It becomes very common to use Wikipedia for most research projects. It becomes an ultimate source of information open for everybody. Do you think Wikipedia can become an open source reference for the information about software for engineering and manufacturing? Kind of Open Source PLM reference place?
What is a good source of knowledge about CAD, PDM, PLM and other systems? What can be used as a consolidated information reference? Think how much time we are spending in discussions about terminology, names, useful practices? What if Wikipedia will become this sort of knowledge? To understand current “state of the art”, I spent some time browsing PLM-related resources on Wikipedia. Here is my list of the references and my conclusion.
Terminology
I found quite complicated to work on well known TLAs. The search for PLM, brings the following definition:
Product lifecycle management, the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product. In addition, multiple searches for relevant terms are available. One of them stated as a PLM (marketing) is very far from product lifecycle management definitions and hardly can be a reference.
Some of other useful links – CAD, PDM, PLM, CAE, CAM. .
Companies
This part of Wikipedia is in a good shape, in my view. Most of the companies are represented. Sometimes, you can find interesting link redirection caused by company acquisitions, renaming and re-branding.
Aras (wasn’t intuitive to find- who may think searching for Corp.?)
Arena Solutions
Bentley Systems (was confused by multiple links to Bentley cars)
Dassault Systems (contains lots of links on deleted pages as a result of re-branding)
SolidWorks
PTC
Siemens PLM (recently renamed as Siemens Industry Software, according to upFront.eZine)
Standards
I found as a very complicated task to find PLM related standards. I found STEP (ISO 10303) pages in a relatively good shape. Also, list of “Engineering Standards” returned by Wikipedia search contains a list of interesting resources.
Other Resources
I found PLMPedia as a good resource of information about PLM. The PLMPedia initiative belongs to the Russian forum isicad.
What is my conclusion? I think the industry need to have a good reference source. Wikipedia is an excellent open source reference that can be adopted and used by lots of engineers and developers. These days I can see quality of industry is in supporting “open source reference”. Wikipedia is a good candidate for such information placement.
If you are aware about any additional information resources related to CAD, PLM and other engineering and manufacturing software, please send me links or comment on blog.
Best, Oleg
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