Manufacturers today are increasingly seeking to improve collaboration between their core engineering teams and an extended group of stakeholders within their organizations. These internal stakeholders include representatives across an array of functions – sourcing, operations, manufacturing, marketing and sales.  

Due to their experience and specialized knowledge, these colleagues often bring key insights and in some cases required approvals, to the product development process. These experts can often suggest improvements that make a difference in getting a product to market. 

Unfortunately, traditional file-based CAD has not provided a good way for engineers to stay connected with these extended stakeholders. In fact, sharing a design file beyond the core team has often been a cumbersome and manual process.   

In the majority of firms, extended stakeholders simply do not have access to a dedicated file-based CAD workstation due to the prohibitive cost. In order to share design files, engineers must find other ways to get feedback. This might include hand-walking a file over to a desk, taking input and later incorporating feedback. Alternatively, a designer might send an email with detailed notes and a screen grab image. In both cases, the manual sharing of designs and compilation of feedback in an ad-hoc manner can result in misunderstandings and delays.

Faced with the challenge of empowering these extended teams, manufacturing companies are now seeking improved digital and cloud-based product development solutions. 

How Cloud CAD Improves Collaborative Product Design Across an Organization 

The core engineering team often requires design feedback from various stakeholders across the organization. Onshape makes it easier to instantly share the latest product designs with non-CAD users. 

Rather than printing out drawings in 2D and physically walking them over to internal stakeholders to explain a design – or even sending an email with lengthy descriptions –  cloud-based CAD enables designers to share live designs by just sending a web link. Rather than waiting for formal scheduled design reviews, stakeholders can check on the progress of projects 24/7 and tag comments to specific design elements – as easy as sharing feedback on social media.  

PTC’s cloud-native Onshape product development platform is making CAD data available to stakeholders who never previously had direct access to in-progress designs. Being able to share an Onshape Document with a link grants view-only permissions to anyone inside or outside the company – even if they do not have an Onshape account.  

With view-only access to the product model, extended stakeholders can measure, evaluate the assembly structure, make comments, and also look at the Bill of Materials. Onshape is making CAD data accessible across departments, allowing for earlier and more frequent feedback throughout the product development cycle. Teams can now more easily break down information silos and accelerate their time-to-market. 

Onshape Helps Doris Dev Engineers Incorporate Earlier Design Feedback

An exploded view of the Canopy humidifier, which is the first product in its class to eliminate mold and be dishwasher-safe.

An exploded view of the Canopy humidifier, which is the first product in its class to eliminate mold and be dishwasher-safe.

Doris Dev is an on-demand, full-suite product development agency based in New York City with a dedicated sourcing and manufacturing team in Hong Kong. The firm can lead product development projects from idea to market, including industrial design, mechanical and electrical engineering, sourcing, manufacturing, compliance and fulfillment.

The company also creates its own brands of consumer products, including most recently the Canopy humidifier, billed as the “World’s Cleanest Humidifer” because of its resistance to mold. Learn more about Canopy.

Doris Dev relies on cloud-based Onshape for enabling its core engineering team to share early product designs with internal stakeholders across the company and incorporate their feedback into new iterations faster. 

“In Onshape, we are able to quickly make design changes with input from multiple designers at the same time because we're all able to share design documents,” says Lucas Lappe, Head of Product. “We're all able to preview the designs with nine technical team members and the marketing and branding teams who can see the product and provide feedback without ever needing a CAD license or the ability to download a CAD file and open it up.”

Doris Dev also credits Onshape for improving communication between its core design team and their clients, allowing them to monitor the progress of a project 24/7.

“What we're able to do with Onshape is give our clients a living link. They can watch us work and see all the changes we're making,” says Lappe. “We do this freely because we want all of our clients to see how good, bad and messy the development process can be sometimes. We believe the more information they have, the better they're going to understand us and the better clients they're going to be.”

“In the Onshape Document, our clients can make comments when they see something they don't like, and we can say, ‘Hey, okay. Do you want to make this change? Here's what happens when we make this change, and here's why we can or can't make that change to the design.’ And they're able to see all that in real time,” he adds. 

Get Your Copy of “The New Collaboration” eBook

Interested in learning more about how forward-thinking companies have benefited from switching to a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CAD platform? 

In this eBook, you’ll be introduced to a brand new class of real-time CAD collaboration and sharing tools, engineering productivity features made possible only by a cloud database architecture.

Cloud-based CAD and data management are no longer a nice-to-have technology, but a must-have technology. Download your copy of “The New Collaboration: A Guide to Transforming Product Design” today and find out why!