CADbro Streamlines Data Sharing and Collaboration Across Teams

Today's product developers are able to work faster than ever before with next-generation tools, platforms and services that cut costs and save time. While adopting these various tools into the product development lifecycle to bring products to market faster can be a valuable investment for teams of all sizes, it can also lead to miscommunication and overlooked mistakes. 

To help team members, clients and other stakeholders better understand and retain information of 3D models, interactive 3D CAD viewers have become one of the most effective ways of sharing technical product communications. Whether a project manager is making annotations to share with his engineering team, or a marketing manager is making mockups for a set of rendered images, CAD viewers allow both technical and non-technical users to create their 2D and 3D product deliverables directly from CAD data.

But just like the software packages responsible for creating the actual 3D models, some CAD viewers are better than others and offer more robust features for those in need of a reliable solution. Among others, one of the powerful CAD Viewers available on the market today is CADbro from ZWSOFT. 

Created specifically for the product design and manufacturing industry, CADbro is able to be used during the entire lifecycle of a product through diversified teams, including engineering, sales, marketing, project management, manufacturing and purchasing departments, to check product manufacturing information, including data exchanging, interactive 3D CAD viewing, vivid 3D annotation and even advanced analysis capabilities commonly seen in more robust CAD packages. 

A quick video overview of significant CADbro features. (Video courtesy of CADbro.)

Since collaboration is such a critical factor in the success of bringing a product to market, CADbro has been designed to be used by both technical and non-technical users with a simple and easy-to-understand user interface for more than 20 kinds of file formats. These formats can be directly opened from within CADbro and include Catia, Parasolid, STEP, DWG/DXF, NX, Creo, SOLIDWORKS and other common industry-standard 3D CAD file types.  

Of course, CADbro isn't the only CAD viewer on the market, and it may or may not be the best solution for everybody’s individual needs.

Alternatively, eDrawings Viewer from Dassault Systèmes is a commonly used CAD viewer for SOLIDWORKS that supports native SOLIDWORKS features, including native SOLIDWORKS animations, dynamic cross-sectioning, component moving, exploded views and other project data.  While professionals can use eDrawings Professional to create markups and provide feedback on product designs, the eDrawings Viewer can be downloaded freely for those simply viewing the files. While the solution is great for SOLIDWORKS users, it may not provide all the features needed for teams working in multiple software packages. Similarly, Autodesk’s A360 Viewer offers a powerful file viewing solution via the cloud that supports multiple file types; however, it too is geared more toward the company’s own family of software products.

While eDrawings may be an example of an exceptional CAD viewer solution for one type of user, on the other end of the spectrum are universal and free CAD viewers available through various freeware websites such as Free DWG Viewer and Microspot DWG Viewer for Mac. While these free offerings do in fact let users view and add markups to AutoCAD DWG, DXF and DWF files without compatible CAD packages, most teams find themselves needing a more powerful solution than these can offer. Additionally, these free viewers are often stripped down versions of a premium viewer and are designed for non-demanding situations.

Although it's clear that CADbro offers an optimal viewing, annotation and analyzing solution for teams working across multiple file formats and departments, the design and usability considerations put into the CAD viewer are worth taking a closer look at:

While those familiar with existing CAD software including SOLIDWORKS, Catia, NX, Creo and others will likely be able to jump into the user interface and make sense of common iconography and tool commands, this is far from the case for those who aren't.

To make the interface as easy to understand as possible, CADbro's menus are simple and free of redundant tools that would otherwise add clutter. Additionally, common views including orthographic and isometric and display types such as shade or wireframe are predefined and easy to find; a multi-window system allows for multiple views and displays to be viewed at any single time.

For more detailed data analysis, layer information and overall clarification, a clear assembly structure displayed in the assembly manager makes it easy to dig deeper inside of assemblies similar to existing feature trees found in CAD modeling software.

With support for more than 20 kinds of commonly used file formats, CADbro's ability to open files without complicated conversion processes makes it the ideal solution for teams working across multiple file types and/or CAD systems. Additionally, the different needs of departments can call for different file formats throughout the product development lifecycle and keeping track of versions could challenge even the most seasoned project manager.  

CADbro helps streamline the collaboration workflow by allowing users to save CAD models to different programs, like Catia V4/V5, Parasolid, STEP, IGES and much more, without the need for additional expensive licenses to interact with them. Additionally, users can easily convert CAD models into 3D PDFs for easy access to viewing the 3D models in Adobe Acrobat.

Unlike text editing software, adding remarks or suggestions in CAD isn't always easy for those unfamiliar with working in 3D space. CADbro's 3D annotation features make it easy for clients, suppliers and other stakeholders to check 3D models, add remarks and suggestions or any other information that can help get a product to market that much faster. Additionally, a visualized information display makes it easy for creators to intuitively add or modify dimensions directly onto the 3D entities.

While modelers can easily check their work with analysis tools directly from within most CAD systems, this isn't always ideal for those without licenses or technical know-how. Included with CADbro is a powerful set of analysis tools for verifying parts and assemblies throughout the product development lifecycle, including face, draft and thickness measuring tools. Additionally, more common 2D and 3D measurement tools, including distance, angle, curvature, mass property, curve connectivity and others are included for making quick verifications on the fly. 

Unfortunately, feature gaps, missing faces and bad geometry are a common reality when working with CAD, and model repair can quickly eat into time that's otherwise best spent moving forward with a project. With the built-in auto-healing tools, CADbro helps users verify any imperfections in a 3D model and attempts to repair abnormal topologies, such as gaps between face edges and coincident vertices. 

The ability to make simple modifications to parts—particularly moving, copying, mirroring or dragging—is built directly into CADbro. Combined with the ability to easily check inner construction and assembly movement with animations, users are able to easily communicate or verify more complicated assembly structures within seconds.  

Additionally, CADbro allows users to easily create exploded views and assembly animations for demonstrating the functionality of a product to other stakeholders before committing to a formal manufacturing order.

While it may not apply to all users, the included mold assistance functionality is a nice touch for those who consistently work with mold design. When used, the feature helps users finalize preparation work and check for any design errors such as draft, product alignment, shrinkage, thickness and creation of cavity region.

While every team and company's needs are different during the product development lifecycle, the speed with which new tools and services come and go has placed more value on how we collaborate and—perhaps most importantly—communicate. As a full-featured, budget-friendly CAD viewer that can support more than 20 file formats for vivid 3D model viewing and markups and includes a host of other features ranging from automated animations to mold design assistance, it's clear that CADbro offers one of the most powerful solutions on the market today. 

ZWSOFT is currently offering a limited-time trial of CADbro at the company’s website. For those interested in making use of CADbro full time, the full version is available for $1,500.

ZWSOFT has sponsored this post. They have no editorial input. All opinions are mine. —Simon Martin

About the Author

Simon Martin is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.