SolidEdge 2D to improve supply chain management

One of the problems I've face over the last few years has been working with external partners.

For example, we deal with a toolmaking company who uses AutoCAD LT 2004 for its manufacturing drawings. Having previously been a user of Autodesk Inventor, has meant that we have had to save in .dwg or .dxf format, as our partner cannot read .idw files, the native Inventor 2D output.

Not a major stretch you might say, but when working on a project that may have 30 or 40 or more drawings, it becomes a real pain to save in .idw and then .dxf and often .pdf for third party users too.

So when it comes to issuing an ECO and releasing revisions, drawing management can become a real headache.

We identified this problem early on, and so far have been able to manage the data manually, but now as we are growing in size, this can no longer be allowed to continue.

Of course we will be using Teamcenter Express for document management, but another great bonus for us is, we no longer need save drawings in different formats.

Instead we will post a link to the Solid Edge 2D FREE download. This means our partners can read, mark up,annotate and modify drawings where necessary in their native format, whilst Teamcentre can be accessed by external collaborators via the web to maintain robust and reliable document management.

We can of course allow external partners to view 3D information too with the free SolidEdge 3D viewer.

There are further benefits to be had with SolidEdge 2D. AutoCAD LT 2009 is listed by Scan for £1,196.46, for a single licence and no support, and a 5 licence pack costs £5,254.05.

Compare that with Solid Edge Design & Drafting at £1,760, with maintenance costing £390 per licence per year, you can easily see that the migration to 3D is more easily justified.

Solid Edge Design & Drafting is the perfect choice for a jig and fixture designer or other business that needs basic 3D solid modeling capability and with a clear upgrade path, it's hard to see a reason for choosing something like Spaceclaim or Alibre in my humble opinion.

Click to download a SolidEdge free 2D factsheet