Success Story

Alibre's Customer-Winning Support Drives Keystone Applied Technologies to Success with 3D Solid Modeling

Before his current position as director of engineering at Keystone Applied Technologies, Harry Beck had worked at a number of medium-sized manufacturing companies with sizable design departments. His past experience was that if a company wasn't on the scale of a Boeing or a General Motors, then design software companies might listen to their customers' problems and requests, but they wouldn't do much to really help the smaller companies solve those problems.

The opposite has been the case with Alibre, says Beck. "We've seen such a different mentality with the Alibre team," he says. "They've shown us that their goal is to serve us. They've really stepped up to the plate, showing a true customer focus by listening and responding to our specific needs."

Keystone Applied Technologies is a relatively small firm specializing in the design and manufacture of night-vision products and technology. A systems integration company, Keystone takes the latest in cutting-edge technology being developed by a number of key players in the industry and puts together a specialized solution.

Keystone was a relatively new company when it first tried using Alibre Design software on such projects two years ago, notes Beck. He admits that they were struggling with the software at first, which he attributes to a couple of factors — they were new to 3D design and the design problems they were trying to solve were complex.

Not only did Alibre listen to Keystone's engineers, notes Beck, they actually came out to Pennsylvania and sat down with them to learn about the design problems first-hand, bringing along the president of Alibre and the vice president of product development.

In addition to helping Keystone Applied Technology designers get better acquainted with the product, the Alibre team studied the design problems faced with this cutting-edge type of design and integrated "fixes" into subsequent releases of the Alibre Design product in direct response to Keystone's requirements.

"We feel as though Alibre has made a substantial investment in us," says Beck. "We've presented them with our problems and design challenges, and they've worked with us to prioritize these challenges. Some of the highest priority fixes they addressed with some relatively quick 'patches,' and others have become a part of subsequent full releases."

Because of the nature of the products that Keystone Applied Technology designs and manufactures, a number of details can't be mentioned. What can be said is that much of their work is devoted to the next generation of night-vision products used by police forces and the military's Special Forces. Working in 3D with these complex designs allows Keystone to perform finite element analysis and other key engineering simulations. With the number of complex parts in these products, it would be easy to miss something designed in a 2D CAD package.

Beck notes that Keystone currently has 10 seats of Alibre Design software. That hasn't been a monumental investment due to the relatively inexpensive price of Alibre Design; on the other hand, moving to Alibre Design represents a substantial return on investment because the typical 1-year design-to-manufacture cycle for Keystone's products has now been cut to a 3 - 6 month cycle — quite a savings in time and money. "We are very pleased with the impact Alibre Design has had in our company," says Beck. "Our initial investment has been returned many times over in our ability to design and manufacture our products more efficiently."

Even so, Beck still considers the key value of Alibre Design to be the top-notch technical support Keystone has gotten from the Alibre Design development and support teams. "They used our input to take the Alibre Design software to the next level," he says. "They get my highest marks for their willingness to do that and for the enthusiasm and effectiveness with which they carried it off."