Cloud Product Data Management (PDM) Software
Transform how CAD data is managed, accessed, and stored with Onshape’s built-in PDM.
What is Product Data Management (PDM) software?
Product Data Management (PDM) software centralizes CAD information so engineers can efficiently store, search, and manage their design data.
Onshape's PDM is built into its cloud-native CAD platform, serving as a foundation for all its CAD workflows. This modern approach simplifies data management and makes design data accessible to those who need it.
Key Features
History, Versions, Compare
Onshape's built-in PDM stores all CAD data in Documents. These can contain assemblies, drawings, BOMs, media like images, videos, or PDFs. Onshape Documents centralize data and keeps a tracking of the entire access and edit history so users can easily revert back to an any previous state of the design.
Users can also compare designs to previous versioning.
Branching and Merging
Onshape helps teams iterate, discuss, and find solutions quickly through branching and merging which enables multiple engineers to work on the same design concurrently, without conflict.
Branching creates independent workspaces for individuals to explore ideas without fear of disrupting others' work. Teams can easily manage design conflicts with tools to compare and merge selective changes into the main design.
Release Management
Onshape accelerates release processes from hours or days to mere minutes by automatically organizing design data and eliminating the need to locate CAD files.
Set up release processes in just a few steps, including review and approval workflows, roles, and company preferences.
Additionally, Onshape makes it easy to share the correct, approved design with your extended manufacturing team and eliminate the need for CAD version-specific viewing tools through Publications.
Advanced Search
Onshape’s Where Used is a powerful tool for tracking where a part has been used in an assembly. It can also help you locate instances where custom features have been applied.
Can’t remember a name or part number? Simply search by property values to find any Part, Assembly, Drawing, or Document.
PLM
Extend your data management benefits with the Onshape-Arena Connection, which integrates CAD, PDM, and PLM in the cloud.
The Connection enables real-time sharing of design information between engineering and operations teams while eliminating the complexities, administrative burdens, and excessive costs associated with traditional PLM integrations.
How Onshape’s Cloud-Native PDM is Transforming the CAD Industry
Learn how Onshape’s built-in, cloud-native PDM system is not only cost-efficient but is also transforming the way CAD design data is managed, accessed, and stored.
Explore More
Learn how Onshape’s Cloud-Native CAD and PDM provide a complete, searchable, and secure product development platform with built-in version control and release management tools.
Got Questions?
Under the hood, Onshape is both a CAD and PDM system.
Onshape eliminates the need to manage files or have separate CAD and PDM software communicating, thus removing manual and non-value-added tasks like check-in/out.
Unlike traditional PDM systems, Onshape does not store its CAD data in files (eg, a black box). This means that Onshape’s built-in PDM can actually operate on the CAD data because it understands it.
This unlocks functionality such as:
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You never have to check in or out a file, all data is versioned implicity.
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You can compare and merge designs from different branches without conflict or manual effort.
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You can release a specific configuration of a design. There are no duplicate, rev-controlled design variants.
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You can start the release process from a drawing, and this will gather all the necessary product information to create the release candidate for you.
Onshape Documents are containers keeping all of your CAD data, including parts, assemblies, drawings, BOMs, and other media like images, videos, or PDFs in one place. Documents can be easily linked, creating relationships between designs so that you can manage projects efficiently.
Onshape Documents allow users to create, share, and store CAD designs online while also providing the ability to inspect an entire edit history, identify contributors, and revert to any earlier version as needed.
Onshape modernizes how you share and manage access to your CAD data using URLs. All data is encrypted and securely retained in your account, where access can be granted or revoked instantly.
You can share Documents or even parts of a document with specific permissions and generate view-only URLs that can be transformed into QR codes for easy access.
Whether it's custom Drawing and BOM templates, custom properties and categories, company Material libraries, or customized Release Management workflows, Onshape gives you the flexibility to tailor CAD and data management to your specific business needs.
Onshape’s Enterprise Plan offers comprehensive analytics so you can monitor design activity, review Document access, and better manage your projects and resources.
Every interaction with your company's data, by employees or external suppliers is recorded in detail and presented in dashboards with easy-to-read tables and charts. By turning data into insight, Onshape helps companies make more informed decisions and accelerate time to market.
"Whenever I describe Onshape to anybody, I always say, ‘It's like the Google Docs of CAD,’ and they're instantly like, ‘Oh, that makes so much sense. Why haven't they (the CAD industry) done that already?’"