BOM to CAD: Revolutionizing Product Development

Essig PLM is a valued Aras partner and sponsor of this year’s Aras Community Event (ACE). They will be presenting as part of the Partner Collaboration on BOM to CAD: Revolutionizing Product Development, Wednesday, April 2 at 3:35 PM.

What if you could reuse most of your product data and deliverables from an existing product you already brought to market? How many days or months of effort could you eliminate from your “get to market” path? How much would that cut out from the overall development process, enabling you to increase your profit margins or to be more cost-competitive with your products?

What are some of the costliest aspects of developing and delivering your products to your customers? In the evolving global marketplace, pressure to accelerate the design-to-manufacturing process and adapt to remain competitive is paramount for businesses today. Embracing technological advancements is crucial to staying ahead of the game and, frankly, just to stay in business.

Do you experience any of the following common “cost drain points” today?

• Price estimation, procurement planning, coordination of lead times with suppliers
• Designing the product – including creating, reviewing and approving CAD models and drawings
• Analysis of new designs – including FEA, CFD, inspections, test procedures, and validation
• Developing product documentation including CAD Documents, manuals, maintenance and repair procedures
• Achieving certification – such as product maturity level or compliance with an industry standard or trade agreement

Embracing “reusable product structures” (also known as modular product design, or product lines with variants and options) is a strategy adopted by many companies that continue to be successful in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace.

One powerful tool you can employ to help you implement a reusable product structure framework is the Connectors for PLM application by Essig PLM. Essig PLM’s Connectors for PLM tightly integrates Aras Innovator into various mechanical CAD applications, including SolidWorks, Inventor, AutoCAD, NX, and Creo. Two actions enabled by the tool are: ‘Create BOM’ and ‘BOM to CAD’ that work together to create new products from reusable product structures such as those built through either the Variant Management application or Aras Innovator’s Effectivity Services. Leveraging reusable product structures enables you to reuse all of the product data and deliverables from your already established products, including all of the items listed above and more.

Why connect CAD to PLM?

Companies that integrate CAD with PLM benefit by ensuring data integrity and accurate access to product information while enhancing collaboration and sharing of information throughout the extended global enterprise.

By automating the transfer of data between CAD and PLM systems, the CAD connector eliminates the need to manually transfer data from one system to another, which is often time consuming and error prone. Ultimately, product development processes are streamlined, companies work more efficiently and cost-effectively, and the release to manufacturing is accelerated.

Two additional benefits of integrating your CAD and PLM systems include enabling 3D Visualization and strengthening your digital thread.

The core Aras application includes a powerful 3D viewer tool, and 3D viewables can be used to generate images for product documentation, manufacturing process plans (MPP), and to conduct virtual product inspections. The 3D viewable files, however, cannot exist without CAD integration, as they are generated from native CAD files.

The digital thread is strengthened by CAD integration specifically by increasing traceability – it ties together many product deliverables to the origination point in the CAD model. Having your native CAD data in Aras allows companies to use their CAD designs for Part and BOM creation and updates, along with leveraging the applications within Aras Innovator for Requirements Management, Technical Documentation, Compliance, Component Engineering, Simulation, MPP, and integration with other systems. For example, if a quality defect is found in a product that requires a change to the product design, you can easily determine all the artifacts related to this change and update them as needed to reflect the change.

The standard – CAD to PLM BOM

Essig PLM has been an Aras development partner delivering MCAD integration solutions with Aras Innovator for many years. Essig PLM’s Connectors for PLM software is the conduit between CAD and PLM – managing critical CAD information while providing direct access to the Aras Innovator PLM application.

The Connectors for PLM technology provide the ability to create and store the “as-designed” CAD Bill of Materials (BOM) structure into Aras Innovator and manages the Aras BOM from the as-designed CAD hierarchy. The Connector also allows for synchronization of the CAD hierarchy as the complete Engineering BOM (EBOM). This CAD-to-PLM design process is traditionally how BOM creation/management has worked … until now.

Game changer – PLM BOM to CAD

Today’s products are becoming increasingly more complex with many different choices, components and variations. Technology advancements are critical to accommodate the development of these complex new products. As a product development company, Essig PLM is constantly challenged with delivering innovative technology solutions that help companies drive better quality products to market faster.

With a comprehensive knowledge of Aras Innovator and CAD systems, Essig PLM leveraged the Connectors for PLM framework to develop the ‘BOM to CAD’ solution to meet the ever-changing needs of product development companies. The ‘BOM to CAD’ functionality helps streamline product development by harnessing the power of Aras Innovator, enabling efficient creation of Bills of Materials and CAD designs through direct Essig PLM Connectors for PLM. With the Essig PLM ‘BOM to CAD’, the traditional CAD-to-PLM design process is essentially reversed to a PLM-to-CAD design process.

Here is a brief demonstration video showing BOM to CAD in action – starting with a BOM created in Aras and using that BOM to generate a brand-new CAD assembly in SolidWorks.

The benefits that ‘BOM to CAD’ could lead to across all phases of the product development lifecycle are notable:

• Significant time and cost savings in the concept and development project stages
• Tighter and timelier collaboration between systems engineers and CAD designers
• Improved quality and consistency by leveraging reusable product structures and template parts
• Enables engineer-to-order (ETO), configure-to-order (CTO), and assemble-to-order (ATO) development and manufacturing
• Increased productivity, efficiency and auditability
• Fosters early up-front systems engineering involvement in product development
• Support Model-Based Definition (MBD) by expediting the process to create a CAD model for a new product

Real World Use Cases – Supporting reusable product structure

Aras PLM allows reusable product structure lifecycle iterations to be continuously maintained and improved, as they evolve over time. The following use cases highlight how ‘BOM to CAD’ would accelerate the product development process.

Allow system engineering to lead product development

Allowing systems engineers to initially modify/create a BOM in Aras Innovator (without using CAD tools), thereby leveraging years of established rules and company intellectual property stored within Aras. This approach then reverses the traditional CAD-to-PLM design process to a PLM-to-CAD process.

Instantiation of variant-specific BOM

BOM resolution and permanent instantiation can now be driven by Aras’ Variant Management and/or Effectivity Services to meet the need for managing configured products, ultimately resulting in the CAD design as a deliverable directly from within Aras Innovator to the CAD tool.

Multi-CAD support

Managing CAD data from various systems and sources to support the development of a Bill of Materials (BOM) within Aras Innovator. With Essig PLM’s Connectors for PLM application, CAD models containing both SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor components, for example, can be generated using the BOM to CAD action.

Effectivity rules!

Effectivity refers to the effectiveness and success of processes and/or product design. It involves using effectivity variables to specify under what conditions (i.e. Effectivity Rules) certain components in a BOM are applicable. The 150% BOM captures all possible component variants of a product in one BOM, thereby providing a holistic view of a product’s structure. The 150% BOM can then be resolved into a valid 100% BOM by selecting effectivity variables based on use requirements. The resolved 100% BOM can then be permanently instantiated using the Essig PLM ‘Create BOM’ functionality.

For example, consider a manufacturer with different aircraft configurations. Each new customer may have unique requirements resulting in potentially hundreds of total possible BOM configurations as shown in this simplified representation of an aircraft:

A manufacturer typically would not want to build/maintain all of the possible BOMs up-front in hopes there is eventually a buyer. A quick, responsive, and dynamic methodology for “just in time” BOM creation is a much more efficient way to proceed.

Effectivity Scope in Aras consists of a set of Effectivity Variables defined by the manufacturer, but selectable by the customer. Effectivity Services can then adhere to Effectivity Rules to accurately select exactly which components are required in a specific BOM at the time of inquiry. This results in an accurately resolved BOM specific to the scope as requested by the customer. Essig PLM can then take this resolved BOM and uniquely instantiate it within Aras Innovator via the ‘Create BOM’ action. Essig PLM’s BOM to CAD functionality adds all registered CAD subcomponents to the active CAD session, creates a new top level CAD Assembly file, and then creates missing CAD files for any new or unregistered BOM Parts. It places CAD subcomponents in the proper position within the assembly based on leveraging either transformation matrix data from a reference assembly or by mating customer defined ‘dock’ and ‘anchor’ Coordinate Systems.

In summary, Essig PLM’s BOM to CAD functionality enables a user to pass information from Aras directly to a CAD application based on the newly instantiated BOM hierarchy, creating a new CAD model that is immediately available for viewing and further design modifications as needed.

PLM to CAD is a very different design approach from the typical CAD to PLM model leveraged today. Now, PLM can be immediately leveraged to use existing IP, instantiate a BOM, and push from the PLM BOM to CAD, essentially transforming the design process.

Variant Management – Breaking it down

Variant management is a specific practice that deals with the management of product variations within a product family or line. Variant management is critical for companies that produce a range of similar products with different options to meet diverse customer requirements or market demands.

It is common for companies to offer a significant number of options across many different product lines. With Aras’ variant management application, Variants, Features, and Options can be configured into a comprehensive Breakdown Structure. This breakdown structure can then be resolved via rules applied to each breakdown element. This is similar to the Effectivity Services described above but applies to much more than just a single 150% BOM. Because of the ability to assign different rules to each breakdown element, the available Variants, Features and Options can be very strictly enforced based on user input requirements.  From a resolved breakdown structure a fully resolved BOM can then be generated.

The Essig PLM ‘Create BOM’ action is used to instantiate a resolved 100% BOM after applying either effectivity or variant management rules.

Variants and breakdown structures go hand in hand assisting a user in resolving the breakdown structure to a specific definition of a product variant including the 100% BOM. The 100% BOM can then be used to construct the CAD design – essentially BOM-driven CAD – via Essig PLM’s Connectors for PLM. Leveraging Aras’ variant management and Essig PLM’s BOM to CAD is yet another way of transforming the design process with a PLM-to-CAD solution.

Key takeaway – A fundamental shift

Essig PLM BOM to CAD functionality can lead to significant time savings, successful collaboration, and improved efficiency, quality, and consistency across all phases of the product development lifecycle. Essig PLM BOM to CAD is not just a tool feature, but a new operational strategy.

• Invest more time early in product development in establishing reusable product structures
• Gain efficiency in downstream product lifecycle phases
• ROI in reuse – time saved for any derived configuration
• Effectively manage derived product families

The idea is – how fast can you make one product from another. You want to be able to reuse all, or a significant portion, of the available product information so if you build it once, then the second time you build, it should be substantially faster and so forth. By the time you get to the 5th variant as an example, you would expect to see a dramatic reduction in overall time and cost to bring a new product to market. Each iteration builds upon a strong foundation of rich product data and deliverables that you can reuse, saving valuable time and money, and enabling you to run a more efficient and profitable business.

For more details on how BOM to CAD can revolutionize your product development process, check out this webinar recording showcasing Variant Management BOM to CAD presented at the Aras ACE Conference in 2024:

FAQs

What does “BOM to CAD” mean in product development?
“BOM to CAD” creates CAD designs directly from a Bill of Materials (BOM) managed in PLM, rather than starting in CAD. Using existing product data and structures, it automatically generates new CAD assemblies, accelerating development and reuse.

How is BOM-driven design different from the traditional CAD-to-PLM approach?
Traditional CAD-to-PLM starts with CAD models and pushes data into PLM to create and manage the BOM. BOM-driven design reverses this process by defining the product structure in PLM first, then generating the CAD design from that BOM.

Why is connecting CAD and PLM systems important for product development?
Connecting CAD and PLM systems ensures accurate data flow, reduces manual work, and improves collaboration across teams. It strengthens the digital thread by linking CAD models to product data, enabling better traceability, quality, and faster time to market.

About our authors

This blog was a collaboration between Jackie Rudolph and Bill Gilchrist, senior solutions consultant at Essig PLM. With over 25 years in the MCAD/PLM space, Bill holds a BSME from the University of Maine and an MSME from NJIT. Drawn to mechanical design early in his career, he became passionate about best-in-class MCAD tools. After working for his first employer, a Value Added Reseller (VAR) introduced him to the broader world of engaging with various companies and technologies. This transition provided diverse experiences in use case requirements and customer interactions. Over the years, Bill has worked with companies across the US and abroad. His career path led to the development of a direct CAD Connector for Aras Innovator, now the Essig PLM CAD Connector. Since its first demo in 2011, he has contributed to its development, testing, and deployment. Bill specializes in design engineering, PLM, and enterprise software solutions.

About Essig PLM

For over 30 years, Essig PLM has been leveraging its industry knowledge and implementation expertise to deliver solutions that directly integrate CAD with PLM. As an Aras development partner and value-added reseller, Essig PLM develops integrated CAD Connector products for the Aras Innovator PLM solution suite and delivers CAD/PLM implementation services that enhance business performance.