REQUIREMENTS
The company is an Italian leader in the heating industry with their products distributed all over the world. The production of appliances is distinguished by reliable meticulous organizational practices involving numerous employees working for Unical AG s.p.a. Every single appliance is first developed in the design office, then reaches the successive stages of the production process so as to be finally assembled and tested. The assembly office dealing with the appliance assemblage has to take into account the instructions coming from other offices and this is the point where most obstacles are encountered. Not clear instructions with scarce visual illustration lead to errors in the assembly process and consequently cause production delays. Furthermore, a great range of products offered to the general public oblige the company to have clear and concise instructions to be easily used by workers assembling boilers and other heating systems so as to avoid appliance parts incorrect fitting and damage infliction. The Unical AG s.p.a. work team main requirements are:

• the tool for communication comprehensible for the whole staff
• quicker interoffice information exchange
• time reduction in the product assemblage phase
• effective presentation of assembled products through virtual prototyping

SOLUTION
Unical AG s.p.a chose 3D PDF Maker to improve its assembly line consisting of different workstations each dealing with the assemblage of a part of the boiler which graphic presentation is not ambiguous any longer. Now at any moment the assembly line supervisors and assemblers can refer to a technical document describing every single part of the boiler through an interactive 3D model. Unical AG s.p.a opted for 3D PDF Maker to utilize it in its production process to create the assembly instructions at the cutting edge of modern technology and accessible for all staff members. The use of interactive technical documentation gives a greater awareness of the product with its all-round view, clearly displaying its form and constituent parts, and, as a result, allows to assemble the product quicker and with higher precision and accuracy.

Along with a list of parts with all their parameters, the assembly instructions, like those of Unical’s boiler, offer a 3D model in the PDF file format with the enabled zoom in/out and rotation capabilities. The model can be further customized by adding texts, images, comments or audio, notes, graphic markups (e.g. arrows and pointers), dimensions – all the extra data that could further facilitate technical documents reading for the assembler. Moreover, it is possible to save views of a 3D model, to create sections and axonometric projections, hide some parts, make other parts semitransparent.

3D PDF Maker’s ease of use and efficiency are the main reasons of the software introduction in Unical AG s.p.a as a working tool. Besides, their technical documentation can be easily shared with the company overseas offices by simply sending via email standard PDF files, the international file format common to everyone. The files with the assembly instructions for Unical boilers are sent electronically with no need for paper usage, nor for their physical shipment. This leads to a considerable cost cutting and the speed of processing that the company used to lack. The data of a CAD model inserted in the document are protected, and anyone receiving the file, especially people outside the company, won’t be able to make use of the project sensitive data for any purpose different from viewing.