Trains and other rolling stock take an especially long time to get from concept design to rolling down the tracks. Even the simplest boxcar needs shock absorbers, brake systems, and high-quality manufacturing to ensure safety and durability. Changing customer requirements and newer, better technologies add to the timeline, too.
To make products cost effective and viable, smart companies leverage the old as they adapt to the new. That is, they build on well-established design ideas to create more innovative products faster.
Collaboration of Molinari Rail in the project «Metro One» in Mumbai, India
That’s a strategy that’s working well at Molinari Engineering GmbH, a company based in München, Germany. Molinari boasts a staff of engineers who are seasoned in rail design as well as plenty of younger engineers who bring proficiency in new technologies.
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Massive Machines
Customers in Action
Top-Down Design
Concurrent Engineering
Piping and Cabling
With PTC Creo
The company also uses PTC Creo, including PTC Creo Parametric, PTC Creo Advanced Assembly Extension (AAX), and PTC Creo Piping and Cabling Extension (PCX).
PTC Creo Parametric is full-featured 3D CAD software that engineers can easily use to create brand new parts and assemblies or to repurpose legacy models, making the most of existing data.
The software is for product developers no matter their business. But the two extensions, PTC Creo AAX and PTC Creo PCX are especially useful for a company like Molinari because it deals with large-scale products and critical routed systems.
Working with large, hybrid products
As you might imagine, a train car is a monster assembly. PTC Creo AAX is built to handle teams concurrently developing big complex products like this as Molinari brings all the pieces together in a single model.
“Rail vehicles are mostly hybrid products where numerous pieces must be brought together to create a reliable, long-lasting whole system,” says Molinari’s website. “That fact and increased quality standards make technical integration on rail vehicles particularly challenging.”
But with PTC Creo AAX, they can create a skeleton model of the design. Then, individual team members can work concurrently on specific areas in the context of the larger design structure—without worrying about interfering with others’ data.
Plus, PTC Creo AAX includes features that make it faster to load, modify, and save large models. It can create “default envelopes” that hold lightweight representations of data you don’t need to work on directly, but you want to see in the model.
Routing cables and hoses
Train cars rely on pneumatic braking systems as one of their most important safety features. In fact, trains have been using air brakes for more than 150 years. That’s because, when they’re properly used, they’re very reliable and effective.
But when they fail, the result can be catastrophic. It was a failed air brake system that ultimately led to the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in July 2013. Dozens of people were killed when a runaway train derailed and exploded near a heavily populated area.
Molinari ensures its systems are well-designed and robust, in part by using PTC Creo PCX. The extension automates routed system designs like pneumatic hoses (as well as pipes and cabling). It also makes sure the system adheres to design rules and checks for interferences. And because it operates right within the mechanical model, it helps designers see the routed systems in context—another reassurance that no surprises will arise later.
With PTC Creo PCX, engineers design the optimum path for manufacturing, cost, and serviceability of their air brake systems.
Since adopting PTC Creo, Molinari says it’s working more efficiently as the company continues to build rail vehicles that are fail-safe, economical, and durable.
Find out more about PTC Creo PCX in this short demonstration:
