Motrec, a North American manufacturer of customizable electric industrial vehicles, has long prided itself on building solutions tailored to the unique needs of its customers. But with a wide range of product configurations and constant design changes, the company faced major challenges in producing accurate, up-to-date parts catalogs and product manuals.

“At Motrec, we don’t have the luxury of long development cycles,” says Marc Decelles, Engineering Coordinator and Project Manager. “Every project is custom and fast.”

Challenge: Custom Products and Countless Configurations

Motrec builds electric vehicles with highly customized configurations for a variety of industries from manufacturing and warehouse operations to tourism. “One day it’s a fire truck, the next day it’s a maintenance truck,” explains Marc Decelles, Engineering Coordinator and Project Manager at Motrec. This level of customization made it nearly impossible to maintain accurate, up-to-date parts manuals using static PDFs.

The legacy approach relied on the team manually updating documentation, which often fell out of sync with the products actually being delivered. As a result, customers struggled to identify the correct replacement parts, and Motrec’s support team faced growing demands.

When Motrec transitioned from CAD software to improve 3D design fidelity, the team also restructured their entire CAD-to-BOM pipeline. This led to a new opportunity: make the 3D models the single source of truth for both internal teams and external customers.

Solution: Zea Parts Catalog

Working closely with Zea’s team, Motrec deployed Zea parts catalogs that connected their CAD data to self-serve web applications. Customers can now enter a serial number, explore a live 3D digital twin of their vehicle, and identify exactly the parts they need with confidence.

“The biggest benefit is that our customers don’t need to call the parts team anymore,” Decelles says. “They can view the exact model they purchased and select the right parts themselves. It’s fast, visual, and accurate.”

Zea’s ability to highlight only sellable parts and dim the rest helped simplify complex assemblies. “That filter button is fantastic,” Decelles adds. “It gives clarity at a glance.”

Empowering the Entire Workflow

Internally, Zea has streamlined operations for both the engineering and support teams. With staff who aren’t always technically trained, being able to visualize parts like bearings directly on a 3D model has improved accuracy and confidence when dealing with customers.

“It’s not just for customers. Our parts team uses it daily,” Decelles explains. “They can actually see what they’re selling.”

Zea’s flexibility also proved critical during Motrec’s transition to a new PLM and ERP system. Using STEP files as a universal format allowed Motrec to decouple its CAD restructuring from Zea’s platform, ensuring continuity throughout.

“We’re undergoing a big transformation. With Zea, we know our 3D parts catalogs won’t break. STEP files give us the flexibility we need.”

Looking Ahead

Decelles sees even more opportunities for collaboration in the future. Motrec plans to extend Zea’s platform beyond parts catalogs into dynamic assembly instructions for the factory floor. “We’d love to create guided, interactive build processes. Step-by-step, not static PDFs,” he says.

Throughout the journey, Decelles emphasizes that Zea felt more like a partner than a vendor. “We always found a solution. Zea’s team was transparent, responsive, and committed. It is a great partnership.”

“Zea is the future,” says Blair McIntosh, CEO of Motrec. “With Zea, we automated how we create and update thousands of serial number-specific part catalogs based on our 3D models and data from our ERP.”