Your Shop Floor and Your Suppliers Are the Last to See the Product

Shop Floor and Supplier Access to BOM, Drawings, and 3D Models 

Shop floor access to engineering data means giving a non-engineering user a browser-based way to see the current released item, its BOM position, its drawing, and its 3D representation, all connected to revision and permission control, without installing a CAD system. That is the capability I want to talk about today, and it matters far more on the shop floor than it does in the engineering department.

A few days ago I wrote about visual collaboration in engineering change management, where I followed one obsolete camera on a drone from a BOM finding to a change request. That article was about people inside the change process. Today I want to stay with the same drone and hand it to everyone else: the technician assembling it, the buyer sourcing the camera, the inspector checking a bracket, the contract manufacturer three time zones away. They have the same questions the reviewers had and almost none of the same tools.

Shop floor access to engineering data is not a viewer problem

Most companies believe they already share engineering data. Drawings sit on a network folder. CAD files live in a vault. PDFs go out by email. Someone maintains a spreadsheet of part numbers and a printer near the assembly line.

None of that is access to the product. A folder does not tell a technician which revision was released. An emailed PDF stops being true the moment the design changes, and nothing about the email announces that. A part number in a spreadsheet does not say where the part sits in the drone or what it looks like. The shop floor compensates the way it always has, by walking to engineering and asking, which is expensive for both sides and invisible in every system of record.

Notice what is missing from that list of failures. Not one of them is a rendering problem. The technician is not blocked because the geometry will not display. They are blocked because the information they can reach is disconnected from the information that is current. A viewer dropped on top of that situation shows them a model whose release status they still cannot confirm.

So the sequence matters. First you make the released product record reachable by people outside engineering. Then visualization makes it fast to understand. Reversing those two produces a very good demo and no change in behavior.

Free read-only access is the part that actually scales

The practical barrier to downstream access has usually been commercial, not technical. If every production planner, buyer, inspector, and supplier contact needs a paid seat, the honest answer from most companies is that they will keep emailing PDFs.

OpenBOM read-only seats are free and unlimited. A technician opens a link, signs in, and sees the released BOM with permissions that let them look and not change anything. That single fact does more for shop floor access than any viewer feature, because it removes the reason people were kept outside in the first place. Bringing an inspector, a planner, or a supplier into the picture is a permission decision, not a purchase order.

What they reach when they get there is a product record rather than a file share. The item carries its revision, its attached documents, its images, and its position in the BOM. Where-used navigation answers the reverse question, which is the one production and service people ask most often: I am holding this bracket, what does it go into. Revision control answers the question that keeps quality teams awake, which is whether this is the version that was released. Different people enter from different directions, and the connections between item, BOM, files, and change records hold regardless of where they started.

Most shop floor questions are answered before you open the 3D viewer

When people hear visualization they picture an interactive 3D model. In production, that is usually the last thing needed and the first thing demanded.

A thumbnail on a BOM line answers the most common question in the building, which is simply which part are we talking about. OpenBOM CAD integrations capture those thumbnails automatically, which turns a list of part numbers into something a person can recognize at a glance. A buyer will not recognize an internal part number for the drone’s camera, but they recognize the camera. For picking, kitting, receiving, and confirming a purchase, that is the entire answer.

The next question is what to make or inspect, and that belongs to the drawing. PDF drawings and neutral formats such as STEP, DXF, and STL carry dimensions, tolerances, notes, and material requirements, and OpenBOM add-ins can generate them as part of the normal save workflow so they stay attached to the right item instead of circulating as loose attachments. Which formats you get depends on the CAD system and your integration settings.

Above that sit formats built for looking rather than editing. 3D PDF and SOLIDWORKS eDrawings let a contractor or a supervisor rotate and inspect a design with a free viewer. 3D PDF generation depends on the CAD integration, and eDrawings are specific to SOLIDWORKS.

Only then does the interactive viewer earn its place, and it earns it on one specific question: where does this sit and what surrounds it. On the drone, that is the difference between knowing the camera mount exists and knowing which side of the frame it lands on, what the technician has to remove to reach it, and what sits close enough to interfere. I laid out the full visualization ladder with the audience for each rung in the previous article, so I will not repeat it here. The point for downstream users is that the goal is the simplest representation that answers the question, not the most impressive one.

Navigating from the BOM to the 3D assembly is the move that matters

A viewer on its own is a model in a window. What makes it useful downstream is the path into it.

In OpenBOM, a user starts where their work starts, usually the BOM, opens the design item behind a line, and loads it in the browser viewer. From the drone’s top-level assembly they can move down into subassemblies and individual components, orienting themselves in the product rather than in a file tree. The question changes from “find me the model” to “show me this line,” and that is a question a production planner or a buyer can ask without help.

Setting this up is a one-time job for an administrator, not a task for anyone on the floor. The documented option is the Autodesk Platform Services viewer: you create an APS application and enter its credentials in the Design Project viewer settings, and from then on the viewer opens from the design item for everyone with access. The video walks through that configuration step by step, because it is the piece people most often want to see before they commit.

Open viewer architecture: the viewer should be replaceable, the product record should not

Companies do not all visualize the same way. CAD mixes differ, security rules differ, and some organizations have standardized on a specialized viewer for a particular format or a particular customer requirement. Forcing all of them into one proprietary viewing engine is a form of lock-in that happens to sit on top of the most stable asset you own.

OpenBOM takes the opposite approach. The viewer is a component connected to Design Projects and product records, while OpenBOM keeps the items, BOMs, files, revisions, and change records. Organizations with enterprise visualization requirements can connect other viewers through the same architecture, which is available with an enterprise subscription and typically involves integration work.

I care about the separation because viewing technology moves faster than product data. A company should be able to start with thumbnails and drawings, add a browser 3D viewer when broader collaboration justifies it, and later swap in something specialized, without any of that touching the item, BOM, revision, and permission model underneath. The viewer helps people see the product. It should not own the product context.

A browser 3D viewer does not replace engineering validation

Making engineering data visible to more people does not make more people engineers. A browser viewer shows geometry and position. It does not validate form, fit, function, tolerances, or manufacturability, and it does not replace the judgment of the person who owns the design in the native CAD system.

That boundary is what makes wider access safe rather than risky. A supplier can receive a drawing and a STEP file without receiving your native assembly. A technician can see the released configuration without permission to alter it. A buyer can confirm a part visually without touching the engineering record. Visual access combined with product structure, revision control, and permissions is how you give the right information to the right person and nothing more.

The goal was never to move CAD authoring to the shop floor. It is to shorten the distance between a question on the floor and the product context that answers it.

Watch the video: the drone assembly in a browser 3D viewer

In the video below, I use the drone to show the visualization options side by side, configure the Autodesk Platform Services viewer in the Design Project settings, and then navigate from the BOM into the assembly and down to individual parts in the browser. No native CAD, no screenshots requested from engineering, no guessing about which file is current.

Controlled access beats a one-time export

The handoff from engineering to manufacturing should not be a one-time export that starts going stale the day it is sent. It should be controlled access to a connected product record that is current by construction.

OpenBOM makes items, BOMs, CAD files, documents, revisions, and changes reachable beyond the engineering department, and free read-only seats mean the people who only need to look can be included without a licensing conversation. Images, drawings, lightweight formats, and an integrated viewer make that information fast to understand. The open viewer architecture means you can use the preconfigured option or connect the visualization technology your environment requires, without rebuilding your product data around it.

This is also why I keep describing what we are building as product memory rather than another viewer. The record of what the product is, and what changed, has to outlive every tool anyone uses to look at it.

The result is what everyone on the floor actually wants: fewer searches, fewer screenshots, fewer arguments about which file is current, and faster decisions based on shared product context.

Watch the video to see the workflow, then try it with your own data.

REGISTER FOR FREE and give your production, purchasing, and quality teams access to the product information they have been asking engineering for.

Best,

Oleg

Frequently asked questions

How can shop floor users access engineering data without a CAD license?

They open the product record in a browser. OpenBOM presents the item, its BOM position, its revision, attached drawings, images, and lightweight 3D formats such as 3D PDF or SOLIDWORKS eDrawings, plus an integrated browser 3D viewer. No native CAD installation is required, and which derivative formats are available depends on the CAD system and integration settings.

Does giving production and purchasing access mean buying more licenses?

No. OpenBOM read-only seats are free and unlimited, with permissions controlling what each person can see. This is what makes wider downstream access practical rather than theoretical.

How do non-engineering users know they are looking at the current revision?

The drawing, file, and 3D representation are attached to the item and its revision rather than distributed as separate copies. A user sees the released revision in the same record as the geometry and documents, which removes the guesswork that comes with printed drawings and emailed PDFs.

Does a 3D viewer replace drawings or engineering approval?

No. A viewer answers questions about position, orientation, and surrounding components. Dimensions, tolerances, and manufacturing notes still come from the drawing, and validation of form, fit, function, and manufacturability remains engineering work in the native CAD environment.