Few days ago, I captured the idea of building cloud PDM system on top of Dropbox infrastructure. It is hard to me to say if manufacturing companies will be ready to put CAD data into Dropbox servers. At the same time, Dropbox infrastructure is starting to make even more sense for management of CAD files on the cloud. Here is an interesting piece. My attention caught the following LifeHacker article – Enable Dropbox Streaming Sync for Faster File Synchronization. Read this article. It is short and sweet. Dropbox made another optimization of the infrastructure to synchronize files. The following passage explains the idea:
When you upload a file to Dropbox, it’s first sent in its entirety to Dropbox’s servers and then it’s downloaded to any synced computers. In a new, experimental version of Dropbox, however, you can enable streaming sync that starts downloading on the target computer while you upload.
The new desktop client (version 2.9) allows users to download files as they’re being uploaded to Dropbox. Only the downloading machine needs to be updated to 2.9, so using the experimental client should speed up downloads for shared folders as well as from your other devices, regardless of whether anyone else upgrades.
It made me think about interesting and typical scenario that happens in many engineering teams. Think about small group of engineers doing some work together and using any existing CAD desktop software (Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, SolidEdge, SolidWorks, etc.) In case they work in one organization, they can easy put all their files on so called “Z-drive” shared in the company. However, what happens if they work in a distributed way (Starbucks coffee shops, home, separate offices, etc.). To buy a traditional PDM system will be too complex and expensive. New Dropbox feature will allow to optimize large CAD file synchronization between their desktop systems and rest of data in the company. Quick and dirty. But it works.
What is my conclusion? There is a tremendous value to use specialized CAD sharing and management systems. I covered these values in my article here. However, when it comes to ease of use, simplicity and very low cost, Dropbox can be a good alternative. For years, Microsoft Excel was (and still is) an alternative PDM/ PLM solution to manage data. Dropbox is coming to the same spot. CAD/PDM companies need to pay attention and take note about how to leverage technologies and ideas developed by engineers from Dropbox. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
