CAD Migration: Why Do You Need It!

Until the invention of state-of-the-art CAD systems, converting any existing engineering drawing into handy presentations was truly a herculean task for mechanical product designers and engineers. However, with the introduction of highly advanced and interactive CAD software, today, converting large amount of scanned images into easy-to-understand and realistic 3D intuitive models has become easier. For any organization with an extensive database of CAD data, the need for CAD migration (the process of making that data compatible with other CAD platforms), will eventually arise.

CAD migration not just assists you retrieve the right data on your fingertips, but also simplifies the entire product development process and gets you rid of unnecessary costs and wastage of vital resources.

How Does CAD Migration Help Mechanical Engineering Projects

The advantages of CAD migration are by and large multifold. It helps an organization keep its vendors and dealers updated with the latest design improvisations. And as for the internal teams working on a given project, CAD migration is certainly the most efficient way to keep them updated with seamless flow of technical information and resources. It helps engineering and product-design teams to efficiently manage even the most complicated product development that involves numerous design configurations.

CAD migration also allows the translation of all existing legacy data into any format that suits the priorities and requirements of product engineering team. In addition, such an adequate translation or migration of legacy data makes it accessible for the long term. It also brings advanced industry leading technologies to the product development team, thereby enabling them to roll out ideal solutions for any obstacles faced during the design and manufacturing process, timely and efficiently.

Apart from that, most of the times you are forced to retain expensive pieces of hardware and/or software, which are no longer backed by their vendors, just to access your old data, which is by no means a cost-effective business strategy. Therefore, embracing an automated and tailored legacy CAD migration strategy is always a win-win situation for your both business, products and your pocket.

Other Notable Benefits of CAD Migration Include:

• It prevents legacy data from piling up in unusable formats
• It automatically keeps a track of the whole legacy data migration project
• It helps identify, and hence rectify poor quality data
  • 2D to 3D CAD Conversion - A 2D drawing can be easily converted to 3D model
• It encourages the use of automation processes and subsequently reduces the scope for manual intervention

Platforms/Software used for CAD Migration

CAD migration is performed to convert/migrate data from various distinct platforms such as Dassault Systemes, CATIA V4 / V5, AutoCAD / Inventor suites, Pro/E Wildfire etc., and then unify under one common platform. There are a number of automated CAD systems and software that help experts navigate the entire migration process smoothly. Some of these include:

• Autodesk Inventor
• McNeel Rhino
• Bentley AutoPlant
• Autodesk AutoCAD and 3D CAD systems
• Siemens Unigraphics / NX

Things to Ensure During the Migration Process

Regardless of whether you assign the migration task to a third party, or to your own teams, there are a few benchmarks that always need to be taken care of so that the consistency and efficiency of the entire migration process does not deteriorate.

First and foremost, the team handling the Computer Aided Design (CAD) migration task must conduct audits of all raw as well as output data on a regular basis in order to ensure the quality and efficiency levels. They must also precisely define the re-usability requirements and the required translation guidelines in sync with the re-usability needs. For each and every translation level, the estimate data volume must be assessed beforehand. In some cases, a standard template must be created, and later, modeling must be done as per the standards. And most importantly, one must set the desired quality levels as well as the acceptance criteria before initiating the process.

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