Litterbox pdm

CAD management becomes very difficult as a team grows. Shared drives become messy, and “official” versions of parts are hard to track as members duplicate parts and assemblies. This is where Product Data Management (PDM) software comes in: Half Cat Rocketry needed its own method for sharing and controlling a common CAD vault, and many other student and hobbyist teams can benefit from it being a broadly available and user-friendly desktop application.

Litterbox is a free, open-source PDM for teams that work with CAD. It is primarily intended for SolidWorks, but support for additional programs may come in the future. It keeps your vault in an ordinary Git repository on a host you already have, such as GitHub, GitLab, or Azure DevOps. There's no server to set up, and nobody on the team needs to know Git. Litterbox automatically handles Git large file storage (LFS) for binary files, which CAD generates.

Features of Litterbox:

• Check out and check in: Only one person edits a part at a time, and everyone else gets the latest with one click.

• Part numbers in your team's format, handed out without clashes.

• Revisions and releases, with sign-off workflows and change orders when you want them.

• Bills of material counted from your assemblies, including purchased parts and costs.

• STEP and PDF files made at release, for people who don't run SolidWorks.

• A full history of who changed what, when, and why.

Litterbox is new, and may have odd quirks or bugs. The program prompts to update when a new version comes out.

Please read the user guide before setting up your repository.