Solutions for efficient product design

B&W – A Success Story

We specialize in the development of add-on applications for Creo Parametric that will make your daily design work easier. Our customers include large companies as well as small and medium-sized enterprises from all kinds of industries. Let’s take a brief look back.

How it all began...

The Chair of Design Engineering at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg decided to introduce PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER 3D CAD system as early as 1992 in order to advance research around knowledge-based design systems.

Stefan Bachschuster and Johannes Weber, at the time research assistants at the department, were able to get to know the new system in a cooperation project with Siemens and use it for initial automation tasks. It quickly became clear that the programming interface supplied with the system opened up previously unknown possibilities for working with the CAD system.

At the same time, large companies such as Bosch or Braun began to use Pro/ENGINEER productively. In the course of daily use, the question of how to handle complex routine tasks, e.g. the derivation of drawings, more efficiently arose more and more frequently.

This created a need – and thus a market – for professional add-on applications that can automate special workflows and tasks in the design process.

When Stefan Bachschuster and Johannes Weber completed their doctorates five years later, they were among the world’s leading knowledge carriers and could already look back on close collaboration with the software development team of the manufacturer PTC. The projects started at the university continued to demand ongoing support, continuation and intensification – which was beyond the existing framework.

Thus, in 1997, B&W Software GmbH, based in Erlangen, was founded as a spin-off of the chair.

The cornerstone of today’s Expert Moldbase Extension (EMX)

A first project led the young company into the field of injection mold design. This laid the foundation for today’s Expert Moldbase Extension (EMX).

PTC also quickly recognized the value and possibilities of B&W’s expansion and integrated the software into its own portfolio. This was the starting signal for the long-standing partnership with PTC, which continues to this day, and the B&W Software success story. With individual industrial projects and two additional industry solutions for profile design (AFX) and the design of punching and bending sequence tools (PDX), B&W subsequently experienced stable growth.

Despite its global orientation and increasing need for space, B&W has always remained loyal to the region. Today, 15 highly qualified employees work at B&W in modern offices in the center of Erlangen. Continuous further developments, future-oriented perspectives and a sustainable, increasing wealth of knowledge – based on many years of experience – make B&W the world’s leading supplier of automation processes for Creo Parametric.

And in the future, too, we would like to offer high-quality and innovative software. To this end, we are constantly educating ourselves and are in close contact with our partner PTC.

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