Customizing Product Data Management tools for design automation

The ever increasing sophistication of products in technology-driven industries requires that different domains and often distinct units in organizations such as electrical, mechanical and software engineering come together in the product development process. With the advent of commercial PLM systems, it is possible to utilize product development by using the tools as a platform for integrating different engineering applications and managing engineering knowledge in order to make product development more effective and accurate. Setting appropriate authority among users and groups for accessing design documents in addition to defining flow processes are two of the main advantages of implementing PLM. The breakthrough though is the ability to develop modules within the system, using a common programming language such as C, to manage data exchange among engineering tools of different application like CAD/CAM, computation, and simulation, examples of which are CATIA, MATLAB/Simulink, and Minitab to name a few.