Founded in 1975, Elmetherm is a French company specialized in the design and production of special machines and turnkey equipment, providing original solutions for specific needs. Its name, which designates its core business, comes quite simply from the abbreviation: ELectricity, MEchanics and THERMal, fields in which Elmetherm has excelled for many years.

Indeed, over the past 30 years Elmetherm has accomplished over 5000 missions in the service of major international corporations (PSA, Valéo, French National Defense, Airbus, SNPE, LU, SNECMA, etc.), as well as many small and medium-sized companies. Its fields of operation are many and varied, including automotive, weapons and aerospace, agri-food, the medical sector and chemicals.

The design office, exclusively equipped with TopSolid, has five designers and six project managers. This makes it a closely-knit, reactive and operationally efficient team working under project managers who are some of the best specialist engineers in mechanical, thermal and automation engineering. An entire study, from quote to delivery, lasts on average three months. It all begins with a quote produced by the project manager using 2D schematic software. Once validated, the study then begins in 3D directly using TopSolid, through to drafting with general and detailed views, parts lists and assembly plans.

The project managers include Thierry Darneix, who has 18 years of service under his belt and who started out working on a drawing board before going on to using CAD. He tells us: "The arrival of TopSolid in 2000 really revolutionized our way of working. At a time when many of our customers were equipped with Catia and Pro-Engineer, it looked like our choice to adopt a software solution that was not the same as those of our customers was dubious to say the least. Yet this proved to be of great benefit to us, since the issues that we had to contend with were nothing like the same.”

Indeed, following benchmarking and a battery of tests with other competitors, TopSolid came out on top with regard to various crucial points. As Thierry Darneix recalls, "We had a structure to produce that included tubes with miter joints. TopSolid was the best in dealing with this aspect, which for us was a basic functionality, since tubular frames are an everyday feature in our studies."

When asked about the advantages of TopSolid, he answers: "Generally speaking, TopSolid offers us better design quality and the possibility to configure and hence reuse special machines quickly, and it has enabled significant reductions in delivery times along with greater design freedom."
Other notable functions are the CAM link for laser cutting of parts out of sheet metal thanks to export in DWG and, above all, the libraries of in-house components. Two internal libraries are kept up-to-date and are fully exploited by the design office. This mine of elements makes it possible to deploy guardrails, human models and other standard components in less than 10 minutes. Thierry Darneix adds: "The fact of being able to standardize has improved the quality of service towards our clients. For example, we have developed a standard components library of resistor racks that can be customized for each client. Thanks to this standardization, the studies are of better quality and are completed far more quickly. These benefits help us to face the future more serenely, in a market that is notwithstanding very competitive."

In the light of these "TopSolid" successes, Elmetherm took part in the TopSolid Design Contest in 2007 and came out on top in the category of the finest kinematic diagram. Hats off to the achievement!