CAD – The Future of Collaborative Modeling

We have been talking about collaboration a lot these days. I was thinking about how collaboration can happen with designers. I thought about this from two perspectives: (1) CAD and PLM collaboration development and (2) Collaborative Document and Drawing capabilities. 

CAD and PLM collaboration development

 We have seen product offerings from companies such as Dassault Systemes 3DLive and Siemens PLM. Besides these giants, smaller ISVs also provide multiple 3D collaboration technologies. Dassault Systemes 3D Live and CATIA V6 provides, in my view, an interesting approach where Designers can work together on the same model and assembly. This is probably a good example of CAD/Design collaboration from PLM vendors. I’m sure you can come up with similar examples and will be interested in discussing these as well.

 Collaborative Document and Drawing capabilities

 I found interesting blog article caught my attention:  5 Ways to Create Collaborative Drawings with Friends  – presenting ways to collaborate on creating pictures and other graphic objects. This is very interesting way to collaborate on graphic models online. 

Online Design Tools

Nice addition to this collection is SolidWorks Labs product, Drawings Now. This is still not as sophisticated as the 3DLive/CATIA option, but is not simply a drawing game such as ScribLink. What is cool is that <SolidWorks Drawings Now> allows you to save 2D drawings on a cloud space. (think about Amazon Web Services or similar)

Conclusion:

I think we are moving towards a CAD system that will be able to store information on a cloud almost in the same manner as today’s CAD saves CAD models and Assemblies on your C: drive or corporate server. I don’t know how fast it will take for us to get there, but I see it happens more in the near future.

 What is your opinion on this?