Data Management from the Assembly Environment

I know of very few people who jump up in joy at the mention of data management. That's perfectly understandable. Digging into rows and columns of alphanumeric data to find the right part numbers, revisions, or file statuses to get a snapshot of your project is not exactly a creative endeavor. It's a necessary evil of the era of parallel product development.

But what if you can use your 3D CAD models as the interface to search, query, retrieve, and visualize supplier info, file statuses, cost, compliance, and outstanding change orders? That would give data management a whole new face, quite literally.

The trend, sometimes described as visual data management, can be seen in how you might use your Autodesk Inventor models to access information stored inside Autodesk Vault, or how you might interact with Teamcenter data right from your NX assembly models.

For more, read my article in April issue, titled "Visualizing the Forest of Data Beyond the Trees," and watch the video clip below: