CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
October 24, 2004
Product News
Actify® Releases Actify DesignShareT for Visual Product Data Collaboration Based on Microsoft's SharePoint Technology
Actify Inc. announced the release of Actify DesignShare. Actify DesignShare is a collaborative product data management solution that enables users to leverage the power of Actify's digital design communication platform from within a managed Microsoft SharePoint server-based environment. It provides a complete encapsulated solution for creating visual product data-based communications within the enterprise that is easy to deploy. Actify DesignShare addresses the needs of workgroups and design teams to effectively manage visual product data to facilitate collaboration and communication internally and externally.
Because Actify DesignShare provides a complete system for managing communications that have historically been undocumented, uncontrolled and ad-hoc, users now have a single system that manages all relevant documents, including all major 2D and 3D file formats. The ultimate benefit is an increase in overall productivity, including time savings, reduced costs, reduction in excess work, fewer errors and improvement in communication of designs and associated data.
"Actify is helping solve a problem in a way that is unique to collaborative product data management (cPDm), product lifecycle management (PLM) and other product-centric management systems," said Bill Gerould, industry director, worldwide discrete manufacturing, Microsoft Corp. "cPDm and PLM systems tend to be expensive, difficult to work with as well as, inappropriate for small to medium business units because of the dynamic nature of concurrent collaboration throughout a product's development lifecycle. With the release of Actify DesignShare, organizations are better able to communicate and collaborate on product information with internal and external teams allowing them to stay more competitive with a much lower total cost of ownership than other methods."
"Actify DesignShare is a significant milestone for Actify in providing the best solution suite for enabling collaborative visual product data management," said Randy Ochs, CEO and president of Actify Inc. "By providing document management, sharing and collaboration capabilities to users in workgroups and design teams within the Microsoft SharePoint and Office Solutions platform, we are confident that manufacturing enterprises will see the value in easily configuring and customizing business systems to suit their specific needs and internal processes."
The release of Actify DesignShare extends the collaboration platform within the Actify Suite of Products helping companies manage the digital design communication process. The full suite of products includes Actify Publisher 2005, to automatically convert CAD files to Actify's .3D format; SpinFire Professional, to view, measure and markup CAD files; SpinFire for Microsoft Office, to imbed rich 2D and 3D design data within Microsoft Office documents; the free SpinFire Reader, to view 2D and 3D files; and now Actify DesignShare.
Through Actify DesignShare's managed server-based environment, users will be able to:
• Create a customized dashboard to manage all collaboration processes that require access to native CAD data
• Access a secure and easy-to-use environment for suppliers and other external partners to collaborate
• Centrally automate and monitor the conversion of native CAD files to .3D
• Inspect and markup native CAD files
• Manage and version control of .3D files created and authored within SpinFire Professional and SpinFire for Microsoft Office.
Actify's suite of products are designed to enable easy and secure access, communication and distribution of multiple 2D/3D CAD file formats, and related documents through global enterprises and supply chains, without requiring expensive native CAD products or access to complex data management systems. This allows for paperless distribution and collaboration of complex design data so companies will realize cost savings and productivity gains in product design, procurement, quoting and estimation, manufacturing, sales, marketing and field support.
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