Primary Designs

Primary Designs Ltd is the leader in the provision of world-class race car exhaust technology, specialist welding, and motor sport fabrication services. When Primary Designs invested in CAD technology and software in 2002 the company consulted its top customers in Formula1 and LMP Sports cars and as a result it now uses Solid Edge Version 20.

Solid Edge has the ability to share information in both 2D and 3D, so workflow is simplified and a BOM and jig drawings can all be produced in one package. This information can then be transferred to Primary Designs’ ISO 9002 compliant ERP software system.

Using Solid Edge to model exhaust packages is simplified as it can be made to work as the Exhaust Fabricator does, the company’s CAD users are exhaust fabricators also; this means that it has full integration with manufacturing systems and techniques throughout the company.

This year, Primary Designs worked closely with a motor sport design company, which uses Solid Edge to draw the exhaust on a very successful Le Mans car. It came as no surprise that the design company was also modelling most other components on the car using Solid Edge.

It is common place that race car constructors design their own exhaust systems "in house”, as they will always have a greater understanding of the car and it's various systems and they like to be able to control sensitive issues such as confidentiality.

Primary Designs works with the designers at an early stage in perfecting exhaust layout, manufacturing methods and material specifications, sharing information in several CAD formats; IGES or STEP and DXF being the most common, but the company can also integrate with a whole list of CAD packages.

Future investment will possibly be in a digitising arm and tube software, which means that the company can go to the customer and digitise the parameters that it works in and produce an exhaust and jigs from this information.

Solid Edge has proved for us to be the most cost effective way of working with design teams in interpreting complex Formula 1 exhaust CAD models as it is quite simple to get the information we require to put into manufacturing. Cutting Edge also has very good value for money training courses and support, which means we are never too far away from a solution.

Pat Barrett, Managing Director, Primary Designs Ltd.