Zuken Improves the Digital Twin Creation Process for Driving Smart Manufacturing

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

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 2022 cover all areas of electrical design through to the manufacturing process, including: wire routing, data visualization, design rule checks, change management and much more. 

“Due to the unprecedented labor and supply chain challenges, there’s never been a greater need for a digital twin to drive the next generation of automated assembly and manufacturing process. The latest enhancements in cabinet design, 3D Visualization, cabling, and wire harness detailing are helping E3.series users get closer to a true digital twin, accelerating the adoption of smart manufacturing,” comments Paul Harvell, Product Director of E3.series, Zuken USA, Inc.

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.

Localized 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 augments the handling of prefabricated multicore cables by treating them as assemblies with options to define connectivity in the parts library. This enhancement makes the cables 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. E3.series is available now in North America and Europe.