Not all Cloud Services were Made for CAD File Sharing

The following post is an excerpt from the white paper “Tech-Clarity Insight The Basics of Managing CAD – When Brute Force Fails and PDM is too Much” by Jim Brown. It discusses the pros and cons of sharing your CAD over the cloud and outlines the importance of security. To read the report in its entirety and find out what are these minimum requirements read the whole white paper here.

The cloud offers a solution without IT or other implementation overhead. There are numerous advantages to cloud applications, including scalability and effectively unlimited storage so users don’t have to worry about running out of disk space. Unfortunately, many engineers look to solutions designed for consumers and turn to webbased file-sharing services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or others. These offerings have good concepts but have many shortcomings that make them inappropriate for professional use, particularly for CAD file management. We expect to be able to easily share information and discuss it based on applications we use in our personal lives, but as I have written “Facebook fails for product development” simply because it isn’t designed for the demands of engineering.

We could set up a Dropbox to work with external consultants … but then how many people can see our proprietary information? Andy Homyk, Lead Mechanical Engineer, HemoSonics

The first concern many people have about cloud solutions is security. For purpose-built solutions this is often a myth because cloud vendors can afford specialized security expertise. But sharing sites like the ones above are optimized for ease of access not control, and were never intended to provide the IP protection suitable for designs. “We could set up a Dropbox to work with external consultants instead of emailing megabytes,” says Andy Homyk of HemoSonics. “But then how many people can see our proprietary information?”

Beyond security, general file-sharing sites are not intended to manage large, complex files.

Beyond security, these sites are not intended to manage large, complex files and don’t offer the caching, selective replication, and other features required for performance with CAD files. While the “sharing” concepts of these sites seems to be a good fit, the sites simply aren’t designed to offer the control required for engineering and design. General file-sharing sites are not made to solve the challenges of revisions or preventing overwriting someone’s work. In addition, they don’t understand the intricacies of CAD assemblies so they can’t support important capabilities like “rolling back” changes to an assembly.

General file-sharing sites are not made to solve the challenges of revisions or preventing overwriting someone’s work.

For more information on secure cloud CAD file sharing download the rest of Jim Brown’s white paper.