Founded in 1974 Franklin Fixtures is a full service store fixture manufacturer. At the outset the company specialized in store fixtures almost exclusively for book stores. Since new ownership in 1985 Franklin Fixtures has expanded this service to a wide variety of specialty retailers including: college stores, museum stores, gift stores, visitor centre stores, libraries, etc.

Employing 35 staff, 85% of company sales are made on the domestic market. 15% of Franklin Fixtures' sales are made in Canada, the Caribbean, South America and the Pacific Rim. Integral to the company's success has been the ability to configure its own standard pre-engineered designs with complete sizing flexibility and to offer a wide range of options without custom product engineering and design. For those installations that require unique fixtures Franklin Fixtures also offers full custom design capabilities.

In 2005 David Troe, Vice President of Operations, came to the well known international woodworking fair Ligna (Germany) in search of a new CAD/CAM software and the company consequently became TopSolid'Wood's first customer in the USA.

Up until 2005 Franklin Fixtures had been using AutoCad and SolidWorks and programming its CNC machines with the software solutions provided by the machine tool manufacturers. A disappointment with its productivity in product design together with the desire to work with an integrated CAD/CAM solution led David Troe to go in search of a new software solution: “We were not very happy with the way we were working. We were losing a lot of time on designing, we did not have a software that was made for the woodworking industry and we certainly did not have an integrated CAD/CAM solution. We were not even sure that such a solution existed on the market.” says David Troe .

During a visit to Ligna in 2005 David discovered TopSolid'Wood for the first time. “I was very impressed by the demo I saw. The software seemed to be in tune with Franklin Fixtures' needs and basically responded to the flaws present in our previous software solutions.”

Ligna 2005 was in fact the International Launch of TopSolid'Wood outside its home French market. According to David “Following on from the show I kept in contact with the Missler Software Export Sales Team. I knew that TopSolid'Wood had not yet been sold in the USA but the company was clearly interested in the US market and was willing to support Franklin Fixtures in every way possible. I was not particularly afraid of becoming the first customer in the USA (in any case Missler Software was already selling into the mechanical market in the USA and already had resellers and customers in this market) TopSolid'Wood seemed to be the perfect CAD/CAM solution for Franklin Fixtures so we initially acquired 2 TopSolid'Wood licences. (followed later by 2 TopSolid'WoodCam)

The actual training process was probably longer than it should have been. At the time there was a real lack of documentation in English so this was a drawback for me (which has been rectified since then) The reseller that trained me was probably not as up to speed as he should have been but thankfully Missler Software France accompanied us all the way – These were problems that were completely normal seeing as the business was only getting up and running at the time in the USA. I would also say that I was so used to working with SolidWorks that I probably wasted time in trying to use TopSolid in the same way – The interface is completely different between the 2 software solutions and the way of designing is also different - Hence, the need for good training.”

When asked to explain the advantages TopSolid'Wood has brought to Franklin Fixtures, David offers the following list:

• Accuracy of product design – TopSolid'Wood is based on the Parasolid modeller and offers large designing possibilities
• Parametric design flexibility for our standard products – This is essential for Franklin Fixtures who tries not to “re-engineer” where possible but adapt and reuse existing designs. “With TopSolid'Wood we have been able to build a large library of standards (this is basically our company know-how which we use over and over again) As TopSolid is a parametric software we can very easily modify and re-use these standards. If we take the example of a sliding door assembly this is child's play with TopSolid'Wood. We take the sub-assemblies of the door, assign parameters and automatically assemble the door. With SolidWorks this is a more complex operation and takes 5 to 10 minutes (with TopSolid'Wood it takes just a couple of seconds)”
• Clarity and accuracy of information for product engineering, manufacturing & assembly
• Ease of communicating design information for customer approval – “We can email designs to our customers who can use the TopSolid'Viewer (free to download on the internet) to view these files.” (Files can also be saved and sent in pdf format)
• Ease of product design modification – It is very simple to make modifications at any stage from design to just before the machining of the product. Any modifications are automatically taken into account
• Integrated CAM solution – Franklin Fixtures has just recently begun working with TopSolid'WoodCam to output to its 2 CNC machines (Biesse and CMS)
• A dedicated solution for the wood industry – TopSolid'Wood has been specifically developed for the wood working industry. This means that it includes specific wood functions used in the industry such as turning, sawing, dadoing, rabbiting, dowelling, edge profiling, rail and stile profiling etc.
• TopSolid'Wood offers “in place design” – This means that many parts can be designed in 1 file as opposed to having to design every part of an assembly in different files and then having to bring all of these files together. “This function is unique to TopSolid'Wood as far as I know and offers huge time gains to woodworking companies such as Franklin Fixtures."

Franklin Fixtures has not looked back since the installation of TopSolid'Wood in 2005. The company plans on acquiring a 3rd licence to keep up with its workflow. TopSolid'WoodCam has really only been used in the company for a couple of months now so the objective is to achieve complete integration from design to manufacturing very quickly and thereby exploit the full capabilities of TopSolid'Wood.