Team Waterloop Using OpenBOM To Organize and Socialize Design Data and BOMs.

Team Waterloop
Team Waterloop

Team Waterloop is a student team based out of the University of Waterloo’s Sedra Student Design Centre in Waterloo, Ontario. Together, this multidisciplinary group of students is designing and building some of the most advanced Hyperloop transportation technology of the future.

For the past five years, Waterloop has been working on validating Hyperloop technology with the goal of building a full-size, fully scalable, levitating Hyperloop pod by 2025!

Comprising nearly 100 students, Team Waterloop has chosen OpenBOM to organize and socialize their design data and Bills of Material for the entire project.

Krista Porter is the business lead for Team Waterloop and has a wide range of responsibilities across many aspects of the project says, “OpenBOM is a ginormous step up from a spreadsheet, the cloud sharing allows us to easily share responsibilities of maintaining the design data with many individuals on the team.”  

In her role as administrator for Marketing, sponsorship, and social media Krista finds herself always looking for the latest design and, “OpenBOM assures us all that we are looking at the latest-and-greatest version of the data at all times”.

The lead of the Mechanical team, Pascal Voyer-Nguyen has been on the project since 2017 and is leading the design efforts of the physical prototypes to ensure Team Waterloop continues to improve on past success in the upcoming SpaceX Hyperloop competitions.

“We are focusing on the specific technology of the Hyperloop system,” says Pascal. “We have three specific engineering teams of Software, Mechanical and Electrical engineers and a specialized team for the Linear Induction Motor (LIM) [the pod’s propulsion system].  The team uses SolidWorks and Altium together with the OpenBOM integrations to create and maintain BOMs.”

OpenBOM brings ease of collaboration to members of traditionally siloed engineering disciplines. The OpenBOM Team subscription gives administrators the ability to quickly and easily provision new team members in a matter of minutes so they can consume and contribute to the team design almost immediately.

“OpenBOM brings PLM to our team of students in an easy-to-learn, and relearn, program,” says Pascal. “As people transition off and back to the team they can quickly contribute to the design, OpenBOM frees our engineers to pursue design and to invest more in the goal of the team”

The Team Waterloop pod is nearly complete and the group has turned to the business case of developing a test track facility and ultimately a functioning prototype.

  More info and photos about the Team Waterloop project can be found here: 

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