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Under the Hood - All things PDM and PLM

The 5 Most Commonly Asked Questions about Fusion 360 Manage with Upchain

Alexandra Maraldo
January 5, 2023

Autodesk’s newest PLM offering, Fusion 360 Manage with Upchain, has created a lot of buzz in the industry. We have hosted some fantastic webinars, resulting in fantastic questions from many of you. We have compiled the top 5 questions that we have gotten during these webinars into an easy to reference list here.

What does “multiCAD data management” mean?

Autodesk’s Fusion 360 Manage with Upchain brings in data directly from every major CAD system. Essentially, it does not force customers to dumb down data, losing much of the work invested in building references, calculations etc. Autodesk aims to maintain the high fidelity format of your data, since we know that much of the value of the design is within that data. So for example, if you have product design being done in Creo, tooling being done in Inventor, and other parts being done in Solidworks, all of that contributes to one common engineering bill of materials. Once you get it inside Autodesk PLM it doesn’t matter what CAD authoring tool was used, you have a master engineering bill of material with all native files from originating authoring tools. This also means there is no need to search every CAD system, export out to Excel, and then mashup Excel spreadsheets. You get easy access to all your information streamlined inside of one system.

Why does Autodesk need two different PDMs?

There will always be a need for an on-premise product data management solution given security requirements, regulations, and compliance in certain industries that restrict some companies from storing data in the cloud. In addition to this, Autodesk did not want to cobble together the foundation of data and process by reusing a product that wasn’t built for the cloud. We wanted to start with our best foot forward with a cloud-native data management product that will become one of the core technology components of our future unified design and manufacturing cloud platform solution — Fusion.

So does that mean Vault is getting replaced?

Vault is an incredibly mature, and very powerful product data management (PDM) solution that a lot of our customers are using and will continue to use. As we said earlier, there will always be a need for an on-premise product data management solution in heavily regulated industries like aerospace and defense. Knowing this, Autodesk will continue to invest in Vault’s capabilities and experience, as well as connecting Vault into our design and manufacturing cloud to drive extended capabilities.

Is the cloud secure?

As cloud becomes a part of our everyday life, we’re happy to say that this is a question we are getting less frequently lately. The answer is yes, the cloud is secure and, in some cases, more secure than on premise solutions as updates are pushed automatically rather than having to be loaded by the user, reducing the vulnerabilities that can be caused by a missed update. For more information about security, check out the white papers we have published on Fusion 360 Manage and Upchain.

Can Autodesk PLM be used with Construction Cloud, Revit or Plant3D?

Autodesk PLM is focused on design and manufacturing, and that’s the lane we’re staying in. Revit and Construction Cloud tools have their own collaboration interfaces and they have their own ways of working. Autodesk PLM is intended for product development and discrete manufacturing customers, with the user experience centered around a design and manufacturing context at this time.

To learn more about Fusion 360 Manage with Upchain check out our product center.

Alexandra Maraldo

Alex is a marketing manager at Autodesk specialising in PLM and PDM solutions.

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