Multicad Support in CERN's PLM

Designing an accelerator complex and its surrounding technical infrastructure requires the participation of multiple disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, civil engineering, or services. Different fields have different needs and may use different tools. At CERN, CATIA is the official CAD tool for 3D mechanical design and integration, but for specific needs alternative tools are being used, such as AutoCAD for 2D, Revit for BIM and Inventor for specific 3D designs such as robotics or external collaborations. Until now, the main focus of the PLM service for CAD data management has been put on supporting CERN's official and main mechanical CAD tool, CATIA. We are currently migrating to a new PLM platform, and one of the requirements is that the new platform should be able to support any CAD tool in use at CERN, both today and in the future. This paper first describes how CAD tools were supported in the past and what the limitations were. It then explains how multiple heterogeneous CAD tools will be managed in the new PLM platform and how this can simplify the support of additional CAD tools in the future. Finally, this paper suggests possible future paths of improvements, in particular in terms of data exchange, visualization and integration between different CAD tools.