Engineers, managers and clientele often struggle to stay on the same page when it comes to collaborating over manufacturing models and projections. With GrabCAD's announcement Tuesday, however, the process of sharing complex CAD files among project stakeholders within the cloud just got easier.
The Somerville-based collaboration platform has officially expanded its cloud-based Workbench solution to offer a complete platform for Collaborative Product Development, which empowers users to manage, share and view CAD models. With the broadened file management capabilities, the more than 10,000 existing users on Workbench will be able to automatically sync their desktop files to cloud projects, track file dependencies and visualize version differences, thus resolving conflicts and confusion.
Given the industry's increasing interest in collaboration and "open engineering," the addition of these new Workbench features comes at the right time for GrabCAD. The cloud-based and maintenance Workbench exemplifies this trend, enabling engineers' productivity and reducing the cost, hassle and risks involved with installing multiple software products.
"Our first solution, launched three years ago, really allows engineers to collaborate in a public way," GrabCAD Founder Hardi Meybaum told BostInno of the Workbench platform. "This new file management expansion helps engineers manage their data in a totally new way...People are becoming more and more distributed. By creating a platform that enables collaboration as part of the product, it can play a huge role in the [project management] process."
The new Workbench file management features are available to all users during a beta period and, in January, will be generally available to users on Professional and Enterprise plans.
