CAD, CAM, CFD and stereolithography in switchgear design

Significant changes have taken place within the engineering design department, most of which are due to advances in digital computing. The main aims of the design engineer have probably never changed, but less time is now required to be spent on product development while both higher quality and reliability still must be ensured. Today these aims are being achieved more rapidly than at any other period in history. In the switchgear industry, advances in technology have allowed the number of breaks across a circuit breaker to be dramatically reduced, thus reducing the number of components. A typical example of this is the development of a 400 kV circuit breaker where previously an air blast circuit breaker required some twelve thousand components; today an equivalent puffer circuit breaker only requires in the region of eight hundred components. With these reductions it is not unreasonable to expect the reliability of the products to improve, along with the customers´ demands for longer intervals between planned maintenance