been hailed internationally as a monument to architectural design. Solid Edge was invaluable in the project as the engineers were able to import 2D drawings done by subcontractors in other modeling software systems, then convert all that data into 3D models, for a visual image they could all look at during design reviews.

The glass façade project was the first of its kind in the Czech Republic; no one had attempted such as complex shape before. Because the design has horizontal supporting features that are bending in both arcs and curves, and the glass itself has complex 3D surfaces, the engineers knew they needed the intuitive 3D design functionality of Solid Edge to make the structure work. Using Solid Edge, they were able to model individual components quickly and then assemble those components into portions of the façade on-screen. To add to the difficulty of the project, Miroslav Rusinak was given a 12-month deadline. The engineers relied on the 3D parametric modeling functionality of Solid Edge to keep to this tight schedule even though during construction, sitegenerated changes necessitated continual design modifications. The fast cycle of design, review and verification kept the project moving forward when it otherwise might have slowed down.

Automatic drawing creation speeds completion

Owing to the changing arcs and curves of the design, most of the aluminum extrusions that made up the façade’s supporting skeleton had to be custom-designed and manufactured. Using Solid Edge’s acclaimed drawing environment, the engineers were able to generate and manage detailed and accurate production drawings for the 80 cross bars and 40 columns in the skeleton, as well as numerous compression plates and anchoring devices. Without Solid Edge’s ability to automatically generate drawings from 3D models, the engineers would have been overwhelmed by the volume of data required in the design and production of the custom components.

The glass façade turned out to be a project in which Miroslav Rusinak and its engineering can taken justifiable pride. Northern Moravia Gas Company now has a beautiful office, which has won two design awards. Stavitel magazine, the Czech Republic’s construction industry magazine, selected the design as Best of the Best. In 2003 the renovated office building was named Building of the Year. Company officials at Miroslav Rusinak credit Solid Edge with giving them everything they needed to succeed at such an ambitious project. In fact, since implementing Solid Edge, the company has grown ten-fold.

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Related Links:

• Miroslav Rusinak

Challenges:

• Provide advanced design and engineering services to expanding Czech industry
• Design complex façade for an innovative office building
• React quickly to site-generated design changes to meet 12-month deadline

Keys To Success:

• Use Solid Edge® software's compatibility with other modeling software to effectively share design data
• Model or import individual components and assemble facade on-screen in Solid Edge
• Use Solid Edge to generate detailed and accurate production drawings

Results:

• Building won two design awards
• First project of this level of complexity attempted in Czech Republic was completed on schedule
• Design firm has grown ten-fold since implementing Solid Edge

Industry:

• Industrial Equipment & Machinery | Industrial Machinery

Client's Primary Business:

Miroslav Rusinak is a mechanical design firm.

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Business Initiatives:

• Enterprise Data Management
• Production Efficiency

Solutions/Services:

• Solid Edge

Client Location:

Prague
Czech Republic