Yes, but collaboration is a broad term that means different things to different people. Your engineering team probably uses a bunch of tools for collaboration already—things like PDM, PLM, Jira, Confluence, and Microsoft Teams.
So where does CoLab fit in? CoLab is a cloud based platform purpose built for fast, effective design review. Using CoLab, multiple engineers, designers, and other stakeholders can review designs together and build off one another's feedback.
CoLab makes it easy to review the right data (including CAD) with all the right people, capture useful feedback, and track issues through to action. CoLab pulls together design discussions previously lost in emails, spreadsheets, and notebooks into a single platform that integrates back into PLM. We call it a Design Engagement System.
Create a CoLab workspace and share 30+ file types from your desktop or PLM. CoLab automatically converts native or neutral CAD into a web viewable format. When you request a review, your reviewers can click a link to open the CAD right in their web browser, without downloading any software.
Use an array of sectioning, measurement, exploding, and viewer modes to fully understand the geometry of a model, and add to the clarity of your comments.
CoLab lets you pin issues and comments directly on any 2D or 3D file. All design comments have their own view state, so you won’t be left wondering what a comment was referring to.
All design feedback can be replied to directly. Reviewers can @mention one another to call attention to specific pieces of feedback, and turn design comments into design discussions.
Feedback from all of your reviews is automatically recorded and organized for you. Sort and filter design feedback to understand why decisions were made, who made them, and what needs to be done next.
CoLab will tell you the average time it takes to complete reviews, address feedback, and show you the types of issues that are coming up more often than others.
Share design files with anyone
It should be easy to share design files with the people you need feedback from—without compromising your IP security or shelling out for extra CAD/PLM licenses. And with CoLab, it is easy. Securely push drawings or models to CoLab and set the appropriate permissions. Then use a simple link that lets anyone open and view files, right in their web browser.
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Add mechanical context to your conversations
CoLab lets you pin issues and comments directly on any 2D or 3D file. When you’re reviewing in 3D, you can even tag feedback to specific geometry on a model. That means design conversations always happen with full mechanical context right there where you need it.
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Automate administrative tasks
Sure, there are dozens of tools that manage projects and tasks. But they’re only useful when someone keeps them updated, which is poor use of an engineer’s time. That’s why CoLab automatically tracks and organizes design feedback as you do the work. Then, whenever you need to pull a report or produce records for an audit, it’s all just a few clicks away.
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30%
lead time reduction
50%
cost reduction on a key assembly
$2M
cost savings in a single event
- Kevin Walters, Senior Director Hardware Engineering at Mainspring Energy