Collaboration Tools for Engineers

Just email, the phone and CR4 from me.

Mathcad had a 'Collaboratory' feature I used for a while, allowing people to post Mathcad workfiles covering a wide variety of subjects, or to post questions and problems either about some math/science/engineering problem they were working on or about something related to Mathcad itself. At some point, though, a major revision was made to Mathcad that was incompatible with a lot of the older workfiles I'd done and it became pointless for me to still use the Collaboratory. I don't know if it still exists or not.

Aside from that I've used Google Documents to create and share Excel- and Word-type documents. I've also used Primo freeware to create and share pdf files.

Good question. I've been pondering this for a while. There are a few software companies that make apps to view your 3D data on mobile devices like an IPad. The problem is they want you too upload the models to "their" servers to access them. I contacted a few for details about security and they have disclaimers specifically saying they cannot guarantee it 100%. Big problem for me and I imagine for others.

As of today we don't send anything through internet except e-mail and use only dedicated FTP to share data. If there was a guaranteed secure way to do it online, I'd be all over it. Like drop box, but secure.

Any thoughts? I'm not that familiar with the in and outs of "the cloud"

In the beginning, there was Sharepoint (but you can only share when its working-unreliable)

Basecamp is an awesome, intuitive collaboration tool.