CAD Integration
CAD documents form an important component of the work of many corporate divisions
Whether in construction, industry or management - many companies are using CAD systems today. There are no limits to the fields of application - they extend from technical product design, plant construction and real estate through to building. And more often than not, they form an important link in the entire product lifecycle management chain.
The underlying documents are often important information elements of the complete process chain, in which downstream operations also rely on this data. These types of document can easily be incorporated using a document management system (DMS). The result is full replication of the processes involved, without the need to change media.
ELO Digital Office has recognized the potential in this area, and thus offers a range of additional CAD integration modules for its DMS/archiving software, as well as interfaces to integrate other CAD applications. Whether documents are imported or sent, ELOprofessional automatically checks all components and nested drawings are complete. When integrating data into the ELO DMS, a duplicate data check ensures that no components or drawings are archived twice. This saves expensive storage space, and avoids errors in document management and downstream processes. Lists of drawings and dispatch reports are automatically generated on dispatch. Special Viewer plugins provide users with functions for red-lining, comparing or plotting. The big advantage is that there is no need to equip every workstation with an expensive CAD license to view and process CAD documents. The ELO Workflow system enables speedy and simple authorization processes. Internal version and revision management, in addition to the new activity management, provide an optimized overview of the current status or version levels of drawings.
Entire sets of drawings can be sent comfortably
A special highlight is the integrated sending folder - a tool that helps the user sent entire sets of drawings comfortably. The module checks for completeness, automatically generates a delivery note, and checks the complete dispatch operation. If required, the module can also check that distributed documents have been returned, and can replace these in their correct position the underlying project structure.
The ELO CAD modules provide a comfortable document management system for the archive. Users can use drag & drop techniques to navigate to documents or can specify targets directly in the ELO archive. The interface recognizes the titles of drawings and other header information, and automatically enters this in the ELO database. This information can then be used to initiate business processes automatically when using the ELO Workflow system. When CAD drawings need editing, they must go through a controlled check-out process. Files stored in revision-secure mode are published along with all references in read-only mode. In the case of files for which various controlled versions have been stored, the user to choose whether to edit the most recent version or the version that was valid when the master drawing was last archived. If a document contains references that have already been archived, the system points out the redundancy to the user when it is stored, to avoid wasting storage space. By integrating individual viewers into the software, 3D and 2D drawings from various CAD systems can be displayed on the workstation even if no CAD software is installed.
Security number one priority
Security of data for the CAD drawings that are important for the company is an important factor in the management of the documents. The ELO Archive, which provides a range of security measures by default, makes a large contribution here. Access protection thus extends well beyond the rights control system of a normal file system, also permitting coded storage of highly sensitive data. Revision-secure management of documents in optical jukebox systems allows CAD documents to be kept securely for many years. The use of optical media to store information rather than pure hard disk systems adds a further level of security to the process. The archive server can be of redundant design using a hot standby system, so that the user can immediately access and continue to work with the backup if the main system crashes. The capacity for the archive server to be mirrored also guarantees that both systems will be synchronized in terms of data.