Cad-Collaboration

The same question comes up on every growing engineering team: “We’re using a shared network folder and emailing DWG files. What should we move to?” The answer depends on how many engineers you have, whether you use SolidWorks, and whether your existing team already runs Git for software or firmware. This guide gives you a decision framework by team size, then walks through the actual tradeoffs of each approach. For the technical setup details — Git LFS configuration, PDM Standard installation, file naming schema design — the CAD version control technical reference covers those in depth. This guide focuses on the selection decision. ...

Remote work has become standard for engineering teams. But CAD files are not like Word documents or spreadsheets. They are large, format-sensitive, and often tied to assemblies with dozens of dependencies. When one person updates a part file and another is working off an older version, things break fast. The problem is not just technical. It is also about process. Even teams with solid tools in place run into trouble when everyone has a slightly different idea of how files should be named, where they should live, and how exports should be handled. ...

Engineering version control for CAD is harder than it looks. A 50 MB SolidWorks assembly changes at the binary level every time you open and save it — even if you moved nothing. Most version control advice comes from software engineers working with text files, and it doesn’t translate cleanly. This guide covers the actual decision: whether to use Git + LFS, a dedicated PDM system, or folder-based naming — what each costs in setup and maintenance, and where each breaks down. Updated June 2026. ...