GrabCAD and Siemens announced last week that GrabCAD has licensed Siemens Parasolid software 
. As you probably know, Parasolid is a leading 3D modeling kernel, used by CAD systems like SolidWorks, NX, and Solid Edge (for more on kernels and why they’re important, see this earlier blog post). You may be wondering what GrabCAD plans to do with a 3D modeling kernel.
Well, let me address the most obvious question first - we’re not building a CAD system. Our vision is to make your current CAD system even better; we aren’t trying to replace it. We hear from users every day how much they love <insert your CAD system here>. But we also hear from them every day how hard it is to keep track of CAD files and share them with partners, which is why we’re constantly working to make GrabCAD Workbench the best cloud-based PDM possible.
How can we use a geometry engine to improve the PDM experience? There are actually a lot of things you can do with geometry that don’t require a CAD system. For example:
- Precise measurements
- Interference checking
- Mass properties
- Projected geometry calculations
- Boolean operations
Workbench already has one of the best CAD viewers on the market. The viewer lets non-CAD users see your models in 3D as well as explode, section view, measure, compare versions, markup models and more. We want to go even further in making it easy to interrogate, measure, and interact with models, which is why we’re working with Parasolid.
So to summarize - “no” on new CAD system, “yes” to better PDM.
Struggling with CAD file management?
Unmanaged CAD data can lead to wasted time and expensive mistakes, but traditional PDM and PLM solutions are too costly for many companies. This guide, written by industry analyst Jim Brown, will help you find the solution that fits your needs.
