Sheet metal design with the aid of Product Data Management (PDM) systems

Product Data Management (PDM) systems were created in the early of 1980s. The development has increased rapidly in these, and also in different CAD-systems. However, there still occur problems in linking these two systems together and getting the full benefit out from the PDM system. Modern PDM systems, together with CAD softwares, do not take into account the different design aspects when designing, for example, sheet metal products. CAD softwares give automatically some parameters for sheet metals but these parameters may not be correct ones. In almost every PDM system there is a possibility for giving almost real-time feedback between the designers and manufacturers, but this feature is rarely used. Only few system users actually know what kind of help the PDM is offering and what kind of add-ons can be added into the system. The main problem seems to be that there is not just one way to design a sheet metal product and transform it to the PDM, even if all the users were using the same PDM system with the same given introduction.