Autodesk, Vault and Multi-CAD

February 21, 2012

I’d like to continue my "multi-CAD and PDM" story. If you had no chance to read my yesterday post The Anatomy of MultiCAD-PDM integrations, please do it before continue. I want you to take some initial context from there. I’ve been talking with Brain Roepke, director of PLM and "father of Autodesk Vault". My interest was to learn more about Autodesk Vault PDM in the context supported CAD systems, Open APIs and openness.

Autodesk, Multi-CAD and Integrations with other PDMs

According to Brian, Autodesk is investing a lot in multiCAD capabilities. It comes in various capabilities and different applications. I’d like to to strict my coverage purely to Autodesk Vault. So, this post will not cover multiple translators and ability to read different CAD formats by various Autodesk products and for variety of purposes – visualization, simulation and many others. Autodesk Development Networks (ADN) allows you to have the ability to develop applications using AutoCAD, Inventor, and other Autodesk products. In addition to that, you may use 3rd party tools that allow you to access Autodesk files and formats. I found integrations with Autodesk Inventor, and AutoCAD developed for Windchill, Enovia, TeamCenter, SAP PLM and others. Some of the integration developed by vendors and some of them, by partners.

Autodesk Vault- foundation and APIs

Let me start from core capabilities of Autodesk Vault to be integrated with other applications as well as providing a platform for development. Navigate your browser to the following link – Autodesk Dev Center. Here is what written about Autodesk Vault there:

Vault makes use of Web Service technology, which greatly simplifies client/server communication. Fundamentally, the Vault API allows a program to interact with the Vault server component, also known as ADMS. In fact, Vault Explorer and the CAD plug-ins are built on top of this API. So you have the same level of access to server data that Autodesk clients have.

Following this you can learn that Autodesk Vault SDK is installed automatically with Autodesk Vault. According to Autodesk you don’t have to be ADN (Autodesk Development Network) member to use APIs.

Another interesting functionality I learned about was Vault Attachments. Navigate to the following link to learn more. What was interesting is that Vault Attachments can be used in order to have Vault to use rules based on the association between files. The following passage, actually, explains this capability:

You can add attachments between any two or more files within the vault. Attaching a file to another in Autodesk Vault creates an association between the two files in the vault. Using attachments, you can check out all the files that are linked together and work on them as a unit, regardless of the applications that created the files. For example, you may want to attach a set of images to a Microsoft Word document if the images are linked to that file. In a design environment, you may want to assign a relationship from a document that represents assembly instructions to the actual CAD assembly files.

I can recommend you the following blog post – 6 hours of videos of Vault API, which contains quite good collections of videos you can use for training. It includes presentations and code samples by Doug Redmond.

Autodesk Vault and Other CAD systems

I’ve been searching for integrations of Autodesk Vault with major CAD systems of competitive CAD/PDM providers – SolidWorks, CATIA, Pro-E / Creo-Parametric, SolidEdge and NX. Here are few videos shows examples of these integrations.

Autodesk Vault and SolidWorks

Autodesk Vault and Pro-E

Autodesk Vault and Bentley Microstation

What is my conclusion? I found multiple ways to develop Vault PDM integration with CAD systems. Some of them requires API and development. Some of them can be done just by product configuration. I believe in such a thing as "integration", devil is in details. It sounds like Autodesk has an intent to be open. More APIs and Web Services approach supported by Autodesk Vault provides a good foundation for that. Just my thoughts… I’m looking forward to learn more from comments and discussion.

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: This post was reviewed by Brian Roepke before publishing.

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The anatomy of MultiCAD-PDM Integrations

February 19, 2012

After posting my last blog multi CAD and PDM- dead lock?, I’ve got quite many emails and calls. It again proved to me that the topic is painful and require clarification. I’ll be setting up few follow up conversations following weeks. Today, I want to provide some background and clarify few basic things related to Multi-CAD and PDM.

The scope of Multi-CAD PDM

One size doesn’t fit all. Companies are using multiple CAD systems. Functional specialization, acquisitions, mergers and existing skill set. All these factors lead to the questions of how CAD systems exchange the information. It is about formats and interoperability. PDM multi-CAD is not about it. Since PDM is largely about the control and data share, multi-CAD PDM is about how to organize an environment in which engineers (and other people in your organization) will be able to use PDM will all CAD systems and files.

CAD-PDM: Immersive integration

Immersive integration is the trend in CAD/PDM which was formed for the last decade. It allows CAD users to interact with PDM within CAD environment. It simplified a lot design interaction and helps PDM to have a better control over the design process.

CAD-PDM plug-ins

Plug-in is a piece of software normally written using CAD API that allows PDM functionality inside of the CAD system. It includes functionality related to PDM control – open, check-in, check-out, release, etc. In addition to that it allows to support multiple CAD functional areas (I’m trying to avoid word ‘feature’ in order not to interrelate it with CAD parametric design features).

CAD complexity and PDM plug-ins

The growing complexity of CAD systems made PDM development quite complicated for the last 5-7 years. CAD systems made lots of functional enhancement, which made development of CAD-PDM in a nightmare. Add to that CAD releases, and you understand why CAD vendors got an ultimate advantage to provide a better CAD-PDM integration for their own CAD and PDM systems. It happens because of availability of internal knowledge, specific APIs and release process.

Customer needs and MultiCAD – PDM

MultiCAD environment is a reality of many companies. In such situation, customers are following two possible strategies 1- to follow dominant CAD + PDM strategy; 2- to form multi CAD/ PDM environment. The availability of a specific CAD-PDM integration is an ultimate deal/no-deal requirements in many situations.

Openness and API

In many situations, basic PDM and CAD integration can be achieved by using open API and system customization capabilities. These are important characteristics both PDM and CAD side. Availability of such instruments can decrease the pain around MultiCAD -PDM plug development.

CAD and PDM software releases and upgrades

Last, but now least- this is another pain point of Multi-CAD ODM plug-ins. Most of CAD and ODM releases are following one-year cycle. At the same time, customers are not always following all upgrades. To support multiple CAD releases in a single PDM is another place where precise synchronization between CAD and PDM development process is required.

What is my conclusion? The topic of MultiCAD PDM isn’t new. Let’s face the reality, because of the absolute importance, companies easy can get provoked to use it as a competitive advantage. In addition to "openness" in general, the ultimate way to solve this problem is Open API. I believe Open APIs is the most important strategic factor for companies to be competitive in the future. Just my thoughts… I’m looking forward to your comments and future discussions. Stay tuned for more posts about that.

Best, Oleg

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Multi-CAD and PDM: Dead Lock?

February 17, 2012

This post was provoked by twitter conversation between me, Jonathan Scott of Razorleaf and Brian Roepke of Autodesk. Let me give you a context. During SolidWorks World general session yesterday, Jonathan commented about comingSolidWorks EPDM integration with DraftSight – free CAD software for your DWG files. I thought, it might be beneficial to have DraftSight integration with Autodesk Vault. However, it appears to be a mistake. Watch that…

This conversation made me think again about what happens in the space of integration of product data management products and design software. Time ago, I posted – Immersive CAD management: is it the CAD / PDM future? Another post related to the same topic was – Back to basics: Multi-CAD and PLM. Last year, I posted CAD, PDM and PLM diversity. What I found common between all these cases is that I can see more and more stable bundles between CAD and PDM systems.

I can see an increased demand for better data-management functionality in CAD systems. The integration of data-management applications increased over the past 2-3 years. Vendors started to think about PDM functionality like revision management and vaulting as a standard function in CAD applications. Dassault V6 took this process even future and introduced CATIA V6 bundled with ENOVIA server.

In my view, CAD-PDM integration played a significant role in the first wave of broad PDM adoption. Multi-CAD support was (and still is) considered as an important function of PDM (and sometimes even PLM) system. To support heterogeneous environment, pure play PDM/PLM vendors must include multi-CAD support. It happened almost to all vendors in PDM/PLM space. On the opposite side, CAD/PDM vendors decided to strength their bundles and prefer to integrate data-management systems only with their own CAD systems. In my view, Multi-CAD integration is a painful issue for pure-play PDM/PLM vendors like Arena, Aras and future others. The complexity of CAD integration with PDM and PLM systems create a significant competitive advantage for CAD vendors to bundle their own PDMs right. At the same time, PDM providers from CAD vendors are less interested to provide support for "non-home-based" CAD systems.

What is my conclusion? I can see a certain dead-lock between the need for multi-CAD PDM systems and interest of CAD/PDM vendors to protect their business. Customers are demanding PDM systems like TeamCenter, Autodesk Vault, SolidWorks EPDM to support Multi-CAD features. However, it looks more and more like a dead-lock. PDM system will be embedded into CAD environment and will become part of the whole design environment. It doesn’t mean new innovative companies won’t try to break this dead-lock. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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SolidWorks, Cloud and Product Data Management

February 15, 2012

Cloud is one of my favorite topics. Back, two years ago, on SWW 2010, SolidWorks made a broad statement about the future of SolidWorks on the cloud and SolidWorks technological experiments in that space. I can see lots of changes happened since that time. Cloud computing is clearly going mainstream. It takes companies to understand what and how they should behave on the cloud. I wanted to put some thoughts about SolidWorks, cloud computing, and product data management. Until now, SolidWorks didn’t make any new announcement related to "cloud products".

SolidWorks Users and PDM

As I mentioned yesterday in my post, SolidWorks keeps the status quo in PDM. Enterprise PDM remains the mainstream PDM story for SolidWorks and as I can hear from many people at the conference, the adoption of EPDM is growing. At the same time, the overall PDM adoption in SolidWorks community is relatively low. My very conservative assessment is that about 70-80% of SolidWorks customers today have no product data management solution. The problem of these customers to adopt PDM solution mainly related to two major factors: complexity and IT resources.

SolidWorks n!Fuze

SolidWorks introduced first (and for the moment, only one) cloud data management product – SolidWorks n!Fuze. The initial kickoff of this product wasn’t very successful. Some mistakes were made in terms of product usability as well as pricing. It was mentioned during the Q&A session with SolidWorks VP R&D Gian Paolo Bassi. I’ve heard the same opinion from others’ people, including SolidWorks product managers and R&D people. Version 2 of n!Fuse is expected to come later this year. I’m expecting to see improvements in user experience. Maybe some changes in pricing will be done as well.

Cloud and SolidWorks opportunity

Back in SWW 2010, cloud topic raised lots of debates. However, if I analyze them in a detailed way, most of criticism was about taking SolidWorks CAD to the cloud. At the same time, I was able to hear that use of cloud to improve data-sharing capabilities and collaboration can be a very interesting option. Today, it is even clearer to me. The opportunity to improve product data access and data management using cloud technology is huge, in my view. Two major showstoppers for EPDM adoption – complexity and IT resources can be removed by cloud. Even very small teams and individual engineers will be able to access CAD models, drawings and other product data inside the company and beyond using mobile devices.

What SolidWorks competitors are doing?

In my view, the opportunity is well understood by competitors and the community. Few years ago, PTC introducedWindchill Product Point. PTC tried to leverage SharePoint to address problem of complexity and IT resources. In my view, it didn’t work and PTC retired ProductPoint. Autodesk is clearly coming after the opportunity by focusing on smaller manufacturing companies. At the same time, it is not clear how Autodesk Nexus PLM will address the need of "PDM-less customers". Autodesk announcements clearly stated a combination of Autodesk Vault on premises and Autodesk Nexus PLM on the cloud as two main components of the solution. From my conversation with Autodesk people, I understood that they are aware about the potential of PDM-less customers and thinking how to address that. I can see potential forAutodesk Cloud (introduced few months ago), but in my view, it suffers from similar problems you can see in SolidWorks n!Fuze.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is a game changer. The ability of cloud products to solve the problem of complexity of deployment and IT resources with a combination of low-cost and availability cannot be missed. The opportunity is well understood by both SolidWorks and Autodesk selling products to smaller manufacturing companies. I can see everything that was done, until now, as "trials". It will be interesting to see next steps. The simplicity is hard to address, and we all know that. I will be heading to SolidWorks 3rd day general session in few hours, which is traditionally focused on product announcements. Maybe some news will be coming from there. Stay tuned…

Best, Oleg

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PDM/PLM Evolution: Final Step and Cloud / On-Premises Integration

February 10, 2012

Cloud race is here. You can see it by how companies are actively acquiring all possible and impossible cloud assets. Just to mention few examples that might be interesting to know. Navigate to the following link Oracle pays 1.9B to Taleoto read about this acquisition. Taleo, which has about 1,400 employees, said it has more than 5,000 customers, including nearly half of the Fortune 100. Through its software, people can apply for jobs and companies can manage the careers of their hires.

This acquisition is definitely come to balance Oracle’s rival SAP, which acquired SuccessFactor for 3.4B. SuccessFactors, based in San Mateo, Calif., is a big maker of cloud-based human resources applications. The company focuses on applications for managing relationships with employees, such as organizing and developing performance reviews and bonuses. The company says it has more than 3,500 customers. It lost 12.5 million on 205.9 million in revenue last year.

Another interesting acquisition just came out to press few days ago, and it is actually in CAD/PLM space. Dassault is acquiring Netvibes. Netvibes is a website for dashboards. Netvibes, the San Francisco–based company that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS and social media feed dashboards. The dollar amount is incomparable, but the trend is clear, in my view. Cloud assets become interesting.

In my post few days ago, I was discussing PDM/PLM evolution. You can read more by navigating to the following link. This picture will give you an idea of my thinking of where PDM/PLM evolution is going – to the cloud.

However, I think my post was missing one picture, which explains the final step. Please take a look on the picture below. Here is my point – moving actually CAD on the cloud will be the final step.

What is my conclusion? I want to stress this point – CAD will be the latest application in the list of PDM, PLM and other business services to move to the cloud. What is interesting to me is how vendors are going to support this "cloud transition". Companies clearly won’t be able to move all in a single shot. So, we can expect a long time when cloud and on-premises application will co-exist. That drive me to another discussion… tomorrow. I’m taking off to SolidWorks World. Follow my tweeter and watch my blog from time to time. SolidWorks World coverage with "spicy PLM flavor" is about to begin.

Best, Oleg

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Software Vendors and PDM/PLM Evolution Steps

February 9, 2012

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with engineering IT manager of a manufacturing company. Without mentioning names, we’ve been discussing how manufacturing companies are adopting technologies in general and PDM/PLM technologies specifically. According to him, software companies largely misunderstood the way manufacturing companies perceive technology adoption. The conclusion we made, was that manufacturing companies are very slow to adopt any technologies. One of the key factors that impacts future evolution of PDM/PLM technologies will cost of implementation and changes. This conversation made me think about what will be the evolution of PDM / PLM systems for coming decades.

Cloud, Unification and Integration

I can define three things that will lead future evolution in PDM / PLM. It is unification, integration and cloud. I wrote about Unification and Integration few months ago. Navigate to the following article – From PDM to PLM: Unify or Integrate? to have a sense of this topic. The reality of manufacturing companies today are that they have lots of different software packages implemented. Siloed approach was dominant in the last two decades. The question of how to move forward to the next level is actively debated by many software vendors and customers. One of the options is to move to unified systems. When it sounds like an interesting option to cut cost of integration, the overall cost of migration stops many companies from taking this approach. On the other side, affordability of cloud-based software sounds like a good reason to move one and offer new type of solutions with a fraction of cost.

4 Steps of PDM / PLM evolution

In my view, cloud (private and public) will be playing a key role in the evolution of future PDM/PLM systems. On the diagram below, I pictured how I see the evolution of PDM /PLM systems. Four steps show how I think systems will be migrating from pure “on-premises’” solution to full cloud adoption.

PDM / PLM Evolution

 

I wanted to bring 3 factors that will become critical to define vendor’s success in this evolution – cloud/on-premises balance, system integration and file content migration to the cloud. Let me talk separately about each of these factors.

Cloud / On-Premises balance

The adoption of new technologies and products is very slow. Because of that, manufacturing companies will have to balance long time between existing and new solutions. The ability of vendor to bring systems gradually to solve real business needs in an affordable way, will be a key to success. Nobody will be able to replace all systems in a single shot.

System integration

I’ve been stated it many times already, but again, the ability to integrate cloud and on-premises solution will be another key capability. Today, the integration is very messy. It is costly and, in most cases, causes data duplication with a lot of inefficiency. The ability to build linked data grid of integrated solutions will create a competitive advantage for software vendors to introduce new PDM / PLM solutions and minimize implementation cost.

File Content migration

The absolute majority of product information such as CAD data is located on premises today. With the introduction of new solutions, this content will have to migrate to cloud in order to become available also for people (globally) as well as to be re-used by different cloud and on-premises solutions. The effectiveness of this migration is another key factor to success.

What is my conclusion? I see next 10 years of PDM / PLM evolution as a very interesting time. Old technologies and software packages will retire and new will be coming. What will be the future of PLM platforms is an interesting question. This question needs to be answered by well established PLM vendors like Dassault, Siemens, PTC and by newcomers such as Autodesk. Smaller companies will innovate to provide PLM solutions and technologies that potentially can disrupt and, at the same time, provide a competitive advantage to future evolution of PDM / PLM platforms. What is your take? Speak your mind, please…

Best, Oleg

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Part numbers and External Classification Schemas

February 8, 2012

fingerprint-253x300.jpgI want to talk about Part Numbers. Yes, Part Numbers, again… My previous blog -Part Numbering and the future of identification raised few interesting conversations. So, I decided to open a Pandora box of part numbering. The formal trigger for this conversation was Arena Solutions blog – Three consideration when choosing Part Numbering schema for you. Here is passage that actually made me think about the fact we are doing something wrong:

Choosing a part numbering scheme is one of the more important decisions you make as you move toward production… Once you commit to a part numbering scheme, you are married to it for a long time to come, so you need to be 100% sure it is nimble enough to evolve and scale right along with you...

It sounded like a Catholic marriage. Once you decided about part numbering, you are done for many years. The same Arena’s blog post mentioned some external tools you can use to generate part numbers – part-numbering.com and partnumber.com.

The idea that stroke me earlier today is that most of the companies are using “smart Part Numbers” in order to simplify part search, re-use and, even more fundamentally, classification. Type of part, organization, suppliers – these are only small elements of “an intelligent part number”. What if some “smart applications” are available that can add classification information to existing part numbers in order to enrich (actually to annotate) Part Number identification. These tools can be web-based and even applied to existing data in the company.

What is my conclusion? We need to re-think some very fundamental elements and concepts of product development, PDM and PLM. The ability to enrich data without building lots of sophistication in the Part Numbering is something that can make PDM / PLM systems more flexible and drive cost of changes down. I’d be interested how to support it in existing PDM/PLM systems. Not sure if it is a simple task. However, I’m curious if new PLM software coming tomorrow to market from companies like Autodesk will have a different set of capabilities to solve the problem of Part Numbering and identification. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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How to streamline PLM?

December 10, 2011

One of the biggest problem I can see in all PDM / PLM tools is a high level of the complexity. I’ve been thinking about it many times. After observing this industry for quite some time, I started to come to conclusion that solutions are becoming more complicated without becoming more functional. I’ve been reading the article The case for stripped-down enterprise 2.0 tools on by Moly Bernhart Walker. He was quoting Tim Young of Socialcast. Here is my favorite passage:

"Simple tools are incredibly powerful," said Young Nov. 15, during a keynote at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. It’s very difficult to solve a complex problem with a complex tool, he added. What we’ve been doing with customers is actually moving away, stripping away functionality and making it very, very simple by just focusing on one or two activity screens. And we’ve actually begun to see the value in this," said Young.

I decided to pull few old pictures of EDM and PDM tools and take a look on them from the angle of PLM 2012.

How to strip-down PLM?


I think, we’ve been obsessed by the power of computer, higher screen resolution and interest to push additional functionality in the PLM software. It is a time to stop and think. Here is the slide from last presentation I’ve made during Autodesk University 2011.

PLM software is bloody complicated. To find a right strip-down option will be an appropriate way to think about the next PLM solution.

What is my conclusion? PLM was born many years to solve the problem of product development in complex defense and aerospace companies. Since that time, software vendors passed a long way developing new functionality. However, I don’t think it made solutions better. It is very hard to remove functionality for existing software. At the same time, I don’t see any alternative to that in the future. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PDM ROI Calculator from SolidWorks

November 16, 2011

ROI is an important topic, and many times I’ve seen customers are not focusing on ROI assessment before starting PDM/PLM implementation. At the same time, I always found ROI definition and calculation as somewhat mystical. One of my best slides about ROI belongs to CIMData.

SolidWorks made available PDM ROI calculator. I find an CIMData logo on the website. The following disclaimer proves that methods were reviewed by CIMData: CIMData has reviewed this ROI model and finds its benefits ranges to of CIMData’s ROI research and ROI study undertaken by CIMData. The calculator is free and available on this link. Yesterday, I’ve made some experiments. Take a look on the example of the calculation I’ve made.

What is my conclusion? There is no conclusion today. In general, the logic of the calculator makes sense to me. Some of the assumptions are very straightforward, such as dependencies between annual revenues and time-to-market saving; number of ECOs and risk-reduction saving. Try to play with this and tell me what do think. I’d be interested to know your impression and feeling about the data. Does it feel right?

Best, Oleg

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BOM and CAD-PDM-PLM-ERP Integration Challenges

November 3, 2011

I want to talk about Bill of Material and integration today. The reason why I’m coming to this topic is largely because I have a feeling "integration" will play a significant role in the future of product lifecycle management and enterprise systems in general. Two days ago, I’ve been writing about two approaches "unification" and "integration" in PLM. One of the main reasons why, I think, CAD/PLM companies decided to focus on "unification" is a struggle with integration. Time ago it started from integration between CAD and PDM. Since then, multiple other topics were added to the story of integration between multiple systems. So, one of the objectives companies put in front of them investing into unification was to simplify deployment of integrated systems.

BOM and Integrations

What I learned from multiple integration projects I’ve been involved for the last 10 years? Bill of Materials is the central piece of every integration story. The majority of integration topics are around how to handle BOM during all scenarios. The processes and implementation practices related to Bill of Materials are impacting in a significant way how a company will operate multiple systems (CAD, PDM, PLM, ERP).

Interesting enough, Bill of Material is also a centerpiece of all battles around how manage product data in various forms in multiple systems. It comes in a form of BOM synchronization between systems, definition of multiple BOM views, Product representations and many others. After thinking about possible integration scenarios, I’d like to come with three main challenges that exist in most of the integration projects (in most of the cases regardless on what systems are involved) – BOM Transfer, Item Data Synchronization and Single Bill of Material representation.

Integration Challenges

Challenge 1: BOM Transfer

This is a very complicated topic. Bill of Materials are everywhere. Drawings, CAD Systems, Engineering databases, ERP and Manufacturing systems. Even sales configurations requires a certain representation of BOM. The top waste, people want to eliminate is a need to entering information manually from one system to another system. Therefore, to automate the transfer is No.1 priority for many integration projects. However, it requires mapping of data and a lot of "hand-wiring".

Challenge 2: How to keep Item Data in Sync

Item information (or how ERP-related people saying Item Master) is a second important topic for the integration. In most of the companies, it is originated and maintained by ERP/MRP systems. However, when company is moving more towards cross-functional processes, the need to have item master information replicated and, sometime originated outside of ERP system, is growing.

Challenge 3: Where is my single BOM?

This is of the most challenging topic. Lots of companies are spending tons of time trying to decide how to maintain different flavors of BOMs in multiple systems, how to synchronize it and how to define what is the "ultimate single BOM". Some of the companies are taking a different approach and starting to manage so called "multiple BOM". Time ago, I spent some time discussing these topics. Read the following two blog post I published before: Is it a time for synchronized BOM? and Non-linear BOM perspective. Companies are spending lots of resources trying to find what is the right BOM management strategy. Lots of tools (including customized tools) are focusing on how to maintain bill of materials handling across multiple representations (aka systems).

What is my conclusion? BOM is a centerpiece of everything. You may lose control of 3D drawings’ versions and do everything in 2D. You can maintain change tracking manually. You may decide not to manage requirements. However, in my view, you cannot lose the control of items and bill of materials. As the number of systems involved into this process is growing, the complexity of keeping BOM under control becomes and more complicated. Many companies are avoiding management of Bill of Materials in multiple systems just because of this reason. As, one of my readers mentioned earlier this week – "you rarely can satisfy all your needs with a single system". So, I’m expecting more "integration challenges" in coming years from implementing CAD, PDM, PLM, ERP in various flavors and combinations. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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