What are the special viewer requirements for productive collaboration on large-scale design projects?
Intuitive. High-performance. And More.
Large-scale design projects involve many diverse teams which are often globally distributed. The CAD design must be available to CAD experts and non-CAD experts alike. The feedback from groups outside of the core design team, quality, manufacturing, purchasing, and sales and marketing, improves the design and helps to find issues earlier.
How can we make detailed design information accessible to multi-discipline teams across the entire project?
3D viewing technology is fundamental to design projects. Projects could use the original design program to solicit feedback in design reviews. Full CAD data is available and team members can drill down into the design details at every level.
The viewer must be easy to use. An intuitive interface allows team members from outside of the design team to explore the design at any level of detail required. And speaking of detail, importing simplified, incomplete CAD data into a viewer for design reviews limits the team’s ability to properly evaluate the entire design.
Remote collaboration is also required. It is rare for all the responsible reviewers to be co-located in the same office. The design team, manufacturing team, and sales team could be located in different offices, different cities, different countries or on different continents. Sharing design data with remote teams is not just more efficient. It is essential.
For large-scale mechanical design, it can be difficult to understand the true scale of the design. Therefore it can be difficult to evaluate how easily operators will be able to do their work once the design project is completed. Having a true-to-life view of the design is very helpful. If the 3D viewer has a display mode that can show a one-to-one scale, then the team can rapidly review the usability of the design or find issues more quickly.
Using 3D viewing technology to examine large-scale designs and to gather input from non-CAD experts on the project is typically a cost effective option. For large-scale mechanical designs, it is important that the viewing technology deliver the following features:
- Performance with large designs
- Easy to use
- Include full CAD design data
- Remote collaboration functions
- Additional, unique features like one-to-one scale viewing
In the short video provided here, Mr. Murata from the iCAD development team presents key features in iCAD’s 3D viewer technology. Please take two minutes to watch the video and learn more.
