In today’s engineering and manufacturing world, working with distributed teams and global supply chains is the norm. This further complicates the ever-present demand to complete projects efficiently and to a high quality. An important part of this is being able to effectively collaborate on designs and share CAD data.
With many different CAD systems being utilized and many people benefiting from seeing the data it can be difficult to find a solution that is both suitable for everyone and cost effective.
This is the first in a series of blogs that will explore how being able to view CAD data can improve efficiency in different departments and how SpinFire can help you achieve this goal.
Prefer a deeper dive right away? Download our free eBook on Enterprise Visualization for Manufacturers, to see how CAD access can streamline workflows across your organization.
How Can Improving Collaboration Benefit the Design Process?
One of the most common things that can cause delays to the design process is having to wait for feedback. Often this problem arises when some people involved in the design process don’t have easy access to the most up to date designs. Providing access to a CAD seat for everyone isn’t cost efficient, particularly for large teams, so sharing designs can be difficult. This also presents an issue when working with external teams or trying to get feedback from customers – with people sometimes resorting to taking screenshots of data, which is both time-consuming and less effective.
Without having instant access to CAD data, decision makers must wait for meetings and presentations before they can see designs and give feedback. This not only delays the time it takes to get feedback but also requires engineers and managers to spend their time in more meetings. Many of these meetings would not be necessary if everyone had easy access to design data, and the rest are shorter when you can come prepared with feedback after already examining designs.
SpinFire Provides Faster Access to Feedback
With SpinFire everyone can have easy access to CAD data, allowing you to view designs even if you don’t have access to CAD. Giving everyone access to this data, not just those who are using it daily, means that feedback can be provided far quicker and more frequently. Faster access to feedback speeds up development time, resulting in quicker time to market.
Along with this, making communication more efficient can enable engineers to focus on their core responsibilities, providing more valuable design time. With SpinFire providing easy access to designs there is less need for meetings to share designs and feedback can be provided much quicker. Plus, the required meetings will be shorter when everyone is going into them with an in-depth understanding of the design.
Wrap Up
Sharing CAD data is obviously an essential part of the design process, but it isn’t always easy. Often, it’s simply not cost effective to provide CAD licenses for people who don’t use it every day for designing, but often they may still need to review designs and give feedback.
In these cases, a CAD viewer like SpinFire can be very useful, allowing everyone to have easy access to designs. This can accelerate the design process by providing faster access to feedback. Design changes can be reviewed without needing a meeting to see the data every time there is a change. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to contact our team or download our free Enterprise Visualization eBook.
