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

Future CAD won’t require PDM

Future CAD won’t require PDM
Oleg
Oleg
13 January, 2015 | 2 min for reading

on-shape-pdm-1

Let’s be honest. Engineers hate data management. This is something that stands between their engineering creativity and formal configuration control. Check-in/check-out are two most painful functions for CAD users when it comes together with PDM. I recall my very old blog from 2011 speaks about the notion of “invisible PDM”. Navigate your browsers to PDM. Pre-configured? Painless? That was my conclusion back four years ago:

Engineers normally dislike PDM functions. They are trying to avoid it as much as possible. Therefore, PDM systems are not as popular when it comes to implementations. It requires time, cost and affect CAD functionality. However, the industry perception is that you need to have PDM to control your data. CAD vendors are trying to embed PDM functions into CAD packages and improve vertical integration between CAD and PDM packages. Can it be completely pre-configured and painless? I’m not sure. I think, the best PDM engineers can think about is the “invisible PDM”.

Solidsmack article about OnShape new CAD system put an interesting perspective on future PDM option for CAD:

We tried with traditional PDM, but fundamentally the architecture of copying files around, to and from servers and desktops, is just not a good basis for solving version control and collaboration problems. We think we have a better way to solve the problems, and no PDM system is needed.” Mac, Windows, phone or tablet. No PDM system needed. The files stay in one place. Different UI look. Now those sound like interesting and wonderful things. We’ll continue to anxiously anticipate what they have planned and what you have to say about it.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is changing paradigms and we are going to see a different user experience appears in engineering software – CAD, PDM and beyond. It can shift the way people are collaborating and eliminate the need for painless check-in/check-out functions that are moving files between servers and desktops. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

picture credit OnShape

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing a digital cloud-native PDM & PLM platform that manages product data and connects manufacturers, construction companies, and their supply chain networksMy opinion can be unintentionally biased.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
4 August, 2015

Cloud is not a foreign word in a lexicon of CAD and PLM developers. Although, there is probably no agreement...

26 June, 2017

Five Ways Product Design Teams Fail at Data Management article by Engineering.com brings results of survey Engineering.com did to learn about...

23 July, 2010

The acceptance of Open Source technologies is growing. One of the latest examples of products in open source movement that...

22 February, 2013

I spent the beginning of this week in Berlin attending PI (Product Innovation) congress. Navigate to the following link to...

4 September, 2009

For years, PLM and not only PLM, but also other enterprise systems like ERP supported idea of a single backbone...

16 May, 2011

I’m going to attend Eurostep Share-A-Space 2011 forum later this week in Stockholm, Sweden. The history of the invitation to...

2 October, 2011

Earlier this month, I posted What is the biggest PLM challenge? Since then I had multiple conversations on twitter, blog...

10 May, 2010

I’m getting back to my thoughts related to Social Software and Product Lifecycle Management. Jim Brown defined the role of...

23 March, 2019

I’m coming to Aras PLM event (ACE2019). It has been a long time since I visited ACE event in person. Eight years...

Blogroll

To the top