Design Collaboration, Files, and OpenBOM Drive Subscription

Collaboration is a very important part of the design and product development process. Modern products are complex combinations of mechanical, electrical, electronics and software components. To get all of these components aligned, you need to have multiple engineers work together and aligned on what they do. Unfortunately, the majority of design systems are still using files to store information. MCAD, ECAD, PCB design tools, and many others produce results that are stored in files. 

Engineers are working in teams and it is super important to provide them with the tool they can use to share and access files collaboratively as well as to allow them to use these files without the chance to override someone else work. 

Design Collaboration 

The biggest challenge in design collaboration using traditional file-based tools is to have a way to manage files, share them and control how they are accessed by multiple people (control locking). Another big problem is managing versions and history of files and accessing them when it is needed. Visualization of the data is another big challenge. 

Imagine a group of 5 engineers that need to collaborate on the assembly with multiple units, each of them is working on a specific unit and all of them need to share the data to keep them in sync. For a traditional PDM, it is a big challenge because all these engineers will have to work in their own workspaces and only combine the data with the final check-in and release. 

OpenBOM provides a unique and elegant technological solution – Drive. 

OpenBOM Drive Service 

OpenBOM Drive is a cloud-based virtual drive that allows you to organize files online, access them simultaneously by multiple people and manage versions of files. The files can be accessed from any computer via the OpenBOM Dashboard (browser) or the Windows File Explorer. You can store and share CAD designs, PDFs, specifications, or any other document. You can manage versions, check-out/in, history, and access data in a simple and automatic way. 

The purpose of OpenBOM Drive is to provide an engineering work-in-progress document management solution. Drive documents can be linked to all OpenBOM Items to manage traceability between Item/BOMs and design data. 

Check out more about what OpenBOM Drive gives you here. 

Conclusion

OpenBOM Drive Subscription is an add-in service for one of OpenBOM subscriptions . It gives you an online service to manage, share and collaborate between designers and engineers using CAD files. It provides a vault-based storage, automatic locking, and manual check-in/out service to control who has access to the files at certain times. Data is synced automatically and allows your team to stay in full sync. OpenBOM Drive provides unlimited storage and a 3D Viewer. 

REGISTER FOR OPENBOM to check out how it can help you today. 

Best, Oleg