Design File Remote Access (Buzzsaw, Newforma, ProjectWise)

[andybosch]

Does anyone have any good information or recommendations on any Remote Access tools like Buzzsaw, ProjectWise, or Newforma. I am working in a project office on a very large project that is going to be split up and sent out to other companies and offices to work on. This is a CAD manager’s nightmare. Do any of these products help ease the stress? Pros/Cons. Any information on these would be greatly appreciated.

[cadtag]

I've managed a Projectwise installation, and really didn't like that platform for external users to access. If it's a multi-company project, and can afford the service fees, buzzsaw's hosted service seems to be highly reliable and fairly well thought out.

I do have substantial experience using Documentum eRoom, both self hosted and on their servers. It's not very CAD-centric, but is a very usable collaborative environment for document/file sharing, discussions, project history, etc. Relatively easy to manage on the technology side, but.... any application that handles this job will require an active champion to drive it and support it, and the clout to require that everthing in the eRoom is current and up to date. The way I treated it was the the 'last known good version' of _anything_ project related was in the eRoom. Anything out in the wild, on somebody elses computer or network, was suspect until it had been posted back to the online collaboration facility.

It's worth doing in a distributed project, but it's just as much a people and process management problem as it is a technolgy problem. When it works, when everyone on the project team buys into the concept, it's very sweet.

[andybosch]

Thanks for the info. It is much appreciated.