What is a Good Price for CAD software?

Figure 1: Product Data Management Framework

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 need to share, access and control your CAD data using an affordable management software. To read the report in its entirety and find out what are these minimum requirements read the whole white paper here.

The previous posts laid out the basic requirements to control, access, and share CAD data. They also discuss the CAD management options currently available to manufacturers. While formal systems provide a strong foundation to control and access information, they come with overhead that is simply not realistic for smaller companies to take on. Additionally, the traditional solutions were designed with “Control” as the primary driver as opposed to “Share,” and are often worked around unless there are strong controls in place to prevent it.

While traditional solutions may be too much, new solutions like the apps we use in our personal lives offer too little. Simple, easy to use file-sharing sites that require little training have raised the bar on usability, connectivity, and collaboration. Cloud solutions offer low overhead and low barriers to entry, and offer a path forward when IT support is not available. Further, Assessing the Cloud PLM Opportunity concludes that “Cloud solutions are faster to implement and therefore provide returns more rapidly.” They offer a low risk approach with faster time to value.

While traditional solutions may be too much, new solutions like the apps we use in our personal lives offer too little.

But these solutions must handle the basics of CAD data management. While the file sharing sites are not enough, they have set the stage for modern, web-based applications to take advantage of newer user paradigms popularized by consumer applications and provide the capabilities required to control, access, and share data. The time is right for a new class of solutions that offers simpler capabilities with reduced overhead to solve the age-old problems of managing CAD data. As Jake Myre of Hippo Engineering shares, “Our solution gives us the basics. It seems to operate pretty simply and it just kind of worked right away without much setup.” These solutions will not be likely to replace traditional applications, but they provide another option.

The time is right for a new class of solutions that offers simpler capabilities with reduced overhead to solve the age-old problems of managing CAD data.

For more information on sharing, accessing and controlling CAD files using management software download the rest of Jim Brown’s white paper.