Aras Touts Visual Collaboration for Latest Aras Innovator Release

For years, we’ve heard how product lifecycle management (PLM) is the engine for helping engineering teams work better together, and it has, but with varying degrees of success.

With its latest upgrade to the Innovator PLM platform, Aras is attempting to address some of the long-standing shortcomings of PLM, particularly in the area of cross-discipline collaboration. To that end, headlining the new Aras Innovator 11 release is new visual collaboration and social technology. It is aimed at allowing engineering organizations to easily solve problems and communicate more effectively about products with an extended internal team as well as with external partners.

The new visual collaboration capabilities let stakeholders view content, add markups and make comments. The embedded viewables cover all data types, including most popular 3D and 2D CAD files along with schematics, layouts, Microsoft Office files and images. Each of the embedded viewables can be marked up, and stakeholders can make comments in the context of PLM items. In addition, the marked-up viewables are linked with text comments into discussion threads, bringing a secure social aspect to the collaboration.

Aras Innovator 11 delivers visual collaboration, adding discussion threads with embedded viewables and markups intended to make cross-functional communication easier. Image Courtesy of Aras

“Engineers want to be able to see what you’re talking about, discuss it, and then make a decision,” explained Doug MacDonald, Aras’ director of product marketing. “But one of the biggest challenges with product development today is that everything is in proprietary formats so colleagues can’t easily view each other’s work.”

While most PLM vendors offer visualization capabilities and there are countless viewers and new collaboration platforms promising to address the same problem, MacDonald contends Aras’ approach works for all the stakeholders in the design and development process — not just engineers. “All of those are partial solutions — they help some people communicate, but they are not universal aids to solving this problem,” he claimed. “What we set out to do is to come up with a solution that works for everyone.”

PLM visualization tools, in particular, can be difficult to use in practice and tricky to deploy on a widespread basis because they often require plug-ins and client software, he said. “They are also focused on solving the esoteric 3D viewing problem rather than some of the more mundane stuff,” he added.

That’s where Aras 11’s visual communications features come into play. The viewables are all accessible within the context of the product structure and processes, including the bill of materials (BOM), parts, models, drawings and change workflows. Because the viewing capabilities are a part of the PLM platform, the same permission model is employed to control access and that same security model also applies to the new social capabilities.

Aras 11’s new social functionality lets users make comments and follow discussion threads similar to how popular social networks like Facebook or Twitter work. For example, users can opt to follow colleagues on a particular project or other people within the organization, but they will only gain access to their discussions and content if they have the proper access privileges — again security controls governed by the core PLM platform. “This is not loosey, goosey, everyone jump in and have no control over information kind of social collaboration — this is visual, enhanced collaboration under the control of access privileges with social discussions,” he said.

Aras Flow, an integrated mobile app that works with Aras Innovator 11, enables continuous engagement when in meetings, on the factory floor or in the field. Image Courtesy of Aras

Because this new release encourages people to do more work inside the PLM platform, Aras is also offering a new mobile app, Flow, which allows users to take advantage of Aras 11’s visual and secure social communications when in the field.

Check out this video if you want the full demo of Aras 11’s visual collaboration features. (Warning, it’s 22 minutes.)