3D CAD Model Downloads

Catalog Data Solutions Whitepaper
Authored by Catalog Data Solutions Technical Division
Configurators – Next Generation CAD Configurators Save Time and Money
Online Configurators enable handling of highly configurable and made-to-order parts. This
Whitepaper explains new time saving advances in online configurators including achieving the
same CAD download benefits, as explained in the Catalog Data Solutions Whitepaper,
“Convergence of Market Trends Creates New Online Opportunity for Manufacturers and
Distributors”. This whitepaper extends that discussion to include ‘Configurable’ and ‘Made-to-
Order’ parts so that the whole spectrum of possible parts is addressed by this sales and
relationship building, CAD download approach (see Figure 1).
Executive Summary:
Configurators are proven engineering and marketing tools that increase productivity by
simplifying and streamlining design, part selection and ordering processes for industrial
suppliers:
• As an engineering tool, configurators created during product development can result in
less physical prototypes and hence reductions in product development time, costs and
time to market;
• As a marketing tool, configurators enable presentation of complex products to potential
customers.
Complex product configuration has historically been achieved through the use of paper
catalogs, containing technical specifications, rules, constraints and decision tree ‘flowcharts’,
but often required experienced users to ensure a valid product was configured. Today’s
configurators are computerized tools used by design engineers to configure custom
components for inclusion in their designs. They are often made available by industrial
suppliers to enable customers to select, configure, price and order multi-option components.
Typically these software configurators will not allow invalid or incompatible specifications to
be selected and thereby eliminate errors and save hours of compatibility and specification
research – just imagine being assured that every unique part is designed within the technical
specifications, rules, and constraints allowed for each component.
Now, new trends in the manufacturing market and the next generation software configurators
have created a new sales and marketing opportunity for industrial manufacturers and
distributors. Increased online searching for products by design engineers, new software
innovations (like the patent-pending Visual Constraint Feedback™ technology) and
integration with pricing and stocking systems provide instantaneous price and shipping
information, and lower costs are driving greater adoption and use by design engineers of
configurators
By providing online configurators for your complex and multi-option products you:
• Increase sales by making it quicker and easier for customers to select your products
rather than your competitors’;
• Attract customers and increase existing customer loyalty by reducing their time to market
and, incidentally, speeding up their purchases of your products;
• Free your engineer’s time to focus on new product design instead of helping customers
configure products.
In the case of Emerson Power Transmission, Marc Macaluso, eBusiness Manager said, “In a
complex product, users usually don’t know the constraints and they almost certainly don’t
know the interdependence of those constraints (i.e. if you select X you are giving up option Y
in selection Z). The Visual Constraint Feedback™ makes you aware of what effects any
selection has on future choices. Substance is vital, but customer perception is even more
important for successful adoption.”
© 2007 Catalog Data Solutions, Inc.

Page 1
*All brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.
Standard simple
CDS Model
Server
Standard complex
Downloads of
Configurable
CAD Drawings
CDS & 3D Models
Configurator
Made-to-Order
Figure 1 – How Configurator and Model Server solutions address the whole spectrum from Standard
to Configurable to Made-to-Order parts
Configurators – Next Generation CAD Configurators Save Time and Money
Configurators are proven engineering and marketing tools that increase productivity by simplifying and
streamlining design, part selection and ordering processes for industrial suppliers:
• As an engineering tool configurators created during product development can result in less physical
prototypes and hence reductions in product development time, costs and time to market;
• As a marketing tool configurators enable presentation of complex products to potential customers.
Complex product configuration has historically been achieved through the use of paper catalogs, containing
technical specifications, rules, constraints and decision tree ‘flowcharts’, but often required experienced
users to ensure a valid product was configured. Today’s configurators are computerized tools used by
design engineers to configure custom components for inclusion in their designs. They are often made
available by industrial suppliers to enable customers to select, configure, price and order multi-option
components. Typically these software configurators will not allow invalid or incompatible specifications to be
selected and thereby eliminate errors and save hours of compatibility and specification research – just
imagine being assured that every unique part is designed within the technical specifications, rules, and
constraints allowed for each component.
Now, new trends in the manufacturing market and the next generation software configurators have created a
new sales and marketing opportunity for industrial manufacturers and distributors. Increased online
searching for products by design engineers, new software innovations (like the patent-pending ‘visual
constraint feedback™, and integration with pricing and stocking systems provide instantaneous price and
shipping information) SaaS (software as a service) and lower costs (for software, deployment and
configuration) are all driving greater adoption and use of configurators by design engineers .
By providing online configurators for your complex and multi-option products you:
• Increase sales by making it quicker and easier for customers to select your products rather than
your competitors’;
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• Attract customers and increase existing customer loyalty by reducing their time to market and,
incidentally, speeding up their purchases of your products;
• Free your engineer’s time to focus on new product design instead of helping customers configure
products.
“Get selected by the design engineer, get the sale”!
Convergence of market and software trends has created a new opportunity for manufacturers
and distributors to exploit the CAD/internet intersection to generate sales leads, drive
revenue growth, lower costs and increase customer loyalty.
Engineers design in 3D CAD and search for components for those designs online.
Manufacturers and distributors need to ‘fish where the fish are’ with online configurators and
downloadable 3D CAD. These component CAD models get built into new designs and, more
than 80% of the time, when an engineer specs a part into a CAD design it stays in the design.
The buyer, who purchases the bulk of the items, is just carrying out the request of the
engineer. Providing downloadable 3D CAD models therefore saves the design engineer time
and makes it easier for customers to select your products rather than your competitor’s
products. In return you generate sales leads by user registration with download logging and
your parts are ‘locked and loaded’ in, so you enjoy sales in proportion to the sales success
of those designs. In addition by helping speed-up your customer’s time to market you
simultaneously speed-up orders for your products.
A symbiotic business relationship is created and customer loyalty increases.
When Should You Consider Using a Configurator?
Companies with configurable (multi-option) or made-to-order products should investigate using a

configurator as part of an online (Internet or Intranet) presentation of those products. If necessary, multiple
configurators for multiple product lines can be implemented – preferably all with a common user interface
(UI) for ease of use. Extending this common UI theme, configurators can be part of an online catalog that
also includes other, non-configurable products. Including your highly configurable products in the same
catalog as your non-configurable products allows you to leverage common functionality, such as e-
commerce, RFQ’s and CAD model downloads.
Configurators are used to capture knowledge in an ‘expert’ system and then make that knowledge readily
accessible to internal staff, distribution partners and customers. They are commonly built to present:
• Existing products for service, sales, marketing, production verification and engineering use;
• Products in development – A configurator built prior to design finalization allows your engineering
and marketing staff to visualize unforeseen design conflicts and holes in the functional
performance. How often has your marketing staff declared “We thought it would do this”, or “We
need this function”? This usually happens after the product is complete, either when creating the
instruction manual or worse, when they show early customers the product.;
• Retiring product lines for maintenance and part stocking needs. Sometimes this is especially
important before key staff retires and their knowledge is lost to the company. In the case of ASCO
Valve (a division of Emerson Industrial Automation), they implemented a configurator for an older

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product line they plan on retiring, so they could ensure that their other product lines could cover all
the applications that the old product line was covering.
In many cases configurators are used as a user ‘front end’ and are integrated into a company’s CRM, PDM,
CAD, PLM, ERP or other systems.
Case Study*
Emerson Power Transmission (EPT), a division within Emerson Industrial Automation, is a major
producer of mechanical power transmission drives, components and bearings. EPT serves a wide
array of machinery-intense industries, including forestry and wood products, mining and
quarrying, power generation, and heating and ventilation. With headquarters in Ithaca, N.Y., EPT
consists of the Browning®, Sealmaster®, Rollway®, Morse®, US Gearmotors®, McGill®, and
Kop-Flex® product brands produced at 14 manufacturing and distribution facilities.
Problem: What do you do when you have a highly complex product line – in this case the
Emerson Power Transmission Browning CbN3000 Gearmotors & Reducers - that can be built in
more than a million possible ways , from which only some sixty thousand different dimensional
configurations are available for order? Add that it’s prohibitively expensive to build and stock sixty
thousand variations so you must build to order and at the same time solve the usual
manufacturing industry goals – increase sales, shorten the sales cycle, decrease time to market
and lower operating costs. What do you do?
Solution: Try the EPT CbN3000 configurator solution at www.emerson-ept.com – register then
click on ‘CAD Templates’, ‘Gear Reducers’, ‘Helical Concentric and Right Angle’, ’CbN3000’.
The CDS configurator with its visual constraint feedback is superior to traditional configurators,
according to Marc Macaluso, eBusiness Manager at Emerson Power Transmission, his team and
colleagues, “The Visual Constraint Feedback™ was a critical component. In a complex product,
users usually don’t know the constraints and they almost certainly don’t know the
interdependence of those constraints (i.e. if you select X you are giving up option Y in selection
Z). The Visual Constraint Feedback™ makes you aware of what effects any selection has on
future choices. Substance is vital, but customer perception is even more important for successful
adoption.”
*This case study is available in full at http://www.catalogdatasolutions.com/eptcasestudy.html
Who Uses a configurator?
By ‘online presentation’ we mean internet, intranet or extranet. Configurator users typically include your
customer service reps, in-house and field sales reps, engineering and manufacturing (e.g. for training and
technical support), distributors and customers. With such a breadth of users to address it is usually
preferable to use an internet browser based solution whereby there is no other software, than the browser,
to install and support (SaaS delivers this).
How Do You Select a Configurator?
As of early 2007, the configurator market is highly fragmented and no clear leader has emerged. Many
configurator software solutions are available in the m anufacturing space, from configurator specific
companies (e.g. Concept One, RuleStream , BigMachines ), from catalog and ecommerce companies (e.g.
Catalog Data Solutions, Access Commerce, PARTsolutions, Technicon, Comergent), from ERP vendors

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(e.g. Oracle, SAP), CAD and from PLM vendors (e.g. Autodesk, Dassault, UGS), CRM vendors (Siebel,
ILOG).
All these competitors offer the promise of configurators . Some offer optional catalog, ecommerce and 3D
CAD download module options, and most offer integration options to other systems, but they use different
technologies and methodologies that dramatically affect the costs – both initial and long term – and the long-
term flexibility of the solution.
The three major areas of concern are: The ‘Configurator Capabilities’, the ‘Need for and Integration
Capability’ and the ‘Business Model’ to control setup and recurring costs.
I. Configurator Capabilities
• Can the complexity of your configurable or made-to-order parts be addressed effectively?

Obviously having the ability to handle the highest complexity of your products is a prerequisite to
choosing a configurator, but how that complexity is captured and presented to the user is critical to
success. Often companies don’t know or realize the full complexity of the interdependencies within
their configurable products so consider doing an initial pilot project to produce a configurator for your
most complex product.
• Will the configurator simplify

complex product configurations or
confuse them? The goal is simple,
guided automation of the configuration
sales and engineering tasks. Some
configurators use multiple option
menus and lead the user through a
step-by-step approach, which is fine for
a limited number of inter-dependent
attributes , but can be confusing for
products with multiple inter-dependent
attributes (see EPT Case s tudy). The
best configuration solutions incorporate
Visual Constraint Feedback ™, though
most traditional configurators do not. In a complex product, users usually don’t know the constraints
and they almost certainly don’t know the inter-dependence of those constraints (i.e. if you select X you
are giving up option Y in selection Z). The Visual Constraint Feedback™ makes users aware of what
effects any selection has on future choices. An alternative approach is to provide real-time feedback
with automatic prompts and warnings but as complexity increases that approach becomes over-
powering because too many prompts and warnings confuse the user.
• Are ‘smart’ part numbers and reverse configuration available? Configurators are often designed
to create ‘smart’ part numbers in which particular digits or letters in the overall part number string
translate to particular selections within particular options of the complex assembly. This is fine when
you want to generate a part number by using the configurator to select options. But what about the
reverse situation? When an order is received it includes a smart part number derived by your
customer or distributor, but how do you know if that part number represents a valid part you can
actually make? The best configurators can be used in reverse, allowing you to enter the smart part
number into the configurator where you can immediately check that it represents a valid part
configuration, and also visually present the detail of all selected options , including the BOM detail for
that assembly
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• Are CAD models of the final configured part available for download? After being guided through
a detailed selection process, by a configurator, many design engineers will want to incorporate the
result into their design. The most productive way to achieve that is to be able to download a CAD
model of the final configuration chosen. By providing freely downloadable 3D CAD models of your
configurable products, you save the design engineer’s time and make it easier for customers to select
your products rather than your competitor’s products. In return your parts are ‘locked and loaded’ into
their designs, so you will enjoy sales in proportion to the sales success of those designs. In addition
by helping speedup their time to market you speedup orders for your products. A genuinely symbiotic
business relationship is created and customer loyalty increases 1.
• What if a product’s model changes? Building a lasting customer relationship involves the ability to
quickly communicate model changes to customers. Maybe due to a supplier change or an
engineering change order a product’s model may have changed. If your customer has this product in
their design, but is unaware of the change there could be major problems for that customer during final
assembly of their product. A unique and industry first solution from CDS is the ability for users to
enable product change notifications for a specific product. Using the user’s registration email a
company can quickly inform their customers of an engineering change that affects the model.
• Does the vendor have a proven methodology to capture the configurator design rules? The
configurator must be reliable and dependable – a feat requiring clear logic from the product engineers
and perfect software from the configurator builders. Most configurator vendors employ a methodology
to obtain or formulate rules about requirements and best practices from your subject matter experts.
II. Need for and Integration Capability
• Need for integration – Configurator integration with other systems is not a prerequisite. It is perfectly
possible to include a configurator as a free standing entity on your website, at least initially to
inexpensively test user adoption before making a more significant investment. If you have a broad
product range including some non-configurable products as well as some configurable products, then
it is common to have a searchable digital catalog of all your products that includes configurators for
some products. Typically the next steps are to have user registration (leads) and possibly online
ecommerce to take orders over the web. These capabilities can be treated as components of the
catalog/configurator system or at a more sophisticated level integrated into CRM, ERP or PLM
systems. It is quite common for companies to approach these stage by stage.
• Integration capability – Some vendors supply whole suites of products such as CRM and/or ERP or
PLM and catalogs with configurators. Others sell only configurators or catalogs with modules for
configuration, CAD downloads and ecommerce with the ability to be integrated with the major CRM,
ERP and PLM systems. The important thing to ensure is that whatever system you choose has the
ability to grow with you if and when your integration needs expand. For example, if you want your
configurator profile data to be added to your CRM system and to configured component pricing or
stock availability from your ERP system then ensure that your configurator choice can be integrated
with those systems.
1
CDS whitepaper “Convergence of Market Trends Creates New Online Opportunity For Manufacturers
and Distributors”
Page 6
Business Model
In applying a configurator, the industrial supplier’s goals are usually to achieve an increase in sales with the
minimum initial and recurring costs. To help achieve these goals, their web site needs to attract, and keep
attracting, browsers and returning customers. At the same time by providing CAD models of their products
online, they can decrease their current technical support costs through more user self-help, and decrease
product returns by enabling online customers to select the right product the first time. The business model
they select will dictate initial and long term costs – the most important items to consider are:
• Will the configurator increases sales? The configurator must guide customers through features and
options to meet their individual requirements. By enabling mass customization and speeding up
responses to quotation requests companies can achieve improved sales, shorter lead times, greater
customer loyalty and increased market share. As an online sales tool the configurator can support
multiple sales channels – enabling your sales people and distributors to communicate with customers,
and sell more effectively. Some configurators can, for example, run multiple user interfaces from a
single configuration model to support unique look and feel necessary for different sales channels.
• Will you use the configured CAD downloads to generate sales leads?
3D models have proven to

be one of the best online JW Winco 2006 Sales Lead Generation
marketing tools available to

manufacturers and
3600
distributors. The best 2500
solutions include
configurators that generate
3D CAD model downloads in Traditional Marketing User Registrations for
CAD Downloads
exchange for capturing low-
cost, high-quality leads from “Since implementing 3D CAD downloads (in Feb. 2006) we
your web site when user’s have averaged over 850 downloads/month from our 18,000
CAD model library. Already 60% of our sales leads are from
download the 3D model.
CAD models and 40% from traditional marketing. CAD
Engineers and CAD downloads sales leads convert to sales at a higher rate and
designers will gladly register even more importantly they convert faster! And the cost per
to download a 3D model lead from CAD downloads is less than 10% of the average cost
per lead from traditional marketing. We’re delighted to have
since it will save them
already achieved so great an ROI on a very modest outlay.”
valuable design time. John M. Winkler, CEO, Office of the President, J.W. Winco Inc.
Companies that require
regis tration prior to downloading a 3D model should be sensitive to protect user information. Many
companies publish and abide by a strong privacy policy that protects user information and email
addresses. Allocation of these leads, for example by distributor territory, can be automated or manual.
• Will the configurator decrease costs? The automation of online configuration can reduce costs in
several ways. For customers, efficiency gained will come from reduced communication dialogue via the
‘expert system’ of the configurator – customers often prefer the immediate self help and download
capability to telephone calls and multiple emails or voicemails. Your internal engineering team can
concentrate on new design work instead of helping customers configure existing products or obtain
CAD models. Sales time is saved by automating production of engineered quotes and proposals. This
automation also reduces the opportunity for human error in quoting and in products built to order,
thereby cutting down repeat or re-work to achieve more consistent product quality, improved
engineering resource utilization and higher productivity.

Page 7
• Will you be charged per model configured or per CAD download or …? To ensure control of
costs and no bad surprises it is best to avoid ‘per configuration’ or ‘per model’ download charges
unless they is capped (e.g. $1/download/month and all downloads beyond the cap are free). As
you become more successful at generating user traffic a fixed price for unlimited downloads is
usually the best choice and prevents your costs accelerating with perhaps no relationship to your
vendors actual cost of running the necessary IT infrastructure and maintaining the configurator/s and
CAD model generation.
• Does the solution support manufacturer-distributor relationships? Distributors can be wary of

disintermediation when manufacturers create new direct relationships with customers. Therefore ensure
that your distributors are part of the plan and that the online catalog complete with 3D CAD models will
further empower your distributor network. Maintaining separation of the CAD model download and the
order processing functions can be key to distributor adoption. Distributors are typically closer to the
customers than the manufacturers and many provide value added services beyond traditional stocking,
order taking and credit provision. The CAD model download capability can be another service available
via the distributors’ web sites (even if those web sites just point to the manufacturer’s web site) and as
part of their visits to customers, distributors can use the web site as a new sales tool to help customers
select parts and download CAD models.
• Does the solution have an ecommerce option? – If you are likely to add online sales later then
ensure that either your supplier’s solution includes an optional ecommerce module or that the solution
can be integrated into the ecommerce module of your ERP system vendor.
• Return on Investment (ROI)? A simple ROI analysis can be based on expected increased sales less
COGS, plus expected technical support manpower savings , plus expected engineering manpower
saving, less the initial (depreciable) costs and the annual maintenance or hosting costs. Be aware that
selecting a particular supplier’s software usually means you will be selecting the business approach and
thereby locking in future costs. In estimating the software and hardware costs look at both of the typical
approaches.
1. The traditional software license approach - where your staff is trained, implements and maintains
your configurators , which are operated on your own computers and internet connection.
2. The Software as a Service (SaaS) approach - where you select a 3 rd party company to build,
maintain and host your configurators.
Some suppliers use the traditional model - a perpetual software license sold for operation on your own
computer hardware plus an annual maintenance fee. Other suppliers provide the software in the newer
SaaS model – the software setup in an online hosted computing environment plus an annual hosting
fee. In both cases there are initial setup costs plus annual recurring costs and the following tabulation
compares the two approaches. In either case, if you are offering an online solution ensure the
application has ‘large pipes’ to the internet to handle large models efficiently and high reliability data
centers with power backup to ensure maximum uptime of you application. It can be a very expensive
proposition to do this internally, but as long as you have the internal infrastructure to run a high reliability
(99.5% uptime) website, then either can work. Externally hosted or Software as a Service (SaaS)
implementations are usually preferable in smaller organizations. Even in large organizations, CIOs have
changed their thinking to welcome SaaS to address specific solutions. At one time CIOs perceived it as
a threat to their power over IT, but now they often see it as a way of fulfilling business mandates without
stretching their thin IT budgets, particularly as there is no end in sight to the short supply of skilled IT
workers. The most important benefits of a SaaS approach are speed of implementation and a reduced
total cost of ownership (TCO). You avoid buying, installing, supporting and upgrading expensive
Page 8
software applications, servers and network equipment on company computers , and you do not spend
time and effort on troubleshooting, tech support, compatibility issues and the other headaches that
accompany traditional "out-of-the-box" software usage. The following table presents a realistic cost and
time, to achieve 30 configurators in service, comparison of a typical traditional software license and a
software as a service (SaaS) approaches. The SaaS approach achieves the 30 configurator goal at
about half the cost ($888K vs. $1688K) and in about half the time (3 years vs. 5 years).
Digital Online Configurator Cost Comparison

Traditional Software LicenseCompany vs Software as a Service (SaaS) Company
($'000)
Annual Training &
Solution Software Internal
Description Maintenance Consulting IT Infrastructure
Provider Cost Workers
Fee Services
Traditional Explanation Packaged SW 20%
1,000 hrs @
2 Bandwidth Equipment IT Support
Software $150
License Initial Costs $70 $14 $150 - - $5 -
Configurator Annual Recurring - $14 - $200 $24 $2 $20
Per 20% (per
Explanation Included 0.5 Included Included Included
SaaS Configurator Configurator)
Configurator Initial Costs (as built) $10 $2 - - - - -
Annual Recurring - $2 - $50 - - -
Solution Cost Comparison

Description
Provider 1st Six Years
Time Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6+ Total
Traditional Initial Costs $239 - - - - - $239
Annual Recurring $244 $260 $260 $260 $260 $160 $1,444
Software
# Configurators (Total) 6 12 18 24 30 30
License Total Cost $483 $743 $1,003 $1,263 $1,523 $1,683 $1,683
Configurator Cost/Configurator $81 $62 $56 $53 $51 -
Time Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4+ Y5 Y6 Total
Initial Costs (as built) $72 $144 $144 - - - $360
SaaS Annual Recurring $50 $62 $86 $110 $110 $110 $528
Configurator # Configurators (Total) 6 18 30 30 31 32
Total Cost $122 $328 $558 $668 $778 $888 $888
Cost/Configurator $20 $18 $19 - - -
In the traditional software license approach the major costs are internal staff, training, consulting and
systems. Even if the software license (assumed at $70K) were free, it would make little difference to the
overall cost. The point is that the SaaS model leverages an outsourced infrastructure of hardware and
staff specialized in creating configurators.
Conclusion
Several market trends have converged at the CAD/internet intersection to create a new sales and
marketing opportunity for industrial suppliers (manufacturers and distributors).
Design engineers spend a significant proportion of their time (some estimate up to 25%) searching for parts
and creating CAD representations of these parts for us e in their designs. A modern configurator through its
user interface (e.g. one using Visual Constraint Feedback ™ can make it easier and quicker for customers
to select your parts rather than a competitor’s parts. The information they rely on to identify parts needs to
be accurate, up-to-date (online) and complete (including 3D and 2D CAD geometry), not least, because their
choice of component supplier can be directly affected. For configurable and made-to-order parts, designers
expect time-saving efficiency gains through use of configurators and use of downloadable CAD models in
their designs. Providing a 3D CAD model download of that selection often ‘locks’ products into a new design
so suppliers later benefit from the sales success of that design.
Industrial suppliers who meet these expectations by making an ongoing investment in their web sites via
configurators with CAD model downloads (and possibly ecommerce) can expect increased sales and lasting
Page 9
customer loyalty, by providing a compelling reason for design engineers and buyers to return repeatedly to
their websites. The 3D CAD downloads will supply critical engineering information, reduce engineering
design costs, accelerate time to market, and ensures design accuracy. Internally, industrial suppliers can
also expect relief for high value tech resources as the customer ‘self-help’ frees up resources from helping
customers configure products and from CAD model retrieval and communication.
Industrial suppliers without configurators and 3D CAD models on their website are at risk of losing
customers to competitors who do offer these capabilities. Conversely adding Configurators and CAD
downloads is a proven way to increase sales… an important sales and marketing tool for all industrial
suppliers and an ROI justification for online configurators, digital catalogs and ecommerce.
Many technologies and business models are available for online configurators, digital catalogs, CAD
downloads and ecommerce. The choices made will dictate initial and long term recurring costs, increases in
sales achieved and longevity of the competitive advantage obtained.
Many technologies and business models are available for online configurators. The choices made will
dictate initial and long term recurring costs, ease of use, likely adoption by users and longevity of the
competitive advantage obtained and ROI.

Page 10

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Catalog Data Solutions Whitepaper

Authored by Catalog Data Solutions Technical Division

Configurators – Next Generation CAD Configurators Save Time and Money

© 2007 Catalog Data Solutions, Inc.

Configurators – Next Generation CAD Configurators Save Time and Money

• As a marketing tool configurators enable presentation of complex products to potential customers.

“Get selected by the design engineer, get the sale”!

A symbiotic business relationship is created and customer loyalty increases.

When Should You Consider Using a Configurator?

Companies with configurable (multi-option) or made-to-order products should investigate using a

© 2007 Catalog Data Solutions, Inc.

Who Uses a configurator?

How Do You Select a Configurator?

© 2007 Catalog Data Solutions, Inc.

• Can the complexity of your configurable or made-to-order parts be addressed effectively?

• Will the configurator simplify

II. Need for and Integration Capability

3D models have proven to

marketing tools available to

© 2007 Catalog Data Solutions, Inc.

• Does the solution support manufacturer-distributor relationships? Distributors can be wary of

Digital Online Configurator Cost Comparison

Solution Cost Comparison

© 2007 Catalog Data Solutions, Inc.

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