Carl Zeiss Meditec Reduces New Product Introduction Cycle with PTC CoCreate

Virtual Prototyping Speeds Development And Shortens Time To Market.

NEEDHAM, Mass - PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC), The Product Development Company®, today turns the spotlight on the success of the Cirrus™ HD-OCT – a high definition retinal scanner which has now been established as the new clinical standard for retinal care. This product was successfully launched ahead of schedule as a result of Carl Zeiss Meditec’s product development process which uses PTC CoCreate explicit CAD software. CoCreate offers great flexibility at the innovation and design stage, and when coupled with PTC CoCreate Model Manager it provides efficient model sharing between engineers for concurrent design.

Carl Zeiss Meditec is the worldwide leading provider of system solutions to diagnose and treat eye disorders. The Cirrus HD-OCT high definition retinal scanner uses spectral domain technology to capture 3D line scans of the retina. The high resolution images allow better visualization and understanding of disease pathogens, assisting the examination of patients with retinal degenerations, uncommon macular disorders and glaucoma.

In order to accelerate the product’s introduction to market the Carl Zeiss Meditec development team relied upon CoCreate as part of a complete 3D virtual prototyping process that allowed the team to eliminate one cycle of physical prototypes. As a result, the company introduced the Cirrus HD-OCT to market five months ahead of a typical development schedule. Carl Zeiss Meditec used CoCreate Modeling and its associativity with finite element modeling software packages to virtually prototype and optimize the thermally sensitive mounts for the optical components.

As is typical when developing new technology, the product development team had to adapt to evolving requirements. By using an explicit approach to 3D product development, Carl Zeiss Meditec was able to quickly and easily adapt the original design. Additionally, the company automated its data management processes by using CoCreate Model Manager to extend the use of the 3D product data to downstream departments, ensuring that its manufacturing, procurement and supply chain departments had controlled access to the most up-to-date product design data.

“The flexibility of CoCreate 3D modeling allowed the engineers to be creative, which enabled us to develop a novel and extremely compact instrument in a shorter than usual schedule” said Chris Baker, director of mechanical engineering, Carl Zeiss Meditec. “CoCreate Model Manager made it easy to access and reuse existing components on this project while ensuring that engineers always had the latest part revisions during design.”

“Many customers like Carl Zeiss Meditec face short lead times and come from fast-paced industries where the ability to respond to unpredictable product and requirement changes is critical to their success,” said Martin Neumueller, director, product management, PTC. “The explicit modeling approach provided by CoCreate allows product development teams to quickly create and modify 3D product designs and provides flexibility to make unexpected and radical changes to a product design until late in the development process. This capability was critical to the success achieved by Carl Zeiss Meditec.”