CoLab: Engineering Collaboration for the 21st Century

Technology today is developed faster than ever before and companies race to release the best, most innovative projects before their competitors. From medical devices to autonomous vehicles, cutting-edge products are making the lives of consumers better.

The design and engineering of these products is rapid and ever-changing, but the technology that supports this process is not. Many tools that teams use to manage their design and feedback process are slow, decentralized, and they've been that way for a very long time.

Spreadsheets, slide decks, emails and paper markups are staples in the design process - ones that waste upwards of 25% of a team’s time due to their manual, inefficient, and uncollaborative nature.

Existing workflows often involve technical teams designing models in CAD tools and then exporting them to a sharable version, which is typically followed by a flurry of feedback, supporting documentation, and actions all managed in email, spreadsheets, and other similar tools. This typically requires a) someone to manage all these active documents and b) a lot of extra time to find up-to-date information, files, and supporting information, with a lot of errors made along the way.

11 months ago, a small team of mechanical engineers at CoLab concluded that with the right technology in place, engineering and design teams could reclaim that wasted time and deliver better projects, more effectively. This idea translated into Gradient, a collaborative platform that now empowers technical teams across North America, like Motovario Corporation USA, to work as innovatively as the products and solutions they create.

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So how does it work?

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Gradient is a design and issue management platform that enables engineering teams to work together, with real-time oversight of issues and progress in a simple-to-use hub.

Gradient has found a common ground for technical users that favor their CAD programs and non-technical users that live by their project management tools. The platform acts as a common place for users to create markups, issues and action items directly on their native CAD files, with quick reference to all supporting project information. No emails. No spreadsheets.

By combining industry-leading 3D web viewing technology with an integrated issue tracking and project management system, Gradient enables users to move quickly and ultimately reduce the number of manufacturing errors.

Gradient is built for collaboration, making it simple for users to share projects with all stakeholders - internal and external.

Learn more about one of Gradient’s Early Adopters, and how they’ve used the platform for expediting their feedback loop with customers.

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Gradient is live!

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After an extensive early adopter program with a group of innovative companies, the CoLab team has now opened Gradient to the public in an open-beta. CoLab anticipates that an enterprise market product will go live in Q1 2019.

With significant progress made in under 11 months, the team has doubled in size after closing a private round of financing in June.

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Want to learn more?

CoLab Software’s mission is to empower engineering teams to facilitate efficient collaboration on innovative projects. Sign-up to become a beta user today at https://www.colabsoftware.com/#signup

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