Time-to-market is the most important factor in designing a new product. With new iterations being produced every week, the only way that you can differentiate is with speed and that’s all dependent on the tools that your team is leveraging.
In the webinar, “Stop Designing Today’s High Tech Products with Yesterday’s Tools,” Onshape’s Michael LaFleche explained the history of product development tools and why companies are making the switch to cloud-native CAD like Onshape to speed up their design process.
What’s the Problem with Yesterday’s Tools?
Product design began with rows and rows of engineers on drafting boards, which required hundreds of file cabinets to store ideas. Ideas and iterations would easily get lost in the piles of papers, so engineers went digital in 1990.
Although the designing process was faster, files would still get lost in hard drives. Companies introduced product data management (PDM) to help with database management. Whenever an engineer finished their work, they had to check in with their PDM system and their whole design process slowed down.
To this day, hundreds of companies are still using this slow method and cannot get their work done as efficiently as they need.
New Workflows With Onshape
Onshape was founded two decades ago and remains the only cloud-native CAD solution on the market. Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) databases around the world, all of your files and designs are securely stored on the cloud. That means that no matter where you are or what device you are working on, you can access your work with the click of a button.
Michael LaFleche demonstrates how to use Onshape’s PDM system on different devices.
For better organization, Onshape also has built-in PDM. Teams can use PDM whenever they want to see exactly which file version your team is working on without stopping work. LaFleche included a demonstration in the webinar of how to use PDM to the best of your ability.
“To companies that are building high-tech, moving fast, and designing hardware like software, the central product database and ability to share is extremely valuable,” LaFleche said.
LaFleche also showed viewers how to add comments to designs and assign work to different team members while in Onshape. For teams that are spread across the world, this makes the design process and its organization faster and more efficient than ever before.
Modern CAD for Modern Products
In addition to all the workflow improvements that Onshape offers, Onshape Professional users can also explore the in-house Render Studio. Rendering within Onshape makes it easy for engineers to show the world what their product will look like in real life. LaFleche gave a demonstration of how to use the render studio and a few tips that will enhance the image even more.
A demonstration of a game controller in the Render Studio.
To close up the webinar, LaFleche introduced one of Onshape’s customers, Withings, a smartwatch manufacturer, and explained how they use Onshape to improve their product design process. Withings started using Onshape in 2019 because they wanted a more reliable system for their designs.
With product designers in Paris, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, they needed Onshape’s built-in PDM and cloud-native system to create the innovative products that they are known for.
Watch the Full Webinar and Demo
LaFleche also covers a variety of other topics on how Onshape can improve your company’s workflow and product design process, including advanced part design and design reviews.
His demonstration can also give existing Onshape customers a few tips and tricks on how to improve the way that they already use Onshape.
Webinar: Modern CAD for Modern Products
Learn how high-tech consumer product designers are using cloud-native CAD tools.