The Jeffrey Redmond Company is a contract manufacturer providing custom wood products for home and industry. The company was created in 2002 and employs 7 people. The company's dedication to providing the best service possible to its customers has always been at the source of its continual search for the most modern machines and software on the market. The software search was finally satisfied in 2006 when Jeffrey Redmond acquired TopSolid'Wood and TopSolid'WoodCam for the design and manufacture of all its furniture.

Jeffrey Redmond works in the high end architectural millwork and store fixtures domain. For the residential market the company has produced a wide array of unique projects, including kitchen cabinets, fitted furniture, mantels, coffered ceilings, panelled rooms, wine cellars …

For the commercial market the company has made point of purchase displays for such clients as Abercrombie & Fitsch, the Ohio State University , the Ohio Supreme Court, …

Missler Software spoke to Jeffrey Norris, founder of the Jeffrey Redmond Company, regarding his experience with software in the woodworking business. Over the years Jeffrey has worked with, at some stage or other, all of the well-known wood packages on the market such as eCabinet, CabinetVision, Autocad, SolidWorks, …None of these software packages satisfied his needs. “Some were good for cabinets but when it came to custom design they had huge limitations, some were good for design but did not have any specific wood functions and none offered an integrated CAD/CAM approach” explains Jeffrey. “I was sick of suffering through bad software and trying to work around the limitations of different software packages.”

In 2004, Jeffrey discovered TopSolid'Wood for the first time. The product was completely new to the USA (and was still quite new in Europe at that stage) According to Jeffrey “I was hugely impressed by TopSolid'Wood but it was not ready for the market at that time – the software was still quite new, it was missing some functions and there was no documentation at all. The software was quite revolutionary though: based on a solid modeller, specifically developed for the wood industry and could output directly to CNC machinery. ”

2 years later Jeffrey re-discovered TopSolid'Wood at the IWF trade fair in Atlanta . The product had hugely advanced since 2004 and the developer of the software, Missler Software, was exhibiting on the trade fair. “I had kept my eye on the software over the 2 years and at the show I learned that Missler Software wanted to seriously start selling into the US market. I knew that TopSolid'Wood was the software I needed so the show enabled me to discuss how I could acquire the software, training, etc. I was very reassured by the attitude of Missler Software. The company was completely new to the wood market in the USA but I was assured that I would get all the training and support necessary. These promises were kept; technicians came from France to train me and I was operational very quickly."

The Jeffrey Redmond Company is TopSolid'Wood's second customer in the USA (in Europe there are in the region of 1000 wood customers) For some companies this may have seemed somewhat of a risk to start out with such a “new” software. For Jeffrey this was not a problem: “I knew there may be difficulties at the beginning. Missler Software was new to the US market and when I purchased the software after the IWF show a reseller and support network was only then being put in place. I was willing to put up with such difficulties and I have no regrets. Missler Software has honoured its commitment to me and it is clear that the company is serious about working in the USA . In any case I have to say that I was never too worried. Missler Software is a very well established company in Europe and Asia – It has been in the CAD/CAM business for 25 years and has more than 20000 customers around the world.”

So when asked the question about what makes TopSolid'Wood different from other software solutions Jeffrey takes a minute to decide where to start. “TopSolid'Wood is so far ahead of all the software solutions I have seen. I work in the custom furnishing business. I need to be able to design freely. TopSolid'Wood enables me to design the most complex shapes imaginable. There are no design limits as the software uses the Parasolid kernel. What differentiates this software from generalist CAD systems is the fact that it has been developed for the wood industry with all the wood functions that are used in the industry – there are modelling functions such as turning, sawing, dadoing, rabbiting, dowelling, edge profiling, rail and stile profiling etc. As the software is in fact an integrated CAD/CAM package all components come with their machining process which offers important time gains. Being able to freely design what I want to design is a huge plus for me. This offers me great creativity options and enables me to better serve my customers. It may take more time to create my own projects as opposed to importing from libraries like most other software solutions on the market today but this gives me a huge liberty. I can also create my own libraries so that my work can be reused for the future. So when I spend time on a project it is not wasted. The software is intuitive and a real joy for me to use.”

Jeffrey Redmond has become a reference for TopSolid'Wood in the USA. The complexity and exceptional quality of the company's work are a clear demonstration of the software's capacities. Jeffrey Norris is today a clear advocator of TopSolid'Wood.

Here is a quick reminder of some of the key TopSolid'Wood functionalities:

• Based on the solid modeller Parasolid so users can freely design the most complex projects (from standard cabinets to the complex shapes)
• Complete CAD/CAM integration: TopSolid'Wood outputs to the CNC plant floor through TopSolid'WoodCam, an integrated CAM solution which automatically produces the ISO code, via a post processor, to manufacture parts on CNC machinery. This means that the same interface is used to design and output to the CNC machine.(which signifies that operators are trained on just one software for the entire design to manufacturing process) It also means that any modification made during the design stage is automatically recuperated in the machining stage without having to make time-consuming changes.
• TopSolid'Wood offers specific wood modelling and machining processes
• TopSolid offers specific CAD/CAM solutions for mechanical engineering, sheet metal and plastics. This means that woodworking companies can easily use any of these materials in their projects and TopSolid can manage these.