Cloud CAD collaboration: the window of opportunity is closing?

Cloudization is one of the top hot topic in the industry in recent years, and it is also the key technology to transform how people will collaborate and communicate in the future. Cloud can bring a difference to CAD and PLM business by sharing data, enabling distributed processes and creating affordable solutions with quick ROI. For the last 5 years, we’ve seen many products using cloud technologies for 3D CAD collaboration. Take a look on my old blogs – CAD, New collaboration and online storage services; CAD Project Cloud Collaboration… what?; Top 3 reasons to have special CAD file sharing tools.

GrabCAD was one of the earlier pioneers to discover the value of cloud collaboration for desktop CAD system – Solid Edge. It was one of the first GrabCAD plug-ins to publish data from Solid Edge to GrabCAD. Read old GrabCAD blog article written by Rob Stevens – Solid Edge Is First CAD System To Publish Directly to GrabCAD.

GrabCAD users can now publish directly from Solid Edge to both the GrabCAD public Library and private Workbench projects. We’re excited to announce that Solid Edge is the first CAD system that allows users to transfer their work directly to GrabCAD.  GrabCAD users are already using the GrabCAD Library to share their work with the world, and GrabCAD Workbench to share projects with trusted colleagues.  Now it’s even easier for them to transfer CAD files directly, simply by selecting “Publish to GrabCAD” in Solid Edge.  This capability is available as a Solid Edge plug-in starting in September.

More information about what GrabCAD plug-in for Solid Edge did can be found here.

My attention was caught by news coming from Siemens PLM Connection (check more here #PLMConx). Siemens Solid Edge is coming with a new product called Solid Edge Portal fro Cloud-based Project Collaboration. Read more here. The new product is part of Solid Edge data management.

Here is a passage from Siemens PLM website:

Our new collaboration portal makes it easy to work on your design projects with other design team members, other departments and external suppliers and customers. Using Solid Edge Portal you can upload your CAD files to the cloud and organize them into projects. Then view your 3D CAD models and share selected models with other users. Solid Edge Portal is simple to use, and you can access your files whenever you want and wherever you are using popular web browsers.

I didn’t find any video or additional materials – I hope they will be available later. Based on short description I’d expect the product to be similar to what offered by 3DEXPERIENCE, Autodesk A360, GrabCAD Workbench and some other.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is turning mainstream and Siemens PLM Solid Edge’s next step is “cloud enablement” is to provide additional tools to help users to collaborate online. Similar to PDM, cloud CAD collaboration is quickly becoming a common tool CAD vendors is providing to improve data management and communication between users. It is probably a signal to independent vendors that  window of opportunity to provide cloud CAD collaboration tool will be closing soon. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of openBoM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased