CAD Software Development OverHead

[NTME76249]

I am interested in the amount of overhead of cad software for other companies. Our company is struggling greatly due to the completions of library parts and proper templates, let along development work regarding our specific products.
What areas of development would you say is possible for a third party to do?
How much product knowledge of your specific products would be needed to further development by third party?

I appreciate any thoughts you all might give, and feel free to ask additional questions.
Thanks


Michael McMillan

http://cadtechie.blogspot.com/

 

[MadMango]

There are companies that can handle your entire development cycle, costs are high, but in some industries or situations acceptable. Any reputable design house should take the time to understand your industry, products, and competitors. They should spend some face time with your company to understand your desires and expectations. The creation of 2D drawings are probably the easiest thing to outsource, but by not having the product knowledge or design intent, may take several rounds of checking to get something satisfactory.

I take it you meant your company is struggling to complete all of your library parts and templates, and not struggling because they are finished. What I have found best is to not try to create your entire library at once, but rather create library parts and templates as they are required.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[NTME76249]

Our struggles are from an incomplete library along with multiple library's at multiple facility's yet some one believes that we are supposed to be able to work together since we all use SolidWorks. Trying to get upper management to see the problem. Same struggle most places I think.


Michael McMillan

http://cadtechie.blogspot.com/

 

[snowshoe2]

Detached management can be difficult when they don't understand what it takes to design things in detail. forgive me if you know this or already have this in place, however one thing to look at would be a PDM system. The value of a pdm system would be a single place to store not only the designs but a location to check in the various parts libraries each location uses. I say PDM rather than PLM because the PDM systems are the first building block to PLM anyway.

PDM may help manage the situation for you, and going thru the evaluation process may help educate the management level of what it takes to work togethor. It takes time to educate people about the process, not sure what they understand of course but you may need to walk them thru it in a manner they can understand. Just some thoughts with very little knowledge of your situation.

All the Best
Snowshoe2

 

[drawoh]

NTME76249,

Libraries and template are a very bad thing to outsource IMHO. You know what you are designing and how you design it. You understand your CAD, modeling and drawing requirements. As your requirements change, you understand the change and you can respond to it.

Your library should somehow acquire screws and stuff. After that, you add things as you specify them, and organize your PDM accordingly.

Take time to think through modeling rules. If all your screw models are copied from the same template file, you will be able to use SolidWorks' replace feature to switch between unified national cap screws to metric pan head machine screws, etc.

Your profile cards should be set up so that you can copy and paste from your BOMs, into your requisition form.

--
JHG