Collaborative manufacturing white paper focuses on Adobe

Cyon Research Corp., a provider of analysis and consulting for engineering-technology markets, has released a white paper, "The Adobe Solution for Design Collaboration and Discrete Manufacturing," which identifies workable and comprehensive solutions to design collaboration in discrete manufacturing using the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

By Control Engineering Staff July 14, 2005

Cyon Research Corp. , a provider of analysis and consulting for engineering-technology markets, has released a white paper, “The Adobe Solution for Design Collaboration and Discrete Manufacturing,” which identifies workable and comprehensive solutions to design collaboration in discrete manufacturing using the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

One of the perceived appeals of Adobe’s entrance into this market is the current diversity of digital document formats, each requiring its own software to be read and marked-up for editing.

“Adobe’s approach to design collaboration and discrete manufacturing is a comprehensive and workable solution that addresses the complete manufacturing digital-data workflow problem,” said Brad Holtz, Cyon Research’s president and CEO. “It is based on the familiar and widely accepted Adobe PDF, recently enhanced to address many manufacturing-specific needs, such as drawing layers, multiple formats within a single package, security, markup, document integrity, and display of 3D models.”

During National Manufacturing Week (NMW) in March 2005, Adobe demonstrated solutions based on its Acrobat 7.0 desktop and LiveCycle server software lines, which permit manufacturers to securely involve suppliers and partners early in the design collaboration process.

Bolstering Holtz’s comments about the broad utility of PDF in working with other solutions, Adobe’s partners at its NMW booth included Agile Software Corp., Right Hemisphere, and Navisware—all of which showed how their collaborative software products operate with Adobe software.

Agile’s product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions use Adobe’s Acrobat, LiveCycle Designer, LiveCycle Forms, and LiveCycle Reader Extensions to enable PDF conversion from an array of document creation programs, allowing users to collaborate on PDF files with review and markup tools, manage product information with electronic forms, and sign off on final documents.

Right Hemisphere’s 3D publishing software converts CAD files to its Universal 3D format and incorporates them into Adobe PDF documents for viewing and interaction by anyone using Adobe Reader 7.0.

Navisware combines Adobe’s LiveCycle Policy Server with its FileLine design documentation security product for protection beyond the perimeter of application files from Autodesk AutoCAD, SolidWorks, and Microsoft Word.

Click here to read Cyon Research’s white paper ; it’s available free.

—David Greenfield, editorial director, Control Engineering, dgreenfield@reedbusiness.com