A closer look at CCE’s EnSuite – Cloud ReVue LiveLink

Vinay Wagle, VP of Sales and Marketing at CCE, speaks about the company’s latest announcement: an extension that enables designers to start a real-time 3D collaboration session directly from CAD systems

Remote collaboration is an important working process for many designers. However, most screen-sharing apps commonly used today were not built with engineering or CAD in mind. Screen sharing works well for discussing documents or PowerPoint presentations, but collaboration with CAD data has unique requirements. Addressing this need, Michigan-based software company CCE has recently developed EnSuite-Cloud ReVue, an update to its EnSuite-Cloud product, to provide a secure alternative to typical screen-sharing apps for CAD collaboration. Now CCE is adding a new functionality to this solution with the introduction of LiveLink, a set of CAD integrations that enable users to start an EnSuite-Cloud ReVue collaboration session directly from their CAD system. Let’s take a closer look at LiveLink with the help of Vinay Wagle, VP of Sales and Marketing at CCE, who recently gave a video interview on this topic to Sanjay Gangal from MCADCafe.

The data exchange specialist chosen by Autodesk and other major CAD vendors

Wagle started out by briefly recalling CCE history and major expertise areas. “CCE has been in business for over thirty years,” he said. “We focus on developing technology for CAD data exchange. We have developed technology that allows you to read and write CAD files without having access to a CAD system. Our technology is licensed by major CAD ISVs, like Autodesk, for example. So, if you go into any Autodesk product and you want to read a CAD file, let’s say a CATIA file, it’s our technology that lets you do that. Based on this technology, we’ve also built some end user products that are meant for the typical CAD designers. These end user products allow you to view and translate CAD data, again, without requiring a CAD system.” Wagle explained that the CCE translators are built in the Autodesk products, so they come with the CAD system with no need to add a plug-in. Besides Autodesk, many other CAD vendors have embedded the CCE data exchange technology in their systems, but their names cannot be made public. “We have non-disclosure [agreements] with most of the other companies. Autodesk has kindly allowed us to talk about them, so I am. But there are other companies like Autodesk that license our technology,” Wagle said.

EnSuite-Cloud ReVue, a browser-based, CAD-oriented collaboration tool

Based on its expertise with products that let designers view, translate and work with CAD files, CCE has recently taken a further step. “For the longest time, these products were available on Windows, they were Windows application that you needed to download and install,” Wagle pointed out. “But late last year we came up with a new product, our EnSuite-Cloud ReVue, which is a completely browser-based product. It allows you to view any CAD file, it doesn’t matter which CAD system it came from, on the browser. But the more important thing is it’s really a collaboration tool for companies. For example, let’s say I am an engineer and I want to work with you, and you want to see the CAD model that I worked on; I can start a collaboration session, then I can invite you to join, and we can both view that CAD model.”

Real collaboration for all participants

Wagle stressed the uniqueness of the EnSuite-Cloud ReVue solution, which enables all the participants in the collaboration session to interact with the CAD model: “We observed that a lot of [mechanical designers] were doing collaboration using Zoom. What happens [with Zoom] is I do screen sharing, I open my CAD model, I share my screen and the other person sees the screen – but that’s not true collaboration because you can only see what I’m doing when I move the CAD model. In our technology, even though you are on the other side of this process, you also can independently view the CAD model. You can move it, you can see it from different sizes and so on, which nobody else can do,” he maintained. “Each participant has independent control over the CAD model, so you don’t have to only see what I’m showing you. You can rotate or measure the model, you can check different parts of it, without me knowing it even.” The solution supports audio communication, allowing session participants to talk to each other in real-time while viewing the same data.

Intellectual property protection

Wagle also addressed any concerns about data protection during collaboration sessions: “The most important part of this technology – he said – is that we don’t upload the CAD model to any server. It is a person to person, peer-to-peer connection. There is no intellectual property risk.” Avoiding data upload to the cloud server also enables faster performance during the collaboration session, as Wagle explained: “It’s lightning fast even if you load a large assembly, it loads very quickly and you can do all sorts of operations on it without any latency. (…) So, intellectual property protection, independent control of the CAD model and super-fast connection is really what this product is all about.”

Starting a collaboration session from a CAD system with LiveLink

The latest addition to EnSuite-Cloud ReVue is the recently announced LiveLink CAD integration. In CCE’s intentions, the LiveLink extension should make collaboration even more convenient for designers. “Now instead of running the product in the browser, you can actually run it in a CAD system,” Wagle explained, adding that so far CCE has released LiveLlink extensions for SolidWorks and SketchUp. “So, let’s say you go into SolidWorks,” he continued. “From SolidWorks you can start EnSuite-Cloud ReVue, and you can actually show the model [to the other session participants]; and if you make any changes to the model, it’s automatically updated in the browser that the other person can see. Again, all of this is done without the data going to any server. It’s completely secure, and [the data] never leaves [the owner]. It’s super-fast and extremely easy to use, it’s meant for any general user who has no CAD training.” Beside SolidWorks and SketchUp, support for more CAD systems will be added shortly. The updated list is available on this page of the CCE website, where designers can also vote which CAD systems integration they would like to be added sooner.

Free 15-day trial

EnSuite-Cloud ReVue supports all major mechanical CAD formats, including CATIA V5, CATIA V6 (3DXML), SolidWorks, NX, Creo, Autodesk Inventor, Solid Edge, JT, IFC and glTF, among others. It also supports all browsers, on any PC or Mac. The CCE website includes all the information about the product and offers visitors a free 15-day trial. CCE is also considering extending EnSuite-Cloud ReVue to AEC (Architecture, Engineering, & Construction) systems; at the moment the product supports the IFC format, which is an interchange format for architectural applications; the next step could be adding support for Revit. “Our roots are in mechanical [CAD], so it was natural for us to come up with solutions for mechanical, but certainly AEC is a very fast-growing segment, as we all know, so we are extending our solutions to support that, soon,” Wagle concluded.

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