CAD Collaboration Without CAD Software: Bridge Engineering and Business Teams | CAD Collaboration Across Confluence, Jira & Outlook

Engineering creates. Everyone else is locked out.

There's a quiet bottleneck in most product companies that nobody talks about in standups. Engineers create CAD files - the detailed 2D drawings and 3D models that define what gets built. But the 80% of the organization that needs to understand those designs can't open them.

Product managers need to see what the design looks like before approving it. QA needs to visualize the part they're writing test plans for. Procurement needs to verify that the supplier's drawing matches the spec. Sales needs to show the customer what they're buying. Support needs to understand the product when a customer calls with a problem.

All of them rely on the same workaround: asking an engineer to take a screenshot. Or export a PDF. Or schedule a screen-share. Every time, for every file, from every project.

The cost isn't just the engineer's interrupted time - it's the cascading delays. The product review gets pushed because the PM hasn't seen the latest design. The defect stays open longer because QA can't visualize the geometry. The quote goes out late because sales couldn't verify the model with the customer.

The root cause: CAD licenses don't scale to entire organizations

CAD software licenses are expensive - often thousands of dollars per seat per year. They require specialized hardware, training, and IT support. Companies buy them for engineers and designers, which makes sense. But that means everyone else is excluded from directly viewing the outputs those engineers produce.

Some companies try to solve this with viewer editions from CAD vendors. But these are typically limited to one vendor's formats (SolidWorks eDrawings only opens SolidWorks files), require desktop installation, and still need IT management.

The result: an information asymmetry at the heart of the product development process. The people making decisions about designs can't see those designs directly.

A different approach: bring CAD viewing to the tools your teams already use

Instead of giving everyone CAD software, bring CAD viewing capabilities to the collaboration tools your organization already uses - Confluence for documentation, Jira for issue tracking, and Outlook for email.

This is the approach behind Move Work Forward's CAD Model Viewer suite: three purpose-built integrations that let anyone in your organization view and interact with 2D and 3D CAD files - without installing CAD software, learning new tools, or buying additional licenses.

In Confluence: engineering documentation comes alive

Confluence is where engineering knowledge lives - product specs, design reviews, manufacturing instructions, project documentation. But until now, the CAD files at the heart of these documents have been opaque attachments.

With CAD 2D and 3D Model Viewer for Confluence, those attachments become interactive viewers embedded directly in the page. Anyone who can access the Confluence page can rotate and zoom 3D models, cross-section parts to see internal geometry, view 2D drawings with full layers and annotations, track model revisions as designs evolve, and browse organized model catalogues.

This transforms Confluence from a place where CAD files are stored into a place where CAD files are understood.

Example workflow - Design Review: An engineer creates a Confluence page for a design review. They attach the SolidWorks assembly and insert the Model Viewer macro. Before the meeting even starts, the product manager, manufacturing lead, and quality engineer can all explore the model independently. They add comments on specific concerns. The review meeting becomes a focused discussion rather than a first-look presentation.

In Jira: issues get design context

Jira issues about engineering work are often missing the most important piece of context - what the part actually looks like. A bug report says 'tolerance issue on bracket assembly' but nobody outside engineering can visualize which bracket or which tolerance.

With Model Viewer for Jira, CAD files attached to Jira issues become viewable by everyone on the team. QA attaches the model to a defect and marks the area of concern. Product managers see exactly what a feature request would change. Support teams understand the customer's part when handling escalations. Manufacturing teams reference the model while tracking production issues.

Example workflow - Defect Tracking: A quality inspector finds a dimensional issue on a machined part. They create a Jira issue, attach the STEP file, and describe the problem. The manufacturing engineer opens the issue, views the 3D model directly in Jira, cross-sections to the problem area, and identifies the root cause - all without switching to CAD software or asking for the original SolidWorks file.

In Outlook: email collaboration gets visual

A surprising amount of CAD collaboration happens over email. Suppliers send drawings for review. Partners share assembly files. Customers attach models to support requests. Sales teams receive technical proposals with CAD attachments.

With CAD Model Viewer for Outlook, these attachments are viewable the moment they arrive. Sales previews CAD attachments in customer proposals without forwarding to engineering. Procurement verifies supplier drawings match specifications before approving orders. Project managers review design deliverables from partners without scheduling a call. Support opens customer-submitted CAD files to understand their issue immediately.

Example workflow - Supplier Review: Procurement receives an email from a new supplier with CATIA files attached. Instead of forwarding the email to engineering and waiting two days for a response, the procurement manager opens the model directly in Outlook, checks the geometry against the spec, and responds to the supplier the same day.

The compound effect: one viewing capability, three touchpoints

The real power isn't any one of these integrations in isolation - it's the compound effect of making CAD files viewable everywhere your team works.

When a design moves through your workflow, it touches all three tools:

Confluence - The design is documented, reviewed, and catalogued. Product pages embed the current model. Manufacturing instructions show interactive 3D views.

Jira - Issues reference the design directly. Defects, change requests, and feature work all have visual context. Cross-functional teams can see what's being discussed.

Outlook - External collaboration is unblocked. Supplier drawings, partner deliverables, and customer files are viewable on arrival. Response times drop.

No CAD licenses purchased. No training required. No IT overhead. Just the ability for your entire organization to see and understand the designs that drive your business.

The format challenge (and why it matters)

One of the most underestimated challenges in CAD viewing is format support. Real organizations don't standardize on a single CAD tool. Your team might use SolidWorks, but your supplier uses CATIA, your AEC partner uses Revit, and the company you just acquired uses Siemens NX.

All three Model Viewer products support 70+ CAD formats - from AutoCAD DWG and DXF, to SolidWorks, CATIA, Inventor, Creo, and Siemens NX, to BIM formats like Revit and IFC, to neutral formats like STEP, IGES, STL, OBJ, FBX, and glTF. This breadth is critical because the moment a viewer can't open a file, you're back to the old workflow.

Getting started

The fastest way to see the impact is to start where the pain is worst. If your team spends the most time asking engineers to share screenshots for Confluence pages, start there. If your bottleneck is Jira issues missing design context, start with the Jira viewer. If it's supplier emails piling up waiting for engineering review, start with Outlook.

All three are available as free trials: