Indmar Marine Engines Shortens Development Cycles with SOLIDWORKS

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Indmar Marine Engines is a company that converts automobile engines for use as marine inboard engines, which are used on jet boats and high-performance towboats for wakeboarding and waterskiing. Until the 1990s, all design work was drawn manually. Indmar tried several CAD systems over the years such as AutoCAD® 2D, Pro/ENGINEER®, and Autodesk® Inventor® 3D products in an attempt to streamline their processes.

A Better Way to Collaborate

Indmar chose to migrate to the integrated SOLIDWORKS® 3D product development platform because its applications are easier to use and more affordable, and they make it easier to interface with boat manufacturing customers to collaborate on engine design, according to Vice President of Engineering Jason Stimmel.

“Almost all our customers have some version of SOLIDWORKS, and many of our vendors do, too,” Stimmel notes. “Moving to SOLIDWORKS put us on a more standard platform, which makes it easier to share data and interact with customers as we collaborate on inboard engine design.”

The SOLIDWORKS product development system not only helps Indmar “marinize” (make suitable for use in a boat on water) automobile engines, it also enables the company’s designers and engineers communicate and exchange data more effectively with customers and partners. We’ve realized a 40 percent drop in design time, primarily because our engineering processes are more efficient,” Stimmel says.

Enabling Innovation

Since standardizing on the SOLIDWORKS platform, Indmar has introduced another industry innovation: the Strainer Pro, a water intake straining accessory with a built-in flush kit for flushing inboard engines.  The Strainer Pro, developed completely in SOLIDWORKS, combines two products in one: a secure garden hose enables boat owners to maintain and protect their engines from debris while simplifying aquatic invasive species flushing.

“The Strainer Pro’s innovation gives our customers more time on the water,” Stimmel explains.

Indmar Marine Engines relies on SOLIDWORKS solutions for design, finite element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), technical communication, and product data management (PDM) to more efficiently convert automobile engines for use as marine inboard engines.

For the complete story on Indmar Marine Engines’ use of SOLIDWORKS, click here.

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Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. offers complete 3D software tools that let you create, simulate, publish, and manage your data. SolidWorks products are easy to learn and use, and work together to help you design products better, faster, and more cost-effectively. The SolidWorks focus on ease-of-use allows more engineers, designers and other technology professionals than ever before to take advantage of 3D in bringing their designs to life.
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