Everyone’s Talking About CAD Migration

By David Prawel, Longview Advisors, Inc.

CAD migration may be the killer application, but not in the way we’re accustomed. It’s killing budgets, it’s killing lean initiatives, and it’s killing productivity.

  Over the last 20 years, 3D has emerged as a powerful product development tool. And it has led to a huge proliferation of new technologies,  applications, and an explosion of product data. Industry consolidation further complicates the problem, as each new company — bought or sold — brings another data mine and toolset. There are about 3TB of data and 1 million parts in a ship. The F35 aircraft consists of 1.5TB of CATIA V4 data in 200,000 unique drawings. In all, almost 40TB of data were migrated last year (creating a $5.5 billion market for about 150 service providers worldwide). And much of this data must move forward with business.

  Globalization, competitive pressure, time-to-market pressure, and the need to leverage and reuse existing product designs all drive the need to migrate product data.

  So what can you do to maximize your future potential to remain flexible in today’s ever-changing, unpredictable environment? Formulate a strategy, then develop, standardize, and execute a migration methodology.

  Start by characterizing your data. What types? How much?  This is a very complex job because some data are easy to migrate and others are, well, impossible.

  What about embedded product knowledge? Not just features and PMI data. What about macros, spreadsheets, embedded relationships like parametrics, evaluators, and other accessory data? And what about other applications that were custom built in CAD languages like UGS GRIP? Part associations tell you how a product was built, and are often maintained in EBOM, MBOM, and PDM systems. All this data is critical to future usefulness of the data, and all must be considered for migration.

  Consider future uses of the data. Who will use it? For what?  Why? Designers usually want all the product knowledge they can get, but manufacturers often don’t.

  Consider how you will validate the results of a migration. How do you know the results match the original data, and who is responsible for changes? There is a huge risk in the cost of problems that appear downstream,  later.

  How much automation of migration is necessary and possible?  Some migrations are custom projects, and others can be automated. If you choose custom services, remember the need to validate results.

  What to do with data that did not migrate? How do you find data that didn’t migrate? Excellent software tools exist to help guide the completion process.

  For each general class of data migrated, determine a best approach. Define your methodology and assess potential low and high ranges of potential cost. Get executive support. Define success in advance and build budgets around these goals. Then you have a plan.

  Data migration is complex and difficult, but achievable. Many projects have proven that success, as usual, will depend foremost on planning and preparation, and then on good old execution.

  David Prawel is founder and president of Longview Advisors,  Inc., a global consulting firm focusing on 3D and CAD software business and applications in the manufacturing industry (longviewadvisors.com). To send comments about this subject, send e-mail to [email protected].