It is an intriguing vision that could easily become reality, which is why respected OEMs are taking the idea seriously. But the technical potential of 3D printing should not distract us from the fact that the real challenge lies elsewhere, namely in the integration of this technology in business processes that continue to be characterized by a wealth of media discontinuities. How on earth can we expect to be able to provide reliably valid 3D print documents across the globe if we have not even managed to set up drawing-free manufacturing in our own companies?
It is no accident that model-based enterprise (MBE) and model-based definition (MBD) are in vogue this year; and like the world of fashion, the PLM world is not revolutionized every year. Some of the things that were "in" years ago lose their dated nimbus and experience a resurgence. After all, if we are honest, the idea of a digital master model that contains all the information related to a product, including manufacturing parameters, and makes this information available to all processes is not exactly novel. It is about as old as CAD technology itself.
For a long time now, CAD systems have made it possible to embed tolerances and other parameters in the models in the form of features, which can then be read out for the purposes of CAM programming, for example. But this option was rarely used in practice as there were no generally accepted standards for exchanging this information across systems.