What is Engineering Document Management Software?

Engineering document management software is a tool for any engineering organization that wants to stay organized and efficient. It provides a secure, centralized platform for storing and managing all types of engineering documents, including CAD drawings, technical specifications, project plans, and more. The main difference between an engineering document management software and a normal document management software is that engineering document management software allows for the management of CAD drawings and can integrate into your CAD software. This makes it ideal for engineering companies that want to house all of their files in one place.

But, why?

Many engineering companies might manage their files with shared network drives. You click on your default file explorer window, and on the left side there is a lettered drive that you click on to access your company files. There are many problems that could occur when controlling files like this, especially for engineers.

Engineers have complex files and information that they work with every day. Imagine you are an electrical engineer designing a building. You are designing the power and lighting. Your mechanical engineering teammate designs the plumbing. Your architecture teammate designs the layout and the fixtures. You all have complex designs, and they must fit together to make a functional building. All together you might have many files with many links. The lighting has to reference the building layout. The plumbing has to reference the lighting. What if someone was referencing the wrong version? What if someone needed to reference an earlier version? What if someone wanted to find a file with specific information?

This is where Engineering Document Management Software like Open Domain Vistapoint shines.

Organized and efficient

Using an engineering document management software helps your work become more organized and efficient. It helps you avoid rework, search for files faster, share easier, and keep your files in a centralized system.

Rework

Engineers typically work everyday with CAD files to design products. Of course, they are not going to complete everything in one turn. An engineer might go through many versions and iterations of the same design until it is finished. If an engineer makes a mistake and wants to go back, she would have to have saved a previous file version. Then, she would have to start from the previous version (hopefully she made a version recently) and start over. Engineering Document Management Software allows you to control file versions and minimize rework. This allows you to save time in design and avoid doing work you don’t want to do.

Searching

What do you do when you don’t know where a file is? Next time you find yourself in this situation, think about the steps you take and how long it takes. Do you ask a teammate where the file is? Do you click in and out of folders? There are two main causes why we can’t find the files we want in an efficient way. First, we have our files spread out over multiple platforms. Second, we can’t effectively search for these files. An engineering document management software like Open Domain Vistapoint helps you find your files faster by allowing you to keep all your files in one place and has advanced search that allows you to search for your files based on different characteristics that you might recall from the file.

Sharing

Engineers work with many stakeholders throughout a project. Because engineers work on complex designs that work together, they need to interact with many other engineers or architects. Naturally, they need to share many files on a daily basis. An important part for engineers, however, is to have a place where they can share their files while also maintaining the integrity of the design files. Engineers need to share files across teams who use different CAD systems and across teams that don’t have access to CAD systems. An engineering document management software allows you to keep files in the same place and easily share among teams even if they have multiple CAD systems or no access to a CAD system. For example, Open Domain Vistapoint has over 15+ CAD integrations to ensure that your team can easily share files no matter what CAD system you use now or in the future.

Security

Document security is not fun to manage, but is important for controlling access to files and auditability. It’s important to have an easy way to control who has access while ensuring that proper security measures are in place. There are varying security needs for an engineer. An engineer might have a certain degree of security requirements to work for the customer. One project might have sensitive data that can only be accessed to people who have signed an NDA. In some cases, CAD drawings can be some of the most important intellectual property of a company, so it is important to have a flexible and secure way to manage access to files. A flexible engineering document management software like Open Domain Vistapoint allows your team to stay in compliance with customer requirements and securely manage access to your most important documents.

Engineering Document Management Software

Engineering document management software is a beneficial tool for any engineering organization that wants to stay organized and efficient. It provides a secure, centralized platform for storing and managing all types of engineering documents, including CAD drawings, technical specifications, project plans, and more. With the right engineering document management software, teams can easily access and share the documents they need, when they need them.

Engineering document management software can help streamline processes and reduce costs. It simplifies the process of sharing and collaborating on documents, which can help reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks. By utilizing a centralized system, organizations can also improve their security and compliance capabilities by ensuring documents are securely stored and tracked. Document management software also enables teams to quickly locate documents and review versions. This helps to ensure accuracy and reduce delays associated with searching for the right document. It also makes it easier to keep track of versions, so teams can quickly access the most up-to-date version of a document.

To learn more about Open Domain Vistapoint engineering document management software book a demo with a friendly member of our Open Domain support team.

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