Have you ever thought about consolidating your product design on SOLIDWORKS, but didn’t because you were intimidated by the idea of migrating all your legacy design data? After all your company has spent a considerable amount—of both money and manhours—creating an enormous amount of product designs so the thought of having to move all of them to a new CAD system, like SOLIDWORKS, can seem overwhelming.

So first off, you probably wouldn’t have to migrate as much of that data as you might think. The video below debunks the myth that you have to move ALL your data. The reality is that it’s probably much less data than you would think.

What to do with the legacy data that needs to be migrated?

Fortunately with new data migration tools, upgrading to the industry’s best CAD system, SOLIDWORKS, is now easier than ever. Let’s break down each of these tools and explain how each can be used to help you migrate your design data to SOLIDWORKS.

3D Interconnect. With 3D Interconnect, you can directly open and integrate your existing 3D designs in SOLIDWORKS with no translation required. Simply insert the files into your SOLIDWORKS assemblies and use them as though they were native SOLIDWORKS components. You maintain the full integrity of your existing designs, without the need for any extra work to use them moving forward.

As inevitable changes are required, SOLIDWORKS can handle these in a variety of ways. If you decide to maintain your legacy CAD software, you can make the changes there, and 3D Interconnect will continue to monitor and incorporate those changes into your designs.

FeatureWorks. With FeatureWorks, you can turn an otherwise featureless file from your existing design data, or even imported files from other sources into fully featured components. These featured components are like any other SOLIDWORKS files, and can leverage all of the capabilities you will come to expect from SOLIDWORKS, such as designing within the context of assemblies to establish exact relationships between multiple components solving complex design challenges.

Direct Editing. Let’s look at a different scenario. Sometimes, you might just need to make quick changes to your existing designs. SOLIDWORKS’ suite of Direct Editing capabilities are a perfect fit for these types of changes. These tools allow you to directly manipulate the underlying geometry without the need for parametric features in the model.

SOLIDWORKS PDM. Finally, SOLIDWORKS PDM understands your native design files allowing you to gain all the benefits of an easy-to-use data management solution, such as workflow and revision control processes. PDM is intelligent with your existing files, reading and writing metadata to application-specific properties as well as understanding the complex relations of component structures and where used. This means as you integrate your legacy files into your new SOLIDWORKS designs, SOLIDWORKS PDM ensures that you’re able to take full advantage of all the work you’ve done in the past.

With tools such as 3D Interconnect, FeatureWorks, Direct Editing and SOLIDWORKS PDM your existing 3D design data doesn’t actually need to be migrated in the traditional sense. Instead SOLIDWORKS removes the data migration barrier to allow you to dive right in and start benefiting from all the capabilities offered in SOLIDWORKS immediately.

Watch the video below to learn about all the tools that are available to help you move to SOLIDWORKS.

Barb Schmitz

Senior Marketing Communications Manager at SolidWorks

Barb Schmitz is a Senior Manager in Marketing Communications with BA in Journalism and over 30 years of experience in the CAD software industry. She started her career as a journalist covering technology and served as an editor for several leading industry publications for over 20 years. Besides being a sleuth of tech, she is a loyal dog owner, travel bum, mom, lover of hoppy IPAs, red wine, and alternative music lover living in the great city of Chicago.