The company IRM was created in Luçon, France in 1992, and has been designing and manufacturing mobile homes and chalets ever since. It was the first French company to compete directly with English builders. IRM is now the No. 1 French builder of mobile homes, and has a workforce of 650 people.

In 2001 IRM equipped itself with the TopSolid’Wood CAD/CAM solution for designing and fitting out its mobile homes. In 2003 the company started only to design in 3D; today practically everything is designed in 3D with TopSolid’Wood. Sébastien Blandin-Boisseau, the designer at IRM who designs mobile homes in the preliminary design phase, works with TopSolid’Wood and TopSolid’Image to design and produce realistic rendered images of the mobile homes. "TopSolid’Image allows me to add special effects such as shadows, reflections, depth, etc. For me, the images that I produce using TopSolid’Wood and TopSolid’Image act as presentation tools to sell internally and of course to prospective clients. Images speak for themselves, there’s no comparison with the 2D plans of before." As soon as the project is approved by management, the design is transmitted to the Design Office, which produces the 3D plans to industrialise the project.

Despite an additional effort initially to work in 3D, the benefits today are significant. According to Franck Bonniot, Design Office Manager "Certain validations no longer require prototypes. With TopSolid we can see any obstructions in advance. As regards the plumbing, we can make provision for reservations in the 3D model, which avoids templates and mistakes during assembly." The in-place design made possible with TopSolid’Wood is also a real asset for IRM. Assembly is an important stage in the production of mobile homes. One mobile home is assembled every half-hour. TopSolid’Wood allows IRM to work faster during assembly thanks to detailed 3D plans and instructions.

The machining of parts for the mobile homes is subcontracted to companies in the region. Meubles Denis, one of IRM’s subcontractors, also works with TopSolid for machining. Thanks to the TopSolid integrated solution, Meubles Denis uses IRM’s TopSolid files directly. A modification in the CAD file is automatically retrieved in the CAM file.