'The future is curved'

If it is up to Kersten, the future is curved. The specialist in curved steel and aluminum structures is active on several continents and has an impressive portfolio that includes the Burj Khalifa and the Opus in Dubai, and closer to home, the facades of Naturalis in Leiden and those of L'Oreal's headquarters in Paris. All masterpieces are fully 3D engineered in ISD's HiCAD. A conscious choice.

Kersten is a market leader in the production of bent components in steel and aluminum. "We started in 1960 in Wanssum on the river Maas as a ship repairer with a specialty in bending technology," begins Mike Minten, Managing Director of Kersten Netherlands. "That specialism has now been our core business for many decades. From now four production locations in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and the United Arab Emirates, we work on the most unique bent components for application in architecture, offshore, mobility and equipment construction."

Switching between 2D and 3D

AutoCAD was the standard at Kersten for many years. "Because we were increasingly dealing with 3D structures, in 2009 we expressed the desire to invest in a 3D drawing program," says Marc Wijnhoven, Team Leader Project Engineering. "In AutoCAD, it was difficult and especially a lot of work to get 3D constructions insightful. That's why we did thorough research and examined several programs. HiCAD came out on top. Primarily because of its practical approach to structures and its ability to switch very quickly between 2D and 3D. Complex contours are sometimes difficult to dimension. The combination of 2D/3D allows us, for example, to add auxiliary lines in the drawing so that the dimensions are always clear to the production environment. This significantly reduces error margins."

Perfect support

Another strong point of HiCAD, according to Wijnhoven, is the support from ISD Benelux. "We can count on perfect support from professionals in the field with expertise. The lines of communication are short, also towards the programmers in Germany. If we miss certain functionalities, for example, this is taken up seriously and often included in a subsequent update." Meanwhile, HiCAD has also been rolled out in Kersten's Middle East branch. "The program has been well received here and is definitely proving its added value," Minten knows. "After all, for architectural steel construction, the Middle East is Valhalla. Architects are not inhibited in their creativity; it can't be challenging enough. The trick is to maintain the architect's design and translate it into workable production drawings. Without HiCAD, this is impossible. For example, we contributed to many different buildings of the Expo2020 in Dubai, such as the complex shapes of the prestigious Al Wasl Dome."

The facades of Naturalis in Leiden and the extension of L'Oreal's headquarters in Paris are also from Kersten's mind. "The latter in particular is exceptional because of its seemingly free form of curved tubes, nodes and strips made of steel and aluminum. Each component is unique," says Wijnhoven. "It is a fine example of a project in which steel and aluminum reinforce each other very well in facade construction and in which HiCAD once again proves its added value."