Spotlight Solar builds solar structures that people walk up to, sit under, and use. Its solar trees, Haven shelters, and solar tables bring clean energy into campuses, ports, parks, and public spaces, places where you can charge a laptop or a phone without hunting for an outlet.
The products look simple from the outside. Behind each one is a set of parts, drawings, and revisions that has to stay aligned every time the design changes. Brad Carpenter, VP of Engineering at Spotlight Solar, is responsible for keeping them aligned. This story, told in his words, is about how Spotlight Solar turned drawing release from a manual verification exercise into a process the team trusts, and what that is worth in hours and in risk.
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Structures People Interact With Need Product Data Nobody Has to Second-Guess
Spotlight Solar’s mission is about experience as much as energy. As Brad describes it:
“We’re really making a safe, sheltered, enjoyable place outside for people to be with solar, where you don’t have to be near an outlet or a plug to get power.”
That ambition puts engineering in a demanding position. These are architectural structures installed in public settings, and each one is assembled from components that have to match the drawings exactly. When the product changes, the drawings, the revisions, and the bill of materials have to change together.
Manual Release Verification Breaks Down Long Before the Product Line Does
For a long time, keeping everything aligned depended on Brad’s own review. Every update meant checking the whole package again.
“Every time we released another drawing package for an update, all the drawings, all the revisions and the bill of materials all had to be verified to be accurate.”
Anyone who has run engineering release in a growing company recognizes what happened next. The checking itself is not difficult. The problem is that it never ends, it grows with every product and every revision, and it depends on one person’s attention on one particular day.
“Frankly, that’s a nightmare. I’m like, ‘Listen, guys, I can’t do this anymore. We got to have something better than this. I am done reviewing every drawing for every release.'”
A Dollar Mistake in Engineering Becomes a Hundred Dollar Mistake in the Field
The real cost of manual verification is not the hours spent reviewing. It is what slips through.
“A dollar mistake on my desk becomes a $10 mistake in manufacturing, becomes a $100 mistake in the field easily.”
Manufacturing people know this as the 1-10-100 rule, and it applies with extra force to products that are installed on site. An error caught at the engineer’s desk costs a correction. The same error caught in the shop costs scrap and rework. Caught in the field, it can mean a return trip, replacement parts, and a delayed project for a customer who is waiting on a finished installation.
A Complete BOM Makes Drawing-by-Drawing Checking Unnecessary
Spotlight Solar’s answer was not to review harder. It was to make the bill of materials the place where the information is already right.
“What I like most about OpenBOM is how easy it is to just build a solid bill of materials with all the information you need in it.”
When parts, drawings, and revisions are organized together in one structured BOM, a release stops being an audit of every individual drawing. The team works from product data it already trusts instead of reconstructing confidence from scratch before each package goes out.
Spotlight Solar designs in SOLIDWORKS, and the OpenBOM add-in puts the bill of materials right next to the model. When Brad opens an assembly such as the battery backup for a Haven structure, the multi-level BOM sits beside it in the same window, showing part numbers, quantities, revision letters, descriptions, and weights for every component. The engineer preparing a release is looking at the design and its BOM together, not comparing a drawing against a spreadsheet.
The OpenBOM add-in shows the multi-level BOM for a Haven battery backup assembly, with revisions and weights, right next to the SOLIDWORKS model.
Half a Day Back on Every Release Adds Up Quickly
The most direct result is time.
“I save hours, you know, probably half a day every time I release new drawings for the entire bill of materials.”
Half a day is easy to underestimate. Multiply it by every update across a product line that keeps evolving, and it becomes weeks of senior engineering time each year that goes back into design work instead of cross-checking.
The Safety Net Works Because Every Group Sees the Same Data
The time savings matter, but Brad describes the bigger value differently.
“Really, it’s a giant safety net for you, keeping all of your parts and all of your drawings well maintained, well communicated between all groups.”
A safety net only works if everyone is standing on it. When engineering, manufacturing, and the people working downstream all work from the same maintained BOM, there is no separate copy to drift out of date and no handoff where information has to be retyped or reinterpreted.
The scale makes the point. Spotlight Solar’s OpenBOM workspace holds more than 1,350 items and 336 BOMs, including 93 top-level BOMs, and the team manages documents such as factory assembly guides and installation guides as items in the same structure as the hardware they describe. Reviewing that much product data drawing by drawing on every release is exactly the work Brad was determined to stop doing.
Spotlight Solar’s OpenBOM workspace: more than 1,350 items, 336 BOMs, and 93 top-level BOMs, with assembly and installation guides managed alongside the parts.
Correct at the Start Means Correct at the End
Spotlight Solar’s experience comes down to one idea that connects directly back to the 1-10-100 rule. If the data is right where engineering starts, it stays right through manufacturing and into the field.
“If it’s correct where I start, it’s correct where it ends.”
If your team still verifies every drawing by hand before each release, there is a better way. Register for free to OpenBOM and see how a structured, shared bill of materials changes your release process.
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