Messier-Dowty: Boosting productivity for aircraft landing gear design

Messier-Dowty is the world’s leading supplier of aircraft landing gear, providing critical assemblies for civil aircraft manufacturers such as Airbus, Boeing, Dassault, Fairchild Dornier, and Bombardier. In the military sector, their landing gear supports Aerospatiale/DASA, Bell/Agusta, British Aerospace, Boeing, and EuroFighter. With over 15,000 aircraft worldwide equipped with Messier-Dowty landing systems, reliability and precision in engineering documentation are crucial for maintenance, modifications, and future design improvements.

To manage thousands of technical drawings and microfilms, Messier-Dowty needed an efficient digital solution that allowed rapid updates, edits, and conversions without requiring additional CAD licenses.

Challenge

Messier-Dowty maintains complex archives of paper-based engineering drawings and microfilms that document landing gear modifications and tooling requirements. The main challenges included:

• Slow manual edits: Engineers relied on hand-drawn updates, requiring physical alterations to scanned images, leading to costly and time-consuming processes.
• Lack of integration between raster and vector files: Existing workflows required engineers to use separate tools for scanned microfilm files and CAD vector drawings, making updates inefficient.
• Collaboration and data sharing: Sub-contractors needed up-to-date landing gear specifications for accurate cost assessments and production planning.

A comprehensive raster editing solution was necessary to streamline workflows, reduce manual workloads, and improve drawing accessibility across Messier-Dowty’s global locations.

Solution

Messier-Dowty adopted GTXImageCAD™ PLUS 2000, allowing engineers to:

• Import vector design files from Expert CAD® while simultaneously working with raster files from scanned drawings and microfilms.
• Modify drawings directly in GTXImageCAD™ PLUS 2000, utilizing advanced drafting tools to edit both raster and vector files without requiring a separate CAD package.
• Convert finalized drawings into TIF raster format, making them accessible company-wide via the Cimage® Drawing Retrieval and Management System for viewing and printing.
• Streamline communication with sub-contractors, ensuring accurate tender documents for project costing and production planning.

Result

Messier-Dowty achieved remarkable improvements in engineering documentation workflows:

• Manual editing inefficiencies were eliminated, as engineers could now modify raster and vector elements directly in GTXImageCAD™ PLUS 2000.
• Drawing updates became 20 times more productive, accelerating tooling modifications and landing gear redesigns.
• Collaboration with sub-contractors improved, ensuring accurate specifications and seamless production coordination.
• Networked access to engineering files enabled teams across Messier-Dowty's global locations to retrieve, view, and print updated schematics efficiently.

"We estimate that we are now at least 20 times more productive in our drawing updates."
- Ian Makin, Messier-Dowty