Wood Stone Corp. captured American’s love for high-quality pizza and many other dishes when it started its stone-hearth cooking equipment business, eventually becoming world-renowned and the leading manufacturer in the industry. The company is especially popular for its wood-fired oven used by famous clients, including Chef Wolfgang Puck, California Pizza Kitchen, and Washington-based restaurant The Rock.

Unlike many other stone-hearth suppliers, Wood Stone strives to design and build every aspect of its own ovens. However this ambition, combined with a steady flow of custom oven orders and new business wins, became a huge burden on its AutoCAD system, which was only 2D-capable. At Wood Stone, one employee can wear many hats, so the company needed a CAD system that was equally versatile.

For many years, engineers at Wood Stone created 2D drawings of oven components using AutoCAD. They sent these drawings to suppliers that fabricated parts, which were then brought back to Wood Stone and assembled. There were several drawbacks to the 2D approach. For one thing it was difficult to envision how parts fit together.

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