Why did Solid Solutions add SWOOD to their portfolio? – An interview with Adam

Can you introduce yourself?

Hey, so my name is Adam Humphries. I work for Solid Solutions in the UK and I’m the product manager for SWOOD for Solid Solutions.

For how long have you been using SWOOD?

So, I’ve been using and working with SWOOD for about seven years now.

Why did you decide to add SWOOD to your portfolio?

I think in the UK, mostly furniture, joinery, and point of sale companies are still quite heavily 2D. So, we started selling SWOOD in the UK back in 2014.

It’s become one of our fastest growing products because there are a lot of furniture companies that are still very 2D based. So that was quite a big market for the kind of automation and benefits that 3D kind of brought on board. So as a business for Solid Solutions, SWOOD has been a very good partnership and it’s worked very well for the past few years.

What did SWOOD bring to your catalogue?

I guess from a SWOOD perspective there are several aspects to it.

But for our customers and obviously, it helps with the design process and helps in the efficiency and standardization across the board. I guess the big benefit for us is the ability to connect with CNC machines so we can kind of have the start-to-finish process from design to production.

And that’s quite a big thing for us and our customers, that everything is all in one software. They don’t have much different software they have to use, but you can all pack it up under one umbrella or solution.

What do you think about the SWOOD support?

Extremely helpful.

I think we do ask them a lot of questions and they never say no. They’re always very, very helpful. So, Olivier and Nicolas especially. Always, always there to help answer questions. So, yeah, when I first started, I was emailing five times a day, a lot.

Hopefully, that’s reduced for me. But yeah, we always ask questions and they’re always extremely helpful and they always go that extra mile to help us.

How was the SWOOD training process?

For us as resellers, whenever we bring someone else new into the team, they always go through the full training process before they will be able to assist our customers. So, they’ll go and sit on all our courses, they’ll come out and shadow me or some of the other senior staff to learn the process and learn the industry.

From a customer’s point of view, it depends on the size of the company and what its timeline is like. But from a training perspective, we essentially run generally if they’re looking at all products, we’d run the SWOOD Design training course.

And then a few days or a few weeks after that, we’d run the SWOOD CAM course, which includes the nesting module. We’d go on-site and assist them with the setup implementation installation.

We’d also assist them with any other further work or services that they need. And then throughout the entire process, we’d be offering them support on any questions or any issues that they’d come across.

What are the advantages of using SWOOD?

I mean, there is a lot. I think if you look at it from a design perspective, you’ve got a standardization across the design team, so everyone’s not all doing the same thing at the same time.

One person creates it and then everyone else can reuse it. So, it allows you to standardize that work across the design team, theoretically saving your time and energy.

I think from the design perspective as well, being able to see something in 3D when we go to prospect and they provide us with the 2D drawings, can be very difficult to interpret, but also the designs aren’t always accurate because you can do whatever you want on 2D, and one view doesn’t necessarily match to another view.

So, with SolidWorks and SWOOD Design, you can accurately see the design, and interrogate to understand how it all fits together. So, you can be confident that if you make that design, it’s going to be suitable from a common nesting point of view. Because you can take the 3D models directly, you’re sure that you know what you’re going to produce matches the 3D.

And I think for customers to be able to see what they’re going to produce and understand how it’s going to be made, I think is also important for them as well and especially in the report.

So, the documentation that the report generates is powerful as well. So, another useful aspect of it.

What do you think about the SWOOD Days?

I mean, I love the SWOOD Days. I think this is the fifth time, I’ve visited Montpellier and it’s always been such an amazing time. I mean, I’ve been using SWOOD now for seven years and even this week I’ve still learned things. I’ve had the opportunity to speak to the guys at EFICAD and see what they’re doing and what they get involved in what and what they’re thinking and why where the software is going. So, I think the SWOOD DAYS is brilliant from that perspective and beneficial from a business point of view.

But obviously, it’s a lovely time in France. You know, the weather’s beautiful, the people are lovely. So yeah, it’s nice.