Cadonix announced the world’s first cloud based CAD tool for automotive electrical wiring design, analysis and report documentation. Arcadia was developed from scratch with ease of use at its heart; using and enhancing the latest cloud software development technologies and practices. The company is also announcing its first sale of Arcadia, to one of the leading global manufacturers of cabling systems for the automotive industry AQ Wiring Systems.
Commenting, the CEO of Cadonix, Andrew Armstrong said, “The harness is the second most expensive assembly of a modern vehicle after the drive train. Arcadia has been designed from the ground up with the single objective in mind, which is to help the electrical designer achieve the optimal design as quickly as possible and to give them complete confidence that the system will work exactly as intended. Arcadia is an end-end solution, taking a project from design and analysis through to full manufacturing engineering documentation.”
He continued, “Using our patent pending cloud based technology, we are offering customers a solution that is economic, scalable and future proof. It is easy and quick to switch to Arcadia, and globally distributed design teams can access their projects at any time through an HTML 5 compliant web browser. Customers can import databases and designs from other leading wiring harness design environments into Arcadia.”
AQ Wiring Systems is the first publicly announced customer of Cadonix Arcadia. Mikael Alvarsson, Managing Director of AQ Design said, “We have an aggressive plan to grow from our strong base into Central and Western Europe. We need to partner with suppliers and adopt design environments that are future proof and offer us the flexibility to compete effectively. Arcadia is an adaptable and intuitive environment that gives our design teams new scope for their creativity. Throughout the adoption process, we have found the Cadonix team exceptionally responsive and easy to work with. Their great willingness to introduce new features and adapt their tool to our needs was a major factor in our decision.”
Arcadia CAD is an easy to use, groundbreaking software tool offering schematic design, animated circuit simulation and analysis, electrical networking, harness design and full design rule checking for wire harness layout and manufacture. Using the integrated simulation capabilities, engineers can be assured that their design intent is carried through into the physical implementation. Arcadia interfaces with the most popular 3D MCAD and enterprise wide PLM and ERP tools, allowing projects to transition easily and smoothly into manufacture. A particular strength of Arcadia is real-time animated simulation which paints a clear virtual picture of the electrical system and how it will behave in deployment. Using Arcadia's simulation capabilities, engineers can be confident that the design will work as intended - eliminating the need for a physical prototype. Any errors are trapped early in the design process, reducing the design cycle and improving design quality.
Arcadia includes a comprehensive symbols and parts database. It provides for wires, motors, lamps, connectors, in-line connectors, splices, terminals, switches, relays, fuses diodes, LEDs, resistors, batteries, ECU’s ground points, page / wire breaks, and more. Customised reports can be created to suit individual requirements. These include a full bill-of-materials, connectivity lists, wire usage, simulation and analysis reports, and many more. Reports can detail materials, terminal and wire lists including lengths, colours tags and BOM information.
Customers can quickly import databases and designs from many legacy systems. Using Cadonix patented cloud based technology customers can access Arcadia from any HTML5 compliant web browser once the license has been activated on the server. Customers have the option of hosting the tool on their own internal server, or accessing it securely from a Cadonix geographically collocated server. New releases and features are normally offered immediately and free of charge to existing customers. Cadonix offers a free 20-day evaluation license giving access to the full functionality of Arcadia using the customer’s own data. Full support is provided during the evaluation period. Arcadia is available on a rental basis for short term projects or can be purchased outright.
Cadonix was formed in 2011 specifically to bring to market a completely new concept in automotive harness design. Its development team has spent the last 4 years creating and optimising Arcadia. The company is led by Dr Andrew Armstrong, CEO, Fergus Kendal, Technical Director and Jon Collins, Business Development Director. Andrew's background of strong, bleeding edge research and development into cloud and graphics software techniques allows Arcadia to be a best-in-class cloud application and his broad engineering knowledge filters down into a tool built by engineers for engineers. Fergus' manufacturing and design experience in the automotive engineering industry has given him a breadth of experience of existing electrical engineering tools, practices and harness manufacture. Jon was formally product line director for Mentor Graphics cabling group and director of R&D for Dassault Systèmes equipment and systems division and has over 20 years of industry experience.
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