Looking for a way to get non-CAD users involved in the product development process without spending a lot of money on a collaboration tool? Delcam, a maker of CAD/CAM software has a solution.
The company has introduced free software called PowerSHAPE-e that lets people who don’t know CAD view, experiment with and comment on CAD data throughout the course of a project. The way Delcam explains it, there are a variety of individuals in a company or at a partner that need to participate in the design process and who need measurements from or want input into CAD models. But not all of them know how to use or can afford to buy a seat of the respective CAD tool to participate. Maybe they don’t even want to spend the money on one of the lighter weight CAD collaboration tools, officials there explain.
That’s where Delcam says PowerSHAPE-e comes in. It lets these infrequent and non-CAD specialists experiment with and give input into the product design, but only allows them to save changes locally. That ensures that alternations to the original master model are not made, only marked-up comments saved locally. PowerSHAPE-e incorporates a variety of surface and modeling functionality which can be deployed on imported models. The software incorporates the Delcam Exchange data translation options, allowing it read in files from all the main CAD systems, including CATIA, NX, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor as well as neutral formats like IGES and STEP.
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