How to Build an Effective CAD Data Migration Plan

We get it. Making the move to a new CAD platform sounds scary and overwhelming. What do you do about your existing legacy data? How do you determine which files to migrate?

Fear not! We are here to tell you that data migration doesn’t have to be scary if you have the right tools.

Onshape’s Principal Technical Services Engineer, Jenny Johnson, sat down with Nicole Phillips, Engineering Systems Analyst at Trek Bicycle and an Onshape customer, to discuss Trek Bicycle’s migration from SOLIDWORKS to Onshape, the steps her team took to ensure a smooth migration, and the challenges they faced.

Step 1: Decide What’s Worth Migrating

One of the most important and most overlooked parts of any migration is the audit. The Trek team’s first task wasn’t moving files but deciding which files deserved to make the trip at all.

Their approach was pragmatic: any files tied to active, in-progress projects stayed in SOLIDWORKS until that work was complete, then were migrated at a natural handoff point. This avoided the chaos of mid-project transitions and kept both systems clean during the overlap period.

Phillips was equally direct about the manual migration question: "If you’ve got at least 100 files to migrate, you can’t do it manually. It’s just not worth the time."

Step 2: Map Out the Project Structure

Before a single file was transferred, the Trek team drew out exactly how their project hierarchy would translate into Onshape. Phillips, who describes herself as a visual thinker, found this step essential, and it paid off.

Their logic was straightforward. A Trek project was migrated to Onshape. Product categories became an additional organizational layer. Each discipline-specific team got its own team space, so anyone could navigate directly to their area and see all active projects at a glance.

Phillips added that this made the project migration a lot easier. “We had a road team, a mountain bike team, a city team… and then category-specific teams, so they can go to their team and then see all the projects that are active.”

Getting the structure right before migration meant files landed in the right place the first time, rather than requiring a second round of reorganization after the fact.

Step 3: Eliminate Duplicates

Duplicate files are among the most common and avoidable problems in a CAD migration. The Trek team addressed this proactively by using a third-party application to assign unique IDs to duplicate files before migration, making them easy to identify and reconcile in Onshape.

Phillips also added that keeping things organized helped. “Beyond that, we’re just trying to find better ways in using analytics a lot to try to keep a handle on everything and make sure everything is nice and clean.”

A migration is a good forcing function to establish cleaner data habits, but only if the team treats it that way.

Step 4: Migrate Continuously

One of the most practical insights from Trek’s experience is that migration doesn't have to be a single, disruptive event. Phillips highlighted this as one of the tangible advantages of Onshape’s architecture. Since the platform is cloud-native, files can be migrated incrementally while work continues uninterrupted.

“We can just do it while working, and no one’s going to really notice it like you would in a prior system.”

If something was needed, the files could be migrated quickly without a problem. “If you need something in the next hour, you can flag it and it’ll come over with a scheduled job that we have set up,” added Phillips.

For large engineering organizations, this flexibility alone can significantly reduce the risk and disruption typically associated with platform transitions.

5 Steps to Planning a Data Migration

Johnson shared five considerations when starting a data migration.

1. Audit your data. Engineers accumulate many files over time, and not all of them are worth keeping. Take the time to evaluate what genuinely needs to migrate and what can be archived or retired. This step alone can dramatically reduce the scope and complexity of the migration.
2. Define your approach. Decide whether to remodel the design data from scratch or import it as-is. Trek did strong work here by clearly defining their requirements upfront and determining what actually needed to come over versus what could be left behind.
3. Identify and consolidate common parts. Migrations are an opportunity to eliminate redundancy. Identify reusable components and consolidate them before the move.
4. Map your metadata. Maintaining links between documents and ensuring metadata is accurately mapped during import prevents downstream confusion and keeps your new system as organized as your old one, or even more so.
5. Plan a CAD retirement. Have a clear plan for sunsetting your legacy CAD system and hardware. A migration without an end date for the old system often results in two systems running indefinitely, doubling overhead without doubling productivity.

Ready to Start Your Migration?

A CAD migration is a significant investment of time and planning, but it’s also an opportunity to build cleaner workflows, better data habits, and a more collaborative foundation for your team going forward.

If you’re considering a move, Onshape’s CAD Data Migration Station is designed to help you get there with the right tools and support from day one.