GrabCAD or Alternative PLM

[feverittm]

Our team used GradCAD last year and found it to be very useful. Their interface has a few quirks, but still very usable.

While it does have SolidWorks integration, it is really a generic version control solution. It should still work well with Inventor files or files from other CAD systems. I know the viewer does understand inventor files.

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by feverittm

Our team used GradCAD last year and found it to be very useful. Their interface has a few quirks, but still very usable.

While it does have SolidWorks integration, it is really a generic version control solution. It should still work well with Inventor files or files from other CAD systems. I know the viewer does understand inventor files.

As my mentor stated we used GrabCAD for the 2015 season and loved it. I will be developing a presentation on it soon. If you PM me I could send it to you once it is done.

[Michael Hill]

We will be using GrabCAD for the 2016 season. I'm glad to hear the good feedback from people who used it last year.

[bcampbell]

Awesome, thank you for the great feedback. I think we will look more into setting up grabcad for the upcoming season

[sanddrag]

I'd be interested in hearing more from anyone who uses it with Inventor.

[asid61]

We use it with Solidworks after trying Dropbox and SVN in years past. It is absolutely amazing; making conflicted copies is nigh on impossible, and anybody can be taught to use it in a matter of minutes. Plus, the online repository and sharing is good too, with its integrated CAD viewer.
It has very few features, making is easy to learn with, but it also can't do things like locking assemblies and the like. However the version control is great.
The infinite file storage really sold it for me. We can store other stuff right along with just CAD files, like info PDFs about the files and renders.

EDIT: The SW plugin crashed some stuff for us when we started using it late last year. They may have fixed it by now.

[Chris Endres]

Ahhh, GrabCAD is amazing, we started using it last year, and it is a godsend. SVN worked, but had troubles with multiple revisions, edit history, user rewrites, ghost-locked files, corrupt files, etc. The SolidWorks plug-in is also really helpful, makes it really easy to upload and download the latest version of files. Separate projects allow the admins to give access to certain people, and you can have previous year's robots at your fingertips if you choose.

[RoboMo786]

GrabCAD is absolutely fantastic. We're currently using OCCRA to test drive it. It's very fast and easy to use, so beginners can catch on quickly. We love the online viewer as well, since we don't need to be on a computer that has and/or can handle CAD. Of course file organization and naming is on you, but once that is done, GrabCAD keeps every version on record and all files up to date. It's easy to find and restore previous file versions if needed as well.

Originally Posted by asid61

EDIT: The SW plugin crashed some stuff for us when we started using it late last year. They may have fixed it by now.

I'm glad to know we're not the only ones. It crashes for me as well. GrabCAD workbench has been an effective way around, but I would love to know how and why the crashes are happening.

[KeeganP]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I'd be interested in hearing more from anyone who uses it with Inventor.

We use Inventor with GrabCAD and love it. Easy to setup and use, just requires syncing files before and after you work on parts/assemblies. Files can be viewed online as well, but sometimes they take a while to load (depends on file size and complexity).

As for the public vs private files: GrabCAD by default makes everything private, but has a public "folder" within each project (we have a project per robot). Any files you move/copy to the public "folder" (partner space) can be viewed by anyone online with the link (not sure if it is searchable or not by Google), but all files not in the public folder are private. We publish our final CAD models each year in a project and post them publicly as .STP files at cad.team2059.org.