Branch Technology

Tennessee-based Branch Technology designs and manufactures commercial facade systems, including rainscreens and mega panel systems that offer articulated surfaces. Inspired by nature’s efficient cellular structures, the company developed a construction-scale, freeform 3D-printing technique and direct digital manufacturing approach called cellular fabrication (C-Fab®) to enable architects, designers and innovators to imagine, compose and construct complex design structures.

Branch Technology required software that could help it process complex geometries to produce many components for a variety of different digital fabrication methods. It also wanted to implement a digital process that eliminated digital fabrication bottlenecks, could be easily updated, and yielded high fidelity parts.

Using Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE® Cloud platform, Branch Technology created a digital model of an intelligent template that included fabrication instructions, quality control metrics, cut files and digital production elements. This was used in a project in Alabama, where a model consisting of 102 panels – each with around 70 custom elements – was generated within the platform during the digital production phase. The template, created in CATIA, housed geometric configurations and components as logic.

Branch Technology achieved 100% accuracy in modeling information using the 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud platform. As a result, every panel is manufactured correctly, and customers benefit from improved costing through accurate bill of materials (BOMs) for manufacturing. The company received a great deal of support and training from Dassault Systèmes, and it also remains active in a user community with other like-minded experts in its field.