Turning design files into trusted, actionable product definition—efficiently—is still one of the oldest engineering headaches in the book.
In the first episode of Inside the Solution, Propel's insider series on how to solve today's most pressing manufacturing challenges, CMO Dario Ambrosini sits down with Tom Shoemaker, VP of Product Marketing, to unpack Propel’s Winter '26 Release and why Tom calls it Propel’s "biggest release ever." The conversation centers on the launch of Design Hub, a new way to bring multi-CAD design data into an enterprise-ready workflow.
Key Takeaways
Our "biggest release ever."
Tom explains why the Winter 2026 Release was Propel’s largest to date, led by Propel One (agentic AI) and Design Hub (design data management across multiple CAD-PLM setups).
Major releases 3x per year—because customers shouldn’t wait a year for progress.
How Propel builds a predictable cadence from customer input, market shifts, competitive context, and platform timing, then ships fast with major releases.
Design Hub fixes the workgroup-to-enterprise disconnect.
The core problem: engineering creates the design definition, but everyone else needs to see it, trust it, and act on it. Procurement, manufacturing, quality, service, marketing, sales — anyone else who touches the product.
When PLM becomes a file vault, the business pays for it.
Many deployments behave like PDM with CAD files tucked away in an engineering corner, so the broader organization runs on stale info, manual handoffs, and delays.
Multi-CAD and multi-PDM are the norm – why aren't integrations build for it?
Design Hub is built for real environments: acquisitions, distributed teams, and different tool stacks across departments (MCAD, ECAD, and beyond). It’s designed to unify, not force a rip-and-replace.
Meet teams where they are: import, connect, or modernize.
Design Hub supports multiple paths:
- CAD-only teams that need structured importing and mapping
- Teams with existing PDM systems that need reliable connectivity (even multiple PDMs)
- Teams that want to upgrade away from on-prem PDM without breaking workflows
Same destination: enterprise-ready product definition in Propel.
Changes keep coming. Design Hub keeps everyone aligned.
Design Hub isn’t just about first ingest. It’s about what happens next: revisions, metadata updates, material changes, assembly updates, handled in a controlled flow so the enterprise stays aligned as engineering iterates.
Learn More
If you’re juggling CAD tools, PDM systems, and daily “which version is right?” questions, Design Hub is your path from design chaos to enterprise control.
Explore Design Hub to see how Propel unifies multi-domain design data, streamlines change, and gets accurate product definition to every team that depends on it.
About Inside the Solution
Inside the Solution brings you behind-the-scenes conversations with Propel's product experts on solving modern manufacturing challenges. Each episode breaks down product development problems across roles, teams, and industries — and the innovative solutions transforming how companies bring products to market.
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