CAD and product development knowledge may be walking off the job again and again. That’s what happens when an employee leaves your company, whether to retirement or a new job, when a project ends, or when you move to a new CAD program.
The answer here is to maintain a legacy system that includes all CAD drawings and information used in the past. If the company is old enough, some of those files might be maintained on paper (needed by, say a maker of military airplanes looking to update or recreate a part). Or files might be kept on 2D drawing systems or on 3D CAD files.
In this age of translation issues between CAD systems and continually updated systems, engineering and design companies are charged with ensuring legacy files—no matter how they’ve been created—are available at all times. A file might need to be quickly unearthed to meet regulatory or legal requirements, or example. Or, a part with a legacy 2D file might be slightly modified and used on an updated product line.
That means that many manufacturers create new designs in 3D but maintain a vault of 2D drawings they can access when needed.
Recreating legacy drawings in 3D is time consuming and needn’t be done anyway as long as the legacy data is preserved. When a 2D drawing is needed, it can be updated at that time.
Jon Peddie Research estimates the CAD software market will grow to $8.7 billion in 2017, a compound annual growth rate of four percent. Folded into that number is the 2D CAD software, which is still being updated and introduced at a steady pace.
The reason the 2D market continues apace has been debated in design circles for the past several years. Those who do design work only now and again might not feel comfortable with (or feel like learning) a 3D CAD package. Also, 2D drawings and files clearly communicate with nondesigners (those on the shop floor, for example) the designer’s intentions. But many organizations house important legacy information in 2D and need to maintain CAD systems so the information is readily available.
Manufacturers that are bringing in an entirely new legacy system or that want to migrate a large amount of CAD data might look at an automated data migration solution.
Software from Theorem Solutions, Geometric, or Srinsoft or other companies automate data migration for companies with large volumes of legacy CAD data that needs to be accurately translated into new formats. Such systems help with the continual CAD update issue, as they allow companies to carry forward CAD data into the latest generation CAD systems.
Or, legacy CAD migration can be outsourced.
Regardless of how the legacy information is migrated, stored, and searched, the most important thing is that it exists in the first place. One engineer’s outdated information may be another employee’s lifeline when regulators or the legal department come calling.
To paraphrase an ad jingle: legacy design files, don’t be caught without them.
