For those involved in system design and development, CAD Migration  tools are a necessity. CAD migration refers to the way in which data is exchanged between electrical or mechanical CAD systems running on different formats. Because the data must be translated from one format to another, it is called CAD migration or CAD translation. There are many different software programs for computer-aided design and drafting. It's a good idea to know the various methods used to transfer or convert your drawing files from one compatible software program to another.

CAD migration is needed for many purposes. It allows collaboration between OEMs and their suppliers, and communication between electrical and mechanical design engineers working in parallel on the same projects. Systems with long product lifecycles, such as military hardware, may have been engineered using CAD design tools which are now obsolete and no longer supported by the vendors. Globalization, competitive pressure, time-to-market pressure, and the need to leverage and reuse existing product designs all drive the need to migrate product data. In order to avoid the costs and problems of accessing this data, it needs to be migrated into modern systems, for which CAD migration tools are needed. There are many CAD migration packages on the market, but few support all platforms. Today, not just getting the correct support platform is difficult but also the costs are even higher. Much of this is down to incompatibility of CAD design formats between engineers and OEMs. This is a very complex job because some data are easy to migrate and others are, well, impossible.