Customer Spotlight: CCE London

CCE London is a specialist in the design, fabrication and installation of commercial kitchens and bars, supporting projects from initial concept through to completion. With over 30 years of experience and its own manufacturing facilities, the company combines 3D design and engineering with bespoke stainless steel fabrication to create tailored solutions for customers across the hospitality industry.

Charlie Pritchard, Production Designer at CCE London, spoke with Visiativ about how they use SOLIDWORKS and how it’s helped the company to thrive.

Why did you pick SOLIDWORKS?

Charlie: “As demand increased for fabrication over the years and as the business grew there was a need to speed up the process of manufacturing and reduce errors. SOLIDWORKS has been a vital tool to help CCE London solve any issues before we move to production. With the integration of SOLIDWORKS, CCE London are able to design sheet metal parts accurately. We can then send that information directly to the factory floor with confidence.”

CCE London’s Design Process

Charlie: “We use SOLIDWORKS as a part of the CCE process. Once the client is happy with the floorplan and design layout it’s moved to the production team. At this point we take the CAD files and start to build and engineer all the fabricated parts in the design. We use all the sheet metal features within SOLIDWORKS to engineer bespoke fabrication where we export flat forming drawings and assembly drawings for the factory to use to bend, cut and form.

“The team primarily uses the SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal tools, alongside myCADtools and its SheetMetalManufacturing functionality.”

Working with Visiativ

Charlie: “The guys at Visiativ have been great, whenever there’s an issue they are quick to resolve it. We’ve also done a couple of training sessions with Visiativ. These have been valuable and have contributed to the success of CCE London fabrication department.”

Would you recommend SOLIDWORKS?

Charlie: “Yes we would recommend, it can speed up the process from design to manufacture and helps to reduce errors. One example where SOLIDWORKS has benefited CCE London: An assembly with over 300 parts. Typically these would take around eight hours to produce the flat pattern drawings. However, with the additional add-ons and using some of the new tools in SOLIDWORKS, it took me an hour and a half, a saving of around six and a half hours. A huge saving on time per job!”

What’s next for CCE London?

Charlie: “Our future plans are to grow our fabrication team and share the knowledge we’ve learned to upcoming engineers. From there we’re excited to see CCE London continue to grow from strength to strength with the help of SOLIDWORKS and the team at Visiativ.”

To learn more about CCE London and the work they do, you can visit the CCE London website here.