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Engineering Drawing Management Made Easy with OnBase by Hyland
January 29, 2016

Engineering Drawing Management Made Easy with OnBase by Hyland

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with OnBase by Hyland

OnBase by Hyland is our enterprise drawing management program for engineering drawings which supports our operating plants in the US. Drawings are also available to our viewers in Canada.

  • With OnBase and our established Workflows within OnBase we manage the check out and check in of drawings with notifications to internal and external design groups. This ensures that the latest version is tracked and updated and made available to users at the operating plants as well as engineering groups in the corporate office.
  • OnBase has an internal viewer that provides users access to engineering drawings created by different computer aided drafting software (AutoCAD, Microstation, Visio, etc). This results in a cost savings of purchased CAD licenses.
  • Users are able to view and print, including to PDF which eliminates the need to contact the Design group for copies. We are currently limited to one print at a time but we are working with our Value Added Reseller and Hyland to correct the issue.
  • Using a Value Added Reseller has brought unique help to our specific situation. We have a reseller that assists with upgrades and recommendations, who has expertise beyond our small staffing group; a reseller with immediate access to the right individuals at Hyland if needed. It's a great relationship.
  • Training - Hyland offers in house classroom training at their headquarters in Cleveland. With hotel recommendations and pick up service, the out of town student has no problem getting to "school" and back. Any pre-requisites are explained on their training website where the Administrator or Expert can track and maintain their certifications. Classroom work is thorough and challenging but the staff is friendly and helpful and willing to take extra time to assist in making sure that each individual has a good chance of passing required testing for certification. With a facility that includes a restaurant and a program for the student that includes some evening "entertainment", school takes on a whole new meaning.
  • Training also is available online for some courses. This is something I still need to experience.
  • Scalability - Our use of OnBase by Hyland currently is just for engineering drawings and our annual maintenance is a one time payment.
  • Hyland showcases in many online articles and videos on how OnBase can be used throughout the entire organization from applications to HR, accounts receivable and accounts payable... and in different types of organizations from healthcare to banking...and including manufacturing.
  • We could grow OnBase to include many other departments of our company but the choice is ours.
  • Permissions and security - With OnBase we are able to give all our users the ability to view and print drawings for plant operations or project work. We limit the number of designers who can edit drawings. We manage locations which an individual is able to check out files and edit. Proprietary drawings, where required, are available to only a select group.
  • Availability - By importing our engineering drawings into OnBase all drawings are available to all users in North America. We still have engineering drawings on a drafting server and these drawings are only available to designers. Organizing drawings from a project turnover can be a challenge; importing them into OnBase is easy.
  • Printing multiple drawings from a hit list.
  • We are currently working with our Value Added Reseller and Hyland to enable a print button that would allow us to print multiple drawings from a hit list. Our users might need entire sets of electrical one line diagrams or piping and instrument diagrams for plant operations or project work. The disabled option stems from the fact that some engineering drawings are created with external drawings (XRefs or external references) that are referenced inside a drawing. Because 99% of our drawings are simple drawings that do not use external references, the disable print button is a handicap. If not resolved in this issue, which is still our hope, Hyland is aware that the issue needs to be fixed in the future.
  • Efficiency and increased productivity by making drawings accessible to all engineers and plant personnel across the US and Canada, reduced printing costs, reduced shipping charges to send hard copies, reduced storage of drawings in flat files resulting in a paper free environment, manage renditions of drawings yet make only the latest approved revision available to engineers.
  • Need to scan hard copies, need to request only native digital copies and bring others into the digital era, need to organize existing files and prepare for importing. The turnover of project files from other groups is our greatest challenge as we do not always receive an index or files are named with long file names that are cumbersome.
  • Alfresco
We utilized another product prior to OnBase but we were alerted that there were possible issues with solvency of the company. We were able to switch to OnBase.
There are two other groups in our company that are using products (Alfresco and an internally created program) to share PDF files of drawings with others.
While I have not used these programs here are some comments I have heard. These two particular software programs are limited to sharing only PDF files with users. This is to make sure that the native file is not downloaded and edited by anyone who so desires to make changes. Control of the master electronic drawing file is not possible in these programs.
We utilize OnBase for managing our engineering drawings and managing revisions that occur through our management of change process to these drawings. I can only say that it works well for this process in our organization.

OnBase Feature Ratings

Enterprise Content Management
10.0
Content capture & imaging
10
File sync, storage & archiving
10
Document management
10
Records management
10
Content search & retrieval
10
Enterprise content collaboration
Not Rated
Content publishing & creation
Not Rated
Security, risk management & information governance
10
Contract lifecycle management
Not Rated

Using OnBase by Hyland

500 - 
  • Plant Operations / Engineers in the field
  • Plant Projects / Engineers at the corporate level with small projects
  • Engineering and Construction for the growth at existing facilities with large projects or moving and existing plant to another location
  • Training personnel
  • Risk Management personnel
  • Zone and Platform Managers