Case Study: Thrush Aircraft achieves 12x development throughput and grows annual sales from 4 to 54 with SOLIDWORKS

Gaining altitude in agri-aircraft development with SOLIDWORKS® Solutions

Thrush Aircraft, a designer and manufacturer of specialized aerial application aircraft, faced the challenge of overhauling its product development platform to support higher throughput and seize market opportunities. To modernize and accelerate development, Thrush adopted SolidWorks solutions—standardizing on SolidWorks Premium for 3D design and analysis and adding SolidWorks Simulation Professional, SolidWorks Electrical (Schematics and 3D), and SolidWorks PDM Professional for data and workflow management.

By implementing SolidWorks tools, Thrush cut design cycles in half, grew development throughput 12× (from one to 12 projects annually), and increased aircraft sales from about 4 to 54 per year, while dramatically improving design accuracy and virtually eliminating part rework. SolidWorks also helped enable a key partnership with GE Aviation (leading to roughly 110 GE-engined planes sold), and allowed Thrush to automate design and manufacturing workflows for sustained growth.

Thrush Aircraft

Fernando Alvarado

Lead Design Engineer