Managing Multi- CAD Complexity on a Budget By : Jim Brown President Tech-Clarity

Transcription

1 1 Managing Multi- CAD Complexity on a Budget By : Jim Brown President Tech-Clarity Tech-Clarity 2015

2 Can a Simpler Data Management Approach Still Work in a Multi-CAD Environment? 2 Tech-Clarity s The Basics of Managing CAD - When Brute Force Fails and PDM is too Much took a fresh look at what it takes to effectively manage CAD. For some, implementing formal data management solutions is out of reach. But the risk and inefficiency of unmanaged design files is simply a bad idea. So what s a company to do? The report explored options and suggested that taking a simpler approach makes a lot more sense than wishful thinking! But the reality is that most companies have designs in a variety of CAD formats. Can a more basic approach still work? Or are companies with multi-cad doomed to suffer through the resulting inefficiency and errors? It's time to go back to our view of the basics and evaluate options. The Basics of Managing CAD Consolidating CAD A simplified, cloud-based CAD data management approach can provide important benefits with significantly reduced investment. There are solutions that enable collaborative access to designs from multiple CAD solutions, but they add a level of complexity.

3 3 Fact Check: Nobody Chooses Multi-CAD! Customers and vendors have specific tools we need to accommodate, we don t really get to dictate what system they use! Ryan Lam, Staff Mechanical Engineer, Synaptics You don t have much of a choice in the matter. No one CAD tool does everything. Robert Conley, Owner, Interactive CAD Solutions First some facts. Nobody really chooses multi-cad, multi-cad chooses them! As Elise Moss of Moss Designs says, We are kind of stuck working in multi-cad. We get CAD data from all different sources. We also have to work with electrical engineering. There are lots of ways that companies find themselves in a multi-cad situation, including: Customer mandates Tool variety in the supply chain Mergers & acquisitions (legacy) Different tools for different jobs (such as conceptual versus detailed design) ECAD, schematics, layouts Reality capture / point clouds (3D laser scanning)

4 4 Reviewing Multi-CAD Survival Options High end CAD and PLM solutions offer some advanced ways to work with multi-cad data, including interoperability and by opening nonnative formats. But not everyone has access to high end software! As Tech-Clarity s Managing Design Data with SharePoint concludes, Unfortunately, data management solutions have been out of reach due to cost and lack of IT resources. How can the rest of us manage CAD files of different formats effectively and efficiently without breaking the budget? You can t afford to lose relationships between the data in different formats, and you certainly don t want to manage them in a spreadsheet! But unmanaged / manually managed CAD is a rough road, as The Basics of Managing CAD finds: Living in an unmanaged, manual environment is highly inefficient and prone to errors. There has to be another option.

5 5 Revisiting CAD Management Basics The basic capabilities of CAD management are: Controlling and securing files Quickly finding and reusing designs Sharing information with others We ll look at each of these to see how it s impacted by multi-cad, and then revisit our conclusion to see if a simpler approach is still feasible. Engineering teams that don t manage CAD data, or perhaps more accurately manually manage CAD data, suffer from a number of consistent issues. Inefficiency Overwriting Mistakes Productivity loss Risk Bigger mistakes (those that escape engineering) The Basics of Managing CAD The Basics of Managing CAD Some recognize the shortcomings and risks of a manual CAD management approach, while others are one mistake away from learning the hard way.

6 6 IMPACT on CONTROL How is getting files under control more complicated with multi-cad? It s still important to keep all files in a single location, manage them as a whole, control versions, and extract/ manage metadata. It s also crucial to control relationships, structures, and dependencies between files of different formats. Translating Files One key multi-cad success strategy is file translation. Designers use translation to move information from one format to another. Sometimes it s because they re working with others that use different tools for the same job, for example different 3D CAD tools. In a multi-cad world formats don t talk to each other either so we have to use some intermediate format and export / import. - Ryan Lam, Synaptics We definitely don t have time to redesign every part. The whole point in getting content from other people is not having to design it! - Elise Moss, Moss Designs An ideal data management solution would perform translations for you as needed. Other times, it s because people use different tools for different jobs. An example of this is taking a conceptual design from a freeform modeling tool into a parametric CAD tool for detailed design. Or bringing ECAD information about a board design into MCAD.

7 7 Maintaining Control with Multi-CAD CAD Integration Managing Relationships With translation you need to manage the relationship between the native/source file for audit or editing and the translated/derivative file(s) in their alternate or neutral formats such as STEP, IGES, IDF, etc. It s critical to manage file relationships to give you a leg up on knowing if changed files need to be retranslated. Every time a new version is uploaded, I can compare versions to see what has changed. - Robert Conley, Interactive CAD Solutions Data management solutions need to integrate with CAD to extract metadata and product structures. Ideally the integration also allows designers to stay in their design environment and use plug-ins for data management. It s important for the data management system to get metadata / BOMs. - Robert Conley, Interactive CAD Solutions Ryan Iam, Synaptics Electrical hardware and mechanical hardware go hand in hand. You can t do one without the other and you can t design them in serial, it has to be concurrent with today s shorter development time.

8 8 IMPACT on ACCESS How is allowing engineers to access the information they need to work together more challenging in a multi-cad environment? Engineers / designers need to work with CAD data even if it s not in their primary format (and shouldn t need another expensive CAD license to get at the data they need.) Multi-CAD data management should allow access regardless of format. Working with Foreign CAD A common approach to access non-native files is to translate them to "dumb solids" in a format like STEP or IGES. While this removes some of the intelligence and design intent incorporated in the file, sometimes that s enough to get the job done. If it s not something I m designing myself, I m happy to have it be a dumb body. - Elise Moss, Moss Designs Sometimes it s enough just to see a part. Other times you might went to make changes using tools that directly manipulate file geometry. Newer direct modeling tools enable these changes. If I find a file in the wrong format I can download it from my data management system in STEP and then edit it in a direct modeling tool. Robert Conley, Interactive CAD Solutions

9 9 Ensuring Data Access with Multi-CAD Designing in Context Very few companies today are vertically integrated. Bringing a product to market requires a coordinated effort between a company and its supply chain. Only a few very large companies are able to fully dictate the tools used in their supply chain. We have to be able to check for interference, look at how much room collaborators need to occupy, and verify form, fit, and function even though we are using different CAD systems. - Robert Conley, Interactive CAD Solutions Engineers need to be able to make design decisions based on how their designs impact, and are impacted, by others regardless of design tool. Like most companies we design some subsystems out of house. You aren t in a great position where you can say you have to use this CAD tool because my chief mechanical engineer is using it. - Elise Moss, Moss Designs Engineers have to be able to take work from other CAD systems into account to design in context by including translated files into assemblies. The days of waiting until the end of the day (or perhaps longer) to see a digital mockup of parts from different designers is no longer enough to compete.

10 10 IMPACT on SHARE Non-engineers need to access information to do their jobs and provide input to get products right the first time. How is this harder with multiple CAD formats? I couldn t say it any better than Robert Conley does, Most companies are not that CAD savvy, multi-cad makes it a nightmare to communicate with everybody. Visualization Another critical capability to thrive in a multi-cad reality is the ability to share designs with non- CAD users via 2D and 3D. If I need to share a design with someone that doesn t have the software, I can upload the file to my data management system and download it in another format. I like it a lot! - Robert Conley, Interactive CAD Solutions Web-based Viewing Using a built-in viewer means nobody has to purchase an expensive CAD license just to view a design. Previous generations of viewers became a barrier to sharing data because they required a download and installation. With many companies putting IT restrictions on their users, web-based solutions make access much easier. Our data management solution provides a webbased viewer for non-technical folks so they can visually see what the design is about versus bullet points. - Ryan Lam, Synaptics Modern CAD management technology should make it easy to share a view of a design, even with those that don t have CAD knowledge.

11 11 Sharing Multi-CAD with Others Collaboration Sometimes just viewing designs isn t enough. Engineers need others to review designs and provide feedback. CAD Data Management solutions should support collaboration and include the ability to provide textual and visual feedback. These resulting redlines should be stored along with any associated commentary as a part of the design history. I do a lot of design for manufacturability. I share designs with my supplier to get feedback. That kind of collaboration is important, it makes a difference on the cost of the part and will make it easier for them to produce it. - Elise Moss, Moss Designs We provide an environment to let everyone give feedback and capture their comments where everybody can see it - Robert Conley, Interactive CAD Solutions The ability to collaborate needs to cross both functional boundaries like electrical and mechanical design as well as dissimilar CAD platforms. Collaboration should ideally be an extension of the CAD Data Management solution, not a separate solution.

12 12 Multi-CAD in the Cloud? We Say Yes! Success is usually about who can do things the fastest. Robert Conley, Owner, Interactive CAD Solutions Cloud services make a lot of sense. Given how fast our business moves we didn t have time to bring up a server and get people up to speed on a traditional solution. Simple, cloud-based CAD management solutions are an excellent option to meet the basic needs to control, access, and share multi-cad data without the overhead of traditional solutions. And yes, although there are some unique requirements that must be met, the same goes for multi-cad too! As The Basics of Managing CAD concluded, 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. Ryan Lam, Staff Mechanical Engineer, Synaptics

13 13 TechClarity.inc Managing Multi-CAD Complexity On a Budget About the Author Jim Brown is the President of Tech-Clarity, an independent research and consulting firm that specializes in analyzing the business value of software technology and services. Jim has over 20 years of experience in software for the manufacturing industries. He has a broad background including roles in industry, management consulting, the software industry, and research. Jim s experience spans enterprise applications including PLM, ERP, quality management, service lifecycle management, manufacturing, supply chain management, and more. Jim is passionate about improving product innovation, product development, and engineering performance through the use of software technology. Jim is an experienced researcher, author, and public speaker and enjoys the opportunity to speak at conferences or anywhere he can engage with people with a passion to improve business performance through software technology.