Webinar recording: Why engineers prefer high-quality native CAD product data over neutral STEP files

"STEP vs. NATIVE CAD data" webinar provided real-life insights into what difficulties engineers face when engineering data is insufficient

High-quality digital product data is the key to successful product development in engineering more than ever before. According to a survey, comprehensive CAD and BIM models with all important metadata are the number one criterion for 65% of engineers when selecting components for their designs.

But why is high-grade product data so important for the day-to-day work of engineers and designers and what is the difference between STEP and native CAD data? Tobias Seubert and Wolfgang Nagl from CADENAS GmbH gave answers to these and other questions in the CADENAS webinar "STEP vs. NATIVE". Using practical examples, he showed the participants how native CAD data provides the "right flavor" for everyone and what major problems simple neutral product data, e.g. in STEP format, can entail. These range from system crashes to costly and time-consuming rework due to open areas within the design or missing information such as thread information.

Exclusive insights into common engineering challenges

"Even a 'simple' component with a thread presents designers with major challenges in STEP: to integrate the part into an assembly, the thread’s location has to be visible right away. If a component with the wrong thread is ordered based on missing data, it causes high costs and an enormous delay because of the time spent on reworking," emphasizes Nagl. High-quality, native data, on the other hand, contains all the important product attributes and can therefore be easily and quickly integrated into digital planning. If the parts list is generated with this information, even the exact order numbers of the component manufacturer are transferred.

The participants of the webinar were enthusiastic about the insights into design challenges: "The webinar was very helpful and informative. I got a lot of input about the benefits of high-quality data in a short time and I will share this information," says one attendee.

Find out what requirements engineers and designers put on CAD data by watching the webinar recording:

More information on intelligent engineering data

You want to make your CAD data fit for engineers? We will happily advise you!

* Mandatory fields

Go back