Over the last two decades, the use of the AutoDesk AutoCAD^® program has become an essential tool to aid in the design of products and equipment by the manufacturing industry. AutoCAD is also widely used in the aerospace & defense, fabrication, automotive and distribution industry among many others. As ubiquitous as the use of this program has become though, it comes with some inherent limitations.

Throughout the years and as an Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) member Coldwater Technology has had the opportunity to partner with companies in these industries, assisting them with their enterprise software challenges. The inherent bottleneck issue encountered was to have the ability to retrieve accurate Bill of Materials (BoM) data from their AutoCAD drawings for the assembly or sub-assembly manufacturing processes. Coldwater Technology saw this as an opportunity to support its partners further and as a result, we have engineered an efficient and time saving solution to handle the retrieval of consistent and validated bill of materials (BoM) data from AutoCAD drawings.