E3.series Improves the Digital Twin Creation Process for Driving Smart Manufacturing

Munich, Germany, and Westford, MA, USA, August 23, 2022 – Zuken announces the release of E3.series 2022, introducing enhancements to empower design teams to create digital twins with functional and manufacturing details captured in a single cutting-edge tool suite. The enhancements to E3.series cover all areas of electrical design through to the manufacturing process, including: wire routing, data visualization, design rule checks, change management and much more.

“The digital twin facilitates the automation and control of production and assembly processes and is therefore an ideal way to address the shortage of qualified personnel among cabinet manufacturers and suppliers. Together with our partners in the Smart Cabinet Building initiative, we are committed to providing open, integration-enabled solutions for automated cabinet manufacturing and assembly. The digital twin provides the central hub for all automated production, assembly and testing processes,” explains Joachim Frank, Managing Director E3.series, Zuken E3 GmbH.

The latest release of E3.series includes more than 50 new features, enhancements, and tools to improve reliability, efficiency, and productivity. Cabinet design enhancements aim to improve the 3D visualization of parts and wires to simplify the assembly process. The cable and wire harness enhancements target improving design reuse and capturing additional manufacturing details. The overall usability enhancements focus on further simplifying the application to increase productivity, while improvements to active and passive design rule checks ensure design quality.

3D-Visualization

E3.series 2022 introduces new 3D visualization options to view individual sections of a cabinet in 3D. The individual sheet 3D option is in addition to the visualization of all the cabinets in a project together. The new visualization options aim to empower manufacturing and assembly processes to visualize the cabinet design easily. Designers can design in 2D and get the result in 3D, eliminating overhead while still benefitting from the form, fit, and functional checks of 3D design.

Enhanced Busbar Handling in Cabinet Design

Busbars have a new dedicated component type in the library and new functionality in the schematic and cabinet. New functions enable connecting directly to a busbar and placement on a busbar resulting in easier to manage busbar connectors, taps, and power distribution components that mount directly on the busbar. Representing the busbar in a 3D cabinet provides an accurate digital twin for downstream assembly and manufacturing.

Prefabricated Multicore Cable Assemblies and Wire Harnesses

E3.series 2022 simplifies the handling of prefabricated multicore cables by treating them as assemblies with options to define connectivity in the parts library. These assemblies are made available in the project with predefined connectivity and physical characteristics. The option to lock the attributes of the multicore cables eliminates unintended alteration in the project. The added flexibility of defining one or more connections inside the assembly enables the creation of complex cables and wire harnesses.

Enhanced Wire Harness Diameter Calculations

E3.series excels when it comes to accurately calculating the outer diameter of sections or bundles of a wire harness. In the 2022 release, enhancements include a sophisticated update to the packing algorithm, significantly reducing calculation time. Designers can now report the diameters of various segments in a wire harness using an always up-to-date display text without affecting the application performance.

Assign Sub-circuits to Any Component

E3.series simplifies design modularization with the help of powerful and easy-to-use design reuse options. E3.series 2022 greatly enhances the design reuse process providing the ability to assign sub-circuits to any component. Designers can now choose between placing standardized design or symbols attached to a component.

Digital-first Workflow

E3.series is the leading electrical design solution for cabinet, cable, wire harness, fluid, and power distribution design across all product categories. It enables multiple designers to seamlessly work on a project, automatically keeping data in sync with the help of its object-oriented design and intelligent central parts library. The tool suite also helps users eliminate errors and omissions with active and passive design rule checks. E3.series bridges the gap between automated assembly and manufacturing processes to allow a digital-first workflow from design to manufacturing, helping users get closer to a true digital twin.

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