About Dudson
Richard Dudson opened his first factory in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent in 1800. Nine generations later, Dudson is still a privately owned family business. The oldest in the UK ceramic industry specialising in hospitality tableware. Their customers include Virgin Atlantic, Disney, Hilton and Sodexo (supplier to the London Olympic VIP hospitality suites).
Challenge
Before investing in SolidWorks Dudson were using Deskartes, a ceramic-specific design software package. Their tool makers were spending hours repairing geometry from models exported from Deskartes. STL files were often inconsistent, causing hours of painstaking re-work. Creating a product range was difficult and time consuming, seemingly minor tweaks such as changing embossed features onto 3D models would take hours. No regular update program meant few enhancements to the product. All of these factors were significantly slowing down their development process.
Solution
Immediately after investing in SolidWorks, the software was put through its paces being used to develop their new “Precision” range. After proving itself Dudson have made the strategic decision to develop all new product lines on SolidWorks. Concepts are developed with ease, and designs can be changed quickly at any stage of the development process. Dudson have also benefited from easy to share 3D files using the embedded 3D PDF creator.