Most companies, regardless of size, need to collaborate with external stakeholders during product development. Cross-company collaboration in SOLIDWORKS Design makes that easier by allowing users to work directly with external SOLIDWORKS partners and suppliers from the design environment. Instead of relying on manual file handoffs or more complex setup, users can create a task, share the required data with controlled access, and collaborate with external users who can bring their own eligible SOLIDWORKS license.
SOLIDWORKS users can now share data with other external SOLIDWORKS users, such as partners and suppliers, who aren’t on the same tenant, right from SOLIDWORKS, simply by creating a task.
In this blog, I’ll discuss how easy this new workflow is to use SOLIDWORKS cloud-based collaboration and data management tools on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
To take advantage of this new workflow, your admin must first grant you permission. Admin can go to the Platform Management dashboard, open the Members tab, select Configure Member Options, and then enable “Allow platform members to invite external users” under Invitations from Members.
Then you’re all set! To start sharing content, go to Create New Task, enter the title and description of the task. Click on “Invite user to platform” and then enter their email and select the Collaborative Space where the external member can create new data with a restricted author responsibility. Then add the content you’d like to share under Attachment Link. You can attach any part of the model, assembly, or sub-assembly you want to share with the external member. Just type the name of the part or assembly, or you can also drag and drop directly from the SOLIDWORKS FeatureManager design tree while holding the Alt key.
Note, if the admin has not enabled the invite external users option, you’ll get a note to contact admin. Also, for those new to creating tasks, Create New Task is available under the Lifecycle and Collaboration tab. If that tab is not visible, right-click the SOLIDWORKS CommandManager, go to Tabs, and enable Lifecycle and Collaboration.
Next, select Manage Access. You can either use the permissions already defined for the Collaborative Space or apply custom access rights for the assigned user. With custom access, you can specify whether the shared content is available For Edit or as Read-only.
Once you are done setting the permissions, click Create. When the task is created successfully, you’ll see a notification with an Open in Collaborative Tasks link. Click the link to open the newly created task directly in Collaborative Tasks.”
The external partner receives an email invitation with instructions to access the shared environment. After signing in, they can access the assigned task and shared content on the inviting company’s platform using their own eligible SOLIDWORKS license. If they are already working in SOLIDWORKS, they can also see the task notification directly there.
When the external collaborator opens the shared model, they can review it, add comments, or make changes if they have edit access. They can also add attachments to the task and update the task status to In Work or Complete. After making their changes, they save the updated design directly to the shared environment. Once the task is marked Complete, the original user is notified and can open the task from SOLIDWORKS, review the update, and use Reload from Server to load the latest changes into the assembly.
If you need to revoke an external collaborator’s access, for example, if they leave the company or are no longer involved in the project, you can open Invite user to platform from the Create New Task dialog. At the bottom of the Invite External Members dialog, the steps described here take you to the documented help page for removing the external member’s access while preserving any data they created.
We introduced cross-company collaboration in SOLIDWORKS Design with the R2026x FD03 functional delivery update in July, and the workflow is now available. Give it a try to simplify collaboration with external partners while maintaining controlled access to shared design data.
With every SOLIDWORKS update, we aim to speed up your engineering design workflows. Learn more about the FD03 enhancements for collaborative engineering design in this blog.
Need to collaborate with stakeholders who only need to review and provide feedback on design content? Check out the Share and Markup capabilities outlined in this blog.