Note, this is NOT 1st April post :). Multi-CAD and PLM. Endless story… Few weeks ago, I published my post The Anatomy of MultiCAD-PDM integrations. I recommend you to have a read before you continue with this article. Another blog, you probably want to review is the story about Autodesk Vault and Multi-CAD. This blog is also continuation of the discussion I started in the following posts – Immersive CAD management: is it the CAD/PDM future?, CAD Strategies: Unified or Diversified and CAD, PDM and PLM diversity.
So, this week, I’d like to make a next step and talk about Dassault Enovia and multi-CAD. Again, as before when I talk about Autodesk Vault, my focus is on the integration between PDM/PLM platform and CAD. I’m not focusing on CAD data translation, visualization. Don’t take me wrong- data translation is important. However, I’d like to keep my focus on how data-management platform interact with CAD applications.
A week ago, I sat down with David Segal of Dassault Systemes to talk about Dassault Enovia and MultiCAD. This blog gives you some ideas about how Enovia presents their Multi-CAD integration and openness. He kindly provided me with some slides about Enovia V6 multi-CAD and gave me explanations about how Dassault Enovia supporting different design applications.
In my view, the usual complexity, every CAD/PLM vendor has is about how to separate their own CAD solutions from “other vendor CAD” solutions. Dassault is calling it “authoring applications”. So, on the following slide, you can see how ENOVIA V6 chart pictures about data-management strategy. I had hard time to go and understand the difference between “comprehensive collaborative solution” and “collaborative data-management solutions” for MCAD and ECAD. What was important to understand is that Enovia is not limiting their offer to Dassault CAD applications only. In addition, interesting to see that CATIA V6 and SolidWorks are positioned on this slide in the same box.
ENOVIA multiCAD data management
Another aspect is related to mechanical and electronic design applications (so-called MCAD and ECAD). The complexity of products is growing. You can hardly limit yourself to only mechanical aspects of the design. In that context, Enovia V6 supports both MCAD and ECAD spaces. You can see a chart below explaining MCAD solution offering.
MCAD Data Management
Another one related to ECAD options.
ECAD Data Management
I’ve got mixed feeling about these slides. The simple message is clear. Whatever CAD you do have – Enovia supports it. At the same time, what I learned the user experience and functionality of the integration are very important. The level of diversification in design scenarios and practices is very high. So, to see what is supported is something that important to understand. It is always interesting to see some performance in action. Take a look on few videos below for more examples.
NX Collaboration
What is my conclusion? I made my short conclusion in the title of the post – Do Everything! I can hardly find the name of design system / CAD not covered by the slides. It is a good sign, since it allows the flexibility for user to choose tools and don’t lock customer on DS tools only. However, don’t take it blind and compare functional details in case you decide to go to one of them. Blog post is a wrong place to make functional comparison, but details are important. Remember that. Moreover, to support different versions of CAD applications is as well important. I can see how Dassault is doing a lot to make ENOVIA capable to be connected to any design applications and looking forward to learning about your experience. Speak your mind…
Best, Oleg
Disclosure: This post was reviewed by David Segal (DS) before publishing.
