A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Back to basics: Multi-CAD and PLM

Back to basics: Multi-CAD and PLM
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
15 December, 2009 | 2 min for reading

How many CAD systems do you have in your development organization? I do believe more than one. And if you will think about your Product Lifecycle Management future, the obvious need is to connect your multiple CAD environment in the way allows you to manage all your design records, reference your design information in processes, allow downstream design usage in ERP and manufacturing systems. Today, most of the systems claims support for multi-CAD environment. So, what is the deal? I’d like to outline the following characteristics and vendor’s trends in this space:

1. My CAD vs. other CADs. For PLM vendors with origins in CAD space, own CAD systems will be always a priority. This is natural for business and much easy for development to support CAD system that making the same product development release cycle as PDM/PLM environment. Vendor’s “my CAD” interfaces may have additional features that will not be available for “other CADs”.

2. CAD/PDM bundles. Due to previous trend, I can see forming of stable CAD/PDM bundles that provide tuned functional characteristics. Autodesk/ProductStream; SolidWorks/PDMWorks; SolidEdge/TeamCenter; NX/TeamCenter; CATIA/ENOVIA etc. Such bundles can be best in class solution for a specific CAD.

3. No CAD files. This is a very new trend. Introduced in CATIA V6, this trend represents technological morphing of CAD and PDM/PLM environment into a single entity. (Note: With future of Cloud/SaaS, this type of software architecture, can be potentially a very interesting approach, but I will discuss it in separate post).

So, what can be the possible strategy for a company to support multiple CAD in PLM environment? I can see two possible and very obvious options.

Option 1: Focus on PLM vendor selection, choose your PLM environment and maximize usage of multi-CAD interfaces provided by this vendor. If you also thinking about possible reducing of CAD system usages and/or you shifting from multi-CAD environment to “primary CAD” option this can be a good option, in my view.

Option 2:
Implement best in class CAD/PDM bundles and think about separate provider of PLM products, services, environment. You can find more appropriated to use PLM system provided by your ERP vendor or use some alternative technologies to build your PLM environment. I posted about this option earlier this year (Which Technology Can Convert Multiple PDMs into a Single PLM).

So, what do you think about these options? Can you share your experience? I’m interested to get your comments and thoughts.
Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
19 May, 2016

The amount of digital data is growing at an exponential rate.  We are doubling data every two year. The rate...

28 August, 2015

Almost two years ago, I asked if Salesforce.com platform is ready for PLM. You can navigate to my old article...

4 December, 2013

The importance of data is growing tremendously. Web, social networks and mobile started this trend just few years ago. However,...

15 July, 2009

Interesting and intriguing sneak peek of SharePoint 2010 video… Looks like creators of SharePoint is trying to provide major pain...

19 May, 2015

It is hard overestimate the importance of Bill of Materials for product development. In my keynote at ProSTEP iViP symposium...

25 June, 2018

Last year I asked in one of my articles – Is PLM business Amazon Proof?  If you run a business,...

17 September, 2015

One size doesn’t fit all. This is very true for engineering and manufacturing. Product lifecycle is a term that I...

15 March, 2019

I had an opportunity to visit PTC yesterday at their new headquarters location in Boston Seaport District. If you’re following...

16 June, 2009

How will PLM-related software evolve on the cloud? This is actually my question for today. How will PLM get along...

Blogroll

To the top