With SpinFire Insight’s enterprise licensing businesses can provide everyone in the company with access to CAD data, but how can this be used? We’ll be exploring how CAD data can improve efficiency in different departments and how SpinFire Insight can help you achieve this goal.

How to Accelerate Design Processes with CAD Data Access using SpinFire Insight

In today’s engineering and manufacturing world, working with distributed teams and global supply chains is the norm. This further complicates the ever-present demand to complete projects efficiently and to a high quality. An important part of this is being able to effectively collaborate on designs and share CAD data.

With many different CAD systems being utilized and many people benefiting from seeing the data it can be difficult to find a solution that is both suitable for everyone and cost effective.

How Can Improving Collaboration Benefit the Design Process?

One of the most common things that can cause delays to the design process is having to wait for feedback. Often this problem arises when some people involved in the design process don’t have easy access to the most up to date designs. Providing access to a CAD seat for everyone isn’t cost efficient, particularly for large teams, so sharing designs can be difficult. This also presents an issue when working with external teams or trying to get feedback from customers – with people sometimes resorting to taking screenshots of data, which is both time-consuming and less effective.

Without having instant access to CAD data, decision makers must wait for meetings and presentations before they can see designs and give feedback. This not only delays the time it takes to get feedback but also requires engineers and managers to spend their time in more meetings. Many of these meetings would not be necessary if everyone had easy access to design data, and the rest are shorter when you can come prepared with feedback after already examining designs.

SpinFire Insight Provides Faster Access to Feedback

With SpinFire Insight everyone can have easy access to CAD data, allowing you to view designs even if you don’t have access to CAD. Giving everyone access to this data, not just those who are using it daily, means that feedback can be provided far quicker and more frequently. Faster access to feedback speeds up development time, resulting in quicker time to market.

Along with this, making communication more efficient can enable engineers to focus on their core responsibilities, providing more valuable design time. With SpinFire providing easy access to designs there is less need for meetings to share designs and feedback can be provided much quicker. Plus, the required meetings will be shorter when everyone is going into them with an in-depth understanding of the design.

How to Accelerate Sales Results with CAD Data Access using SpinFire Insight

Having easy access to CAD data can benefit the sales team as well. Sales teams need to collaborate with design and manufacturing departments for a variety of reasons, including writing proposals and estimating quotes. While cross-department collaboration is always helpful, having access to the designs throughout the design process can give sales the opportunity to provide their own answers to many day-to-day questions.

How Can Improving Collaboration Benefit the Sales Process?

One of the most significant aspects of sales requiring a large amount of collaboration between sales teams and design and manufacturing teams is producing a proposal. These proposals typically require detailed technical information, much of which is found in CAD files.

Having design and manufacturing teams serve as middlemen for this data takes away time they could be using on their core duties. Sales also has to sit and wait for their request to be filled, twiddling their thumbs and slowing down their own processes. While some initial collaboration will still be required (and is important), providing sales teams with access to CAD data can speed up the process massively, and help support quoting and estimating activities.

With clear, user-friendly access to CAD models, sales teams can examine data and get the answers to many questions themselves. Informed decisions can be made quickly, without needing as much outside input. All of this reduces the need for otherwise unnecessary meetings, saving time for both sales and design and manufacturing.

SpinFire Offers Access to Designs

CAD viewers are a great way of providing access to CAD data to people who don’t usually have it. With SpinFire you can thoroughly investigate models – with the ability to zoom into areas of interest, take measurements, and markup files. All of this is done without paying for extra, often expensive, seats of your chosen CAD software, or having to train salespeople on how to use them. This allows sales teams to get a clear understanding of designs, speeding up the process drastically while saving money.

SpinFire also improves collaboration between teams when working with CAD designs. With enterprise-wide deployment, non-CAD users throughout the business can have more informed discussions around CAD designs resulting in much more efficient collaboration.

How to Enhance Customer Communications with CAD Data Access Using SpinFire Insight

With easy access to CAD designs customer communication also becomes easier. Communicating effectively with current or potential customers is a very important part of any business, but working with data that some people can’t access will complicate the process. Easy access to designs can help marketing teams create engaging and informative marketing materials and providing designs to customers directly can ensure that everyone is on the same page during conversations.

Create Effective Marketing Materials

Marketing materials are (if the marketing department has its way) often the first communication you’ll have with potential customers. Having high quality and informative materials needs to be a priority but creating them can prove difficult. Marketing teams are often bogged down by needing to request images from engineering to produce resources that are engaging and accurate, resulting in frustrating delays for both departments. No team wants to spend more time on file management and permissions, and the right CAD viewers can streamline this process.

By making engineering designs more accessible throughout the business, marketing departments can procure the images they need without needing to contact other departments. As a result, important marketing assets can be produced without any delays that could affect campaign launch.

SpinFire Insight is a great solution that addresses these problems, offering CAD viewers that are user friendly and can be applied enterprise-wide when needed. Because it’s so easy to use, SpinFire is a great way of giving non-technical people access to designs, without needing to spend large amounts of time on training. 

Improve Customer Communication

As well as helping to produce engaging marketing materials, CAD viewers also facilitate direct collaboration with customers. There are many situations where it’s useful to be able to share designs with customers – design reviews, brainstorming sessions, communicating design changes, and answering customer questions, for example. Unfortunately, not everyone uses the same CAD system, and a difference in software choice by a prospective client should never be the barrier that costs you a sale. CAD viewers circumvent this problem by circumventing the CAD systems themselves. 

Effective communication is key to building customer loyalty; customers are more likely to stay with a company that values their opinion. With SpinFire Insight you can share data with customers regardless of the CAD system they use, which greatly enhances the conversations you can have. By improving understanding, you naturally align goals and expectations, which reduces confusion that can cause delays and dissatisfaction.

Why Choose SpinFire Insight?

From the first marketing touchpoints and all throughout the customer relationship, communication is vital for maintaining customer loyalty. Being able to access design data can allow marketing teams to create engaging marketing materials without needing to make requests from the engineering department. When discussing designs with customers, visualizing the data can reduce the chance of misunderstandings and improve communication.

For a CAD viewer that enables people throughout the enterprise to access design data, SpinFire Insight is the perfect solution. Enterprise-wide access ensures that everyone communicating with customers can view the data they are having conversations about. This allows for a seamless process that improves customer satisfaction and encourages customer loyalty. If you’d like to find out more about how SpinFire Insight can benefit the enterprise, download our free Enterprise Visualization eBook. Or get in touch with our team to find out how SpinFire Insight could benefit you!

How to Improve Supplier Relations with CAD Data Access Using SpinFire Insight

Supply chains are an integral part of engineering and manufacturing projects, often requiring communication between multiple companies located across the globe, each with their own way of doing things. Differences in CAD software can create one of the most significant obstructions to effective, efficient communication. Without a tool to solve the issue, projects can grind to a halt, money is lost, and customers get frustrated.

Collaborating Across Global Supply Chains

No matter where they are in the world, designers and engineers working in global supply chains need to constantly share data to stay on the same page. CAD files carry all sorts of crucial information, from the designs themselves to product and manufacturing information (PMI) and more. When everyone has different experience levels and software, how can you and your suppliers take advantage of this information?  

The key is having a solution with the flexibility to view multiple types of CAD files. This means that one tool can be used to collaborate with multiple suppliers even if they use different software. Not only is this more cost effective, but it also requires less training than teaching users how to work with multiple tools. CAD viewers are designed to provide the detailed information that an expert user might need, while offering a user-friendly experience for less technical team members. They offer a way of future proofing your design processes, ensuring that you can share data with any supplier you start working with.

How does SpinFire Insight Enhance Supplier Communication?

SpinFire Insight offers CAD viewers that provide a neutral CAD environment, which allows you to share data with all of your suppliers. Plus, since SpinFire Insight gives data access to everyone in the enterprise, communication is made simple no matter who is talking with your suppliers at the time.

Sometimes just being able to visualize the data you’re working on isn’t enough. SpinFire Insight also includes a variety of markup tools and the ability to include comments alongside the model, helping put your notes in context. Having a 3D model as a visual aid helps ensure that everyone is on the same page, which is incredibly important when working with multiple people within a supply chain.

Last Thoughts

The need for effective communication is consistent throughout the entire enterprise. Many different departments can benefit from CAD visualization because it helps improve collaboration and provide context for decision making. This is why enterprise visualization is so powerful, CAD viewers can be used in so many different ways depending on your individual needs.ds.