Case Study: Freight Farms achieves scalable, efficient containerized farming with SOLIDWORKS

Growing Food Anywhere with Freight Farms

Freight Farms, a pioneer in containerized urban agriculture, needed a modular, space‑efficient design to fit a commercial hydroponic farm—the Leafy Green Machine—inside a shipping container while optimizing operator workflows and reducing costly physical prototypes. To tackle these constraints, Freight Farms used SolidWorks 3D CAD to model every component, test arrangements and operator interactions, and validate designs before fabrication.

SolidWorks helped Freight Farms quickly identify interference points with mates, use sheet‑metal features to accommodate fabricator constraints, and iterate designs without expensive prototypes, accelerating part completion. The resulting Leafy Green Machine maximizes cubic space and produces about 1,000 baby heads or 500 full heads of lettuce per week, with IoT controls for remote monitoring—demonstrating both production and design‑cycle improvements enabled by SolidWorks.

Freight Farms

Derek Baker

Designer