With the increasing popularity of SharePoint among business organizations vying for shares in the market, support for their data is clearly the challenge of the IT industry. Microsoft SharePoint helps organizations create data storage facilities for company information essential for every business process. However, in the world of engineering and architecture, SharePoint is only a backbone for collaboration. The toughest question is how to improve team collaboration by allowing designated users to appropriately use CAD files in SharePoint.
In reality, handling CAD files continues to give SharePoint administrators some headache. However, unlike before, CAD components used to integrate CAD drawing management in SharePoint are already available. The development of such applications began several years ago when SharePoint administrators were faced with uncertainties in their quest for solutions that could cater to the need for CAD and SharePoint integration. Today, CAD drawing management in SharePoint is a click away from applications such as CADnection and Cadac Organice.
CADnection has its focus on AutoDesk AutoCAD applications. Installing CADnection on a client computer will create a new user menu used to integrate AutoCAD into a SharePoint server. CADnection allows a user to login and logout into SharePoint without leaving AutoCAD. This simply means that users can continue working with AutoCAD while maintaining a SharePoint connection. Other features of CADnection include the integration of attributes in AutoCAD into SharePoint metadata. Users can also access their files from Exchange emails and still have CADnection present in AutoCAD.
Cadac Organice on the other hand, works on broader CAD applications. To provide support for wider clients, Cadac Organice is designed to access well-known drawing files. Aside from AutoCAD’s DWG files, Cadac Organice can open DNG and drawing files with different file extensions. CAD applications like Bricscad, MicroStation, Revit and the ever popular AutoCAD are all supported by Organice.
However, on computers without AutoCAD installed, users can still open, view and produce hard copies of drawing files with an Organice viewer designed to open other formats of drawing files. With all these features and capabilities, CAD Drawing Management in SharePoint is gradually becoming convenient while maintaining a budget-friendly implementation.