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Rachael Dalton-Taggart, September 21, 2007
Actify, a long-time provider of 3D CAD viewing products, made changes
in 2006 to its executive team that indicated a possible shift in the
company’s mind-set.
Actify started using the term ‘Digital Design Communication
Solutions’ in 2005. The company still uses the phrase to describe its
technologies. But rather than relying on its original 3D CAD viewing
tools -- now a commodity -- it has focused on applying robust and proven
technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint as a way to streamline
engineering data across enterprises. DesignShare, released originally in
October 2005, with a major upgrade in January 2007, is described as
follows:
DesignShare manages both structured and unstructured data as it is
accessed by various team members. The technology is based on Microsoft
SharePoint.
“DesignShare 2.0 is an enterprise-wide collaboration solution, based
on Microsoft’s SharePoint platform, which allows users to quickly and
securely track, collaborate on, and mange all product information
including 2D and 3D data.”
But What is Actify Really Doing?
In June 2007 Actify announced that it had secured additional funding
from both existing and new investors into the company. So we chatted
with David Opsahl, Actify CEO, to determine what is on the company’s
agenda -- and what customers are buying into.
The company’s SpinFire product is regarded by Opsahl as a key
technology to achieve company goals. SpinFire is a technology platform
that enables manufacturing organizations and their supply chains to
access, interact with, and communicate part data plus related files and
documentation. All major 3D and 2D CAD data formats are allowed and no
CAD system is required to view the design data.
Now Actify is building on SpinFire technology to enable the data to
be available to many disciplines, not just engineering.
