Business strategy aimed at drawing new customers

Established in 1991 and located in the Chelyabinsk region, KONAR is well-known in Russia for developing and producing quality pipeline valves, flanges, fittings and parts. Among KONAR’s customers are large Russian oil processing plants, including Kirishinefteorgsintez (Leningrad region), Tuapse Oil Processing Plant, and Transneft. Among a long list of significant achievements, the company recently completed a large-scale joint project with Transneft, creating special pipe supports for Russia’s tundra and permafrost regions.

KONAR’s business strategy, which is aimed at attracting the leading oil and gas companies, necessitated a totally new approach to design preproduction, one of the most important areas of the company. After analyzing ways to improve this area of its operations, specialists at KONAR decided that the company needed to modernize its design technology, including introducing 3D-modeling, parametric design and a new generation of highly integrated computer-aided engineering (CAE) software.

“Working for oil and gas industry enterprises, we need to design products with a solution that utilizes a branched structure and complex geometry, as well as makes design re-use easy,” notes Yevgeny Bodrov, the head of the enterprise’s engineering center. “Upon completing a design, we have a large number of two-dimensional drawings, which are ineffective at visually presenting the final form of the product. Moreover, in making corrections, it’s very difficult to simultaneously change a large number of drawings using a 2D CAD system because, very often, changing small parts results in the need to change ten or more product components. There is no such problem using three-dimensional (3D) modeling, because the whole set of drawings is closely related to the 3D product model. Changing the model automatically changes the drawings.”

Accelerated modeling, design data management, simulation and so much more

Having agreed that a 3D modeling system was essential to realizing its business strategy, KONAR’s specialists set up a list of requirements for the system. In addition to specific computer-aided design (CAD) requirements, the list also included general requirements, including ease of implementation, national standards support and a user-friendly interface.

In assessing both domestic and international software solutions, KONAR experts enthusiastically favored Siemens Digital Industries Software’s Solid Edge® software, especially after learning that the system is widely used at international enterprises that specialize in similar endeavors.

Bodrov spoke in detail about the advantages of the system: “Solid Edge undoubtedly has a lot of advantages: easy-to-use interface, speed, and the ability to build assemblies with unlimited nesting. Moreover, there are several unique features that favorably distinguish Solid Edge from other systems in its class. First, using the 3D modeling tool of Solid Edge, unlike using a system with a traditional history tree, allows designers to design in the familiar environment of the product structure. Second, the unique synchronous technology capabilities of the software provide the power of parametric design with the flexibility of direct geometry editing and ad hoc modifying. Third, the built-in tools of design data management and embedded mechanisms of finite element analysis (FEA) make Solid Edge not just a means of 3D model construction, but also a tool for managing the design process and performing simulations.”

Dmitry Pryamikov, lead design engineer at KONAR, adds, “An important factor in the choice of Solid Edge was its excellent localization for Russian applications. Design drawings generated using Solid Edge are fully compliant with Russian ESKD (unified system of design documentation) standards.”

At the final stage of the selection process, KONAR held an open test in which the company’s specialists made 3D models of several test products using different CAD systems, comparing their speed, productivity and ease of use. The best results were demonstrated using Solid Edge.

With Siemens Digital Industries Software partner PLM Ural in the region, the company felt that a decision to go with Solid Edge would be augmented by high-quality implementation services, training at the partner’s education center and consistent system support, including on-site technical consultation.