Collaborative Design Tools: A Comparison between Free Software and PLM Solutions in Engineering Education

The shift from sequential to concurrent engineering has led to changes in the way design projects are managed. In order to assist designers, many effective tools have been developed to support collaborative engineering, whose implementation is perceived as complex. Nowadays, industrial scenarios encourage companies to adopt PLM solutions, even if, sometimes, they can’t understand the benefits. On the other hand, many free solutions with comparable functionalities are developed, which have been increasingly successful.

In this article, we test different associations of software to make a comparison between free software and market solutions. In this experiment, 24 students in a Master’s Degree course aimed to design mechanical products by using software to assist collaborative distributed design, using two different configurations. This experiment allowed us to compare design functionalities between free and commercial solutions, in order to determine ways to improve efficiency in a collaborative distributed design situation. Finally, the feedback generated in this experiment allowed us to adapt training practices in engineering education.