PRODUCT DATA MANAGEMENT (PDM)

Gain control of your data to unleash engineering potential

Remove collaboration barriers, limit time spent on non value-add tasks, and increase product development agility with CAD-integrated product data management.

Engineer

Free your engineers from the burden of low-value tasks

How can you make engineering processes more efficient to create time for strategic, innovative thinking? Get your project data in check with product data management (PDM). With PDM, you have a single source of truth that organizes your design and product data in one centralized system that tracks revisions, manages change orders, generates bills of materials, and more.

Read how manufacturers bring innovations to market faster with a powerful combination of PDM and parametric 3D CAD.

Develop a robust engineering ecosystem with PDM

Design confidently

Share, track, and manage all product data in a central, secure system so team members around the globe can efficiently collaborate with reduced risk to your projects.

Move with agility

Give everyone access to the right data at the right time in a centralized system to control design processes, reduce errors, and increase development agility.

Connect everyone

Bring together external project collaborators in one secure workspace where you can maintain access permission control, versioning, and traceability.

Boost productivity

Spend less time searching and more time doing. Easily find and access files you want to replace, reuse, or copy to minimize rework and repetitive tasks.

How industry leaders increase agility with product data management

Integrate engineering processes with PDM

Parametric modeling

The need for more agility in design requires a modern modeling approach. Easily incorporate design changes, get more value from your models, and reuse existing design data by modeling in parametric 3D.

Design automation

Integrate PDM with your design tool to automate design and engineering processes. Save time and increase development agility by easily copying designs and reusing, replacing, or copying components.

Bill of materials (BOM) management

Create and maintain a more accurate and comprehensive manufacturing bill of materials. Automate centralized product data in one BOM to ensure stakeholders have access to the data they need in real time.

Machine design

Pair product data management software with your CAD tools to respond rapidly to data insights and stakeholder feedback, helping you reduce risk while fast-tracking machine designs from prototypes to products.

Product design

Bring products to market faster by bringing all project data into one place. Imagine, prototype, improve, and market-test new products more efficiently than ever before with product data management.

Change management

Easily manage engineering change orders (ECOs) with an intuitive workflow. Enforce control over revisions to designs, items, and records for enterprise-wide visibility and traceability.

3D design and product data management software

Product data management software—available as Vault Basic, Vault Professional, Vault Office


Get Inventor + AutoCAD + Autodesk Fusion + more—Professional-grade tools for product development and manufacturing planning.


Stay current on product data management best practices

preview of the 'Top reasons to use Vault' PDF

TOP REASONS

Centralize data, enable collaboration

Take control of your product data with Autodesk Vault. Read why engineers, designers, and extended teams use Vault to remove collaboration barriers, boost productivity, and speed up development cycles.


Open laptop with headphones showing an image of an on-demand webinar

WEBINARS

Improve your development process

Learn from Autodesk experts about PDM tips, tricks, and best practices. Dive into our extensive library of webinars to learn how you can streamline workflows with product data management software.


Designer working at a workstation in an office setting

BLOG

Keep a pulse on what's new

Stay up to date with all things PDM and PLM on Autodesk’s Under the Hood blog. Visit the blog for regular features on learning opportunities, events, and product updates.

 


Free Autodesk software for students and educators


Unlock educational access to Autodesk software

Autodesk is committed to helping educate tomorrow's leaders. Get free access to our entire portfolio of products with the Autodesk Education plan.

Get your data under control with Autodesk PDM

Talk to a sales representative about how Autodesk data and process management solutions can help you streamline engineering workflows and drive efficiency.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) on product data management (PDM)

What is product data management (PDM)?

PDM stands for product data management. Product data management is a system that centralizes product-related data and processes. Engineers use PDM software to track revisions, manage change orders, generate Bills of Materials (BOMs), and more.

What does PDM do?

PDM software helps companies bring products to market faster by bringing all project data into one place. This reduces time spent on low-value tasks and increases both product development agility and collaboration.

How does PDM work?

PDM captures the entire history of your designs by integrating with your design and business tools to manage data and automate workflows and engineering processes.

What can PDM do for you?

Product data management helps you take control of your project data so you can: 

  • Increase product development agility: Experience real-time access to data from anywhere with multi-CAD integration. With PDM, your design workflow adapts to your business. 
  • Improve internal and external collaboration: Share 2D or 3D views of your work with others, even those outside your company's firewall, and get comments and feedback directly inside your PDM software. 
  • Reduce tedious processes: Easily find and access files you want to replace, reuse, or copy to use in new designs. Use existing design data to spend less time searching and more time doing. 
  • Decrease errors and improve product quality: Automate engineering change orders, revision control, BOM management, and more. Keep your engineering processes under control with PDM software. 

What is the difference between PDM, PLM, and ERP?

Product data management (PDM), product lifecycle management (PLM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are complementary systems. PDM integrates with CAD software and tracks changes, revisions, and design history automatically as engineers and designers work. ERP capabilities focus on business execution processes such as inventory, logistics, and financials. PLM capabilities focus on everything about a product—from concept through engineering to production—and provide processes that connect everyone involved in the product lifecycle to a central source of information. 

What is PDM vs PLM?

A PDM system manages design and engineering data, while a PLM system manages business processes involved in the product lifecycle, such as new product introduction, requirements management, supplier collaboration, quality management, and more.

What does a PDM system do?

A product data management system centralizes product-related data and automates engineering processes. Engineers use a PDM system to track revisions, manage change orders, and generate bills of materials (BOMs)

What is the role of product data management?

Using a PDM system helps ensure that everyone in your organization is working with up-to-date, accurate data while enabling greater collaboration across internal and external stakeholders. PDM also automates engineering processes, reducing time spent on low-value tasks and speeding up time to market.

See more FAQ

Legal terms and conditions

Free Autodesk software and/or cloud-based services are subject to acceptance of and compliance with the terms and conditions of the terms of use and/or other terms that accompany such software or cloud-based services. Software and cloud-based services subject to an Educational license or subscription may be used by eligible users solely for Educational Purposes and shall not be used for commercial, professional or any other for-profit purposes.