AUTOMOTIVE AND TRANSPORTATIONeNovates

Improving development efficiency for electric vehicle chargers

Products
Solid Edge, PADS
Business challenges
Develop products in shorttimeframes
Integrate multidisciplinary
design workflows
Eliminate information silos inproduct development
Improve communication with
contract manufacturers
Keys to success
Implement integrated solutions
for mechanical, electrical andelectronic design and technicalpublication

eNovates uses Solid Edge
portfolio and PADS to integratemechanical, electrical andelectronic design
Supporting the electric mobilityecosystem
eNovates is a rapidly growing technology
company driven by mobility and sustainability. The company was founded in 2010 as athink-tank in a business club focused on
developing and producing charging systems
and energy management software to support the electric mobility ecosystem.
eNovates is expanding in the European
Union and has an important market share indelivering public charging infrastructure,with about 80,000 charging stations
installed in early 2021. The company isexpanding its reach into smart energy
management and recently added a vehicleto-grid (V2G) charger to its portfolio. Its
customers are charge point operators(CPOs) – companies who sell charge points,
connect them to networks and provide
maintenance. eNovates serves its CPO
partners as an original equipment
manufacturer (OEM).
“Some of our customers approach us withno more than an idea for the final product.
In this case we can base ourselves on a setof generic platform components and products to realize the best-fit custom productfor the customer,” explains Stijn Vispoel,
research and development (R&D) manager

Rely on training and support
from ADOPT id PLM, a Siemens
solution partnerResults
Streamlined design iterations
Reduced errors
Prepared thorough and accurate
design and manufacturing
documentation

siemens.com/software

at eNovates. “Others come to us with an
enclosure and ask us to develop a charger
for it. We do full projects for them, and all
solutions include mechanical, electrical,electronic and software components.”
Product development for rapidlychanging requirements
Technologies, regulations, standards andcustomer requirements are evolving quickly
in the electric mobility ecosystem. “The biggest challenge is the constantly and rapidlychanging guidelines in the market,” Vispoelsays. “We have to be on top of all the newdevelopments and we really need a newproduct every year. It’s important to haveenough R&D capacity to keep up with thechanging requirements for charge points.
Another factor is the different regulations indifferent countries in Europe. For example,customers in the Netherlands have different
requirements than customers in France.”
Vispoel leads a team of project managers
and support personnel with varying backgrounds in mechanical, electrical andelectronic engineering. “We begin each project with a prototyping phase where wedevelop the printed circuit boards we need,
the electrical wiring and mechanical components,” Vispoel explains. “Once we do all thechecks on the digital design files, we makesome prototypes and do test runs to confirm
that they comply with the customer requirements and regulations. Then we enter what
we call the alpha phase, redesigning any
components that need modifications. We
make another batch of the product, around
30 to 50 chargers, and do another validation
run, performing temperature and high-voltage tests. We also have customers who usethem to charge cars and run additionaltests.”
In the next stage of development, the betaphase, eNovates makes necessary designmodifications and orders a new batch of theproduct. “We go directly to certification labs
with the beta chargers, and place about 100chargers in the field with our customers, so
we are certain that the product is mature
enough and it’s fully certified to go into theWe didn’t find this level of integration
anywhere else in the engineering
software market.”
Stijn Vispoel
Research and Development Manager
eNovates

market,” says Vispoel. “At that stage
we typically don’t develop the hardware
further – the focus is on finishing the software. Finally we go into production for ourcustomers.”
Disparate systems and information silos
Over its history, eNovates had acquired
engineering software systems for mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), twodifferent printed circuit board (PCB) design
solutions, and a system for electrical wiringand harness design. The systems had been
selected based on engineers’ prior experience and partners’ and customers’ use of
the solutions
This software landscape had some limitations: The MCAD system lacked electricaldesign functionality, the wire harness designsystem had no 3D capabilities and neither
system easily exchanged data with the PCB
design tools. The four separate and disconnected software solutions created
information silos that hampered interdisciplinary collaboration. Each software
package used different data formats that
impeded transfer of information between
disciplines. Because the software was purchased from different vendors, the newversions of each software solution were notsynchronized with the others and eNovates
had four different sources of support.

Using this approach, the mechanical design “We see Siemens as a very
team sent their design models to the electri- big technology provider, abrand that delivers quality
cal team, which amended the designs andand a market leader in
returned them to the mechanical team.
software.”
These iterative design exchanges continued
over weeks and months, resulting in huge
Stijn Vispoel
design and prototyping costs and productResearch and Development
launch delays. The information silos andManager
barriers between systems made it difficult
eNovatesfor eNovates to fit electrical designs intomechanical spaces. They also created problems in communicating design information
to contract manufacturers. eNovates wassending confusing and disconnected detailsof the design for manufacturing, which
resulted in issues with requirements andregulations.
Integrating engineering disciplines
and solutions
To eliminate the workflow inefficiencies,
eNovates searched for an integrated software toolset that better suited the fast paceof development. From contacts at Ghent
University, the eNovates team was introduced to Solid Edge® software, which is apart of the Xcelerator portfolio of solutions
and services from Siemens Digital Industries
Software and a leading mainstream productdevelopment platform.
eNovates contacted ADOPT id PLM, aSiemens solution partner in Belgium. Afteran initial meeting, ADOPT id prepared aThe biggest challenge is the constantly andrapidly changing guidelines in the market.”
Stijn Vispoel
Research and Development ManagereNovatespresentation for eNovates that included
Solid Edge and its integrated electricaldesign and technical publishing tools. The
demonstration illustrated how all of theSolid Edge mechanical design, electricalwire routing and harness design, and technical publishing applications were fully
integrated and used the same data format
and user interface conventions. ADOPT id
also proposed Siemens EDA (formerlyMentor) PADS Professional software, also
integrated with Solid Edge, for PCB designand verification (PADS is supported bySiemens EDA solution partner Innofour).
The presentation also emphasized the bidirectional data flows and associativity acrossthe mechanical, electrical and electronics
domains – design modifications in each discipline are automatically reflected in theothers.
eNovates quickly made the decision tochoose the proposed Siemens solution forseveral reasons. “We wanted all of our software tools to work together so we could
have a streamlined design flow for our fastpaced development,” Vispoel explains. “Forcomplex products with high quality standards and efficient production, we needed
to transfer information very efficiently. TheSiemens software offered us a better match
to help us make fewer errors in our designiterations. We didn’t find this level of integration anywhere else in the engineering
software market. And we regard Siemens as
a very big technology provider, a market
leader in software and a brand that deliversquality.”

Documenting designs for manufacturing“We fully outsource our production,” Vispoelsays. “We deliver the contract manufacturer
a full package of information on how theproduct has to be made, how to test it, how
to package it. And then they translate what
we do in engineering into making the product. They source every component, makeevery PCB and test everything based on theinstructions we provide.”With its previous software solutions, eNovates could deliver a 3D file depicting themechanical design, electrical drawings, andthree separate bills of materials (BOMs) fordrawing mechanical, electrical and PCB content. However, the information was not wellintegrated, and its delivery was notefficient.

Solutions/services
Solid Edge 3D Design
Solid Edge Electrical Design
Solid Edge Technical Publications
solidedge.siemens.com
Siemens PADS Professionalsiemens.com/pads
Customer’s primary businesseNovates is a rapidly growing
technology company that isdriven by mobility and sustainability. The company is focusedon developing and producing
charging systems and management software to support theelectric mobility ecosystem.
eNovates’ current product portfolio spans from fully modular
alternating current (AC)charging stations for every
need, to direct current (DC)home chargers and a full suiteof smart-charging software.
www.enovates.com
Customer location
Lokeren, East Flanders
Belgium
Solution Provider Partners
ADOPT id PLM
www.adopt-id.com
Innofour BV
www.innofour.com

Solid Edge Technical Publishing software
offered eNovates a superior solution for preparing information for manufacturing. Now,
the manufacturing package includes a unified BOM for the entire product, which isespecially useful for pricing. For PCB manufacturing, a standard format file producedusing PADS Professional software includes
information about each physical board layer
and coordinates for PCB objects like copper
traces, vias, pads and solder masks. For electrical manufacturing, Solid Edge TechnicalPublishing software extracts the list ofcables and their locations, connections, cut
lengths, and torques required on their connecting screws, all produced using the Solid
Edge electrical design software. With theSolid Edge 3D model, the publishing software fully and visually describes each step inthe product assembly and testing processes.

Streamlined workflows boost efficiency
With the new integrated toolset, eNovates
benefits from improved efficiency throughout
the development and manufacturing cycle.
“This was a big win for us,” Vispoel says.
Solid Edge 3D design software includes
synchronous technology, which enables
eNovates to edit CAD data from any source
and leverages built-in product data management and cloud collaboration tools. SolidEdge electrical design satisfies eNovates’
need for 3D wiring and harness design andvalidation in mechanical assemblies.
Solid Edge technical publishing has helped
eNovates improve the clarity, accuracy andcompleteness of manufacturing informationin comprehensive case files. The integrationof PADS Professional with Solid Edge hashelped improved communication between
PCB designers and mechanical engineers.

We wanted all of our softwaretools to work together so we could
have a streamlined design flowfor our fast-paced development.”
Stijn Vispoel
Research and Development Manager
eNovates

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