Today we’re going to look at consolidating CAD software. We’re going to take a look at some of the benefits of moving to a single, consistent CAD platform. While there will be cases when this isn’t a feasible option, for instance customer requirements, it a large number of cases it is a solid strategy for your company.
Let's take a look at 4 of the key benefits that CAD Consolidation can bring to your company.
1. CAD Consolidation Brings Cost-Saving
From a cost-savings perspective, there are numerous ways that eliminating redundant applications can help, including:
- Reducing licensing fees
- Removing maintenance costs
- Removing upgrade costs
- Decreasing costs of training
2. CAD Consolidation Enables Design Reuse
Reuse is the ability to take existing models and use them directly in your work. This eliminates the need to rework models, which can be necessary when you move a model from one CAD system to another. While this is clearly a benefit when it comes to design efficiency, reuse also enables your to:
- Reduce validation of new parts
- Reduce testing requirements
- Reduce need for multiple suppliers
3. Collaboration in the Company Becomes Easier
You know that collaboration is important in design and product development. When you look at the ability for people to collaborate, often you’ll find they are sharing engineering ideas and concepts. But, one of the nice things when people are all using the same CAD system is that you can more easily develop best practices. When you are sharing with another engineer, not only are they able to understand the design, but also how it has been modelled in the CAD system. This opens the possibility that you’d be able to work on a colleague’s CAD model, as opposed to just being able to give advice and struggling with how that particular CAD model was put together.
4. There are Corporate Benefits to CAD Consolidation
Being able to standardise on one tool really helps companies to build best practices for engineering, for design, and for product development. They can then continue to optimise these processes over time. Being able to do this consistently across the business is extremely valuable. It’s also helpful to be able to shift work, to overcome any capacity issues.
From an efficiency perspective, it also helps your IT resource to be confident in supporting the CAD systems that you use.
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