Using configuration models to drive alignment between CAD software

[KennyG]

Do you have any PLM application? Seems this would be the place where product configurations would be defined globally with CAD just consuming them.

[KennyG]

Trust me when I say this can be done with PLM that has a good configurator tool such as Teamcenter with Rulestream, and much more robustly as it can include things that are not modeled like paint, adhesives, and lubricants. It can drive the CAD system to generate models and drawings, but that is not always necessary as manufacturing equipment can also be driven directly from PLM.

We are a manufacturer of a highly configurable manufactured product with a near infinite end SKU count, and we don't model everything to "net" as it would require a monumental effort to do so, and there is an easier way making it unjustifiable.

FYI, not using Teamcenter or Rulestream, just used as an example. We utilize a standalone configurator and ERP to do this.

[Frederick_Law]

So for example, if someone created a configuration model in Solidworks, and shared it with someone working with Ilogic - how simple would it be to recreate this configuration model into Ilogic?

Same as every SW to IV model, start from sketch.
If you have config on both, you'll need maintain, update, Rev both.
Model in one, STEP out to use on the other.
Prefer to model in SW because of ZTG. IV could create model with ZTG and SW will cry.

Check what PDM can do with IV files.
The Config in SW is ModelState/iPart/iAssembly in IV.