Saturday, December 14, 2013: RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE:ECM), the world’s leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, has achieved a series of major milestones in user download figures for three of the company’s popular free online design resources accessible via the RS website and from DesignSpark.com, the online resource hub for the engineering community.
The 3D CAD model programme has attained the highest download figure for a single online resource available from RS, with a total of more than 500,000 model downloads from the RS website since the programme’s launch in 2010. This figure represents a rise of almost 50% since the beginning of the year, and has been hastened by the recent release of DesignSpark Mechanical, the free, intuitive 3D solid modelling tool co-developed by RS and SpaceClaim. The RS 3D model programme now offers access to more than 35,000 3D models from over 60 leading manufacturers in all of the most common 3D CAD formats.
DesignSpark Mechanical has delivered unprecedented download results, logging 100,000 within the first two months since the tool was launched in September this year. Half of these downloads were recorded after just two weeks of the tool’s availability – statistics that show the keen interest in affordable, easy-to-use 3D design software.
With a total of 100,000 downloads in the first twelve months of availability, the company’s extensive ModelSource component library of PCB schematics and footprints is also a major success for RS, further demonstrating the high value placed by engineers on free, downloadable time- and cost-saving resources.
“Lack of time is one of the biggest challenges facing engineers, and these significant download results prove the increasing popularity of online tools and resources,” said Mark Cundle, Head of Technical Marketing at RS. “The appetite for 3D design has also really taken off, and engineers all over the world are reporting time-savings of up to two days in the design cycle when using our online models compared to creating them manually. This is clearly a huge advantage in achieving faster time-to-market and, when used in conjunction with our new free DesignSpark Mechanical 3D design tool, engineers can slash even more time off the design process.”
The 3D CAD models are available to download completely free-of-charge from the company’s 3D CAD microsite, or via the ModelSource component library at www.designspark.com/modelsource. DesignSpark Mechanical is available for free download from www.designspark.com/mechanical.
