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