GVSU Laker Racing: Moving a Formula SAE Car Off OneDrive
About 30 students, one combustion Formula SAE car, and about 20 of them designing it in SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD. This fall Laker Racing at Grand Valley State University moves its CAD files off OneDrive and into Sibe, ready for Michigan in May.
One car, one shared assembly
Laker Racing is the Formula SAE team at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. About 30 students design, build and race a combustion formula car, and about 20 of them work on it in SolidWorks.
Shared drives work well for documents. A car assembly is different. Every subteam's part lands on someone else's: the frame moves, a mount no longer lines up, and the assembly only works if everyone opens the current version of every file.
From OneDrive to Sibe
Until now the team kept its CAD on OneDrive. This fall it moves those files into a cloud CAD Document Management workspace from Sibe, as part of Sibe's sponsorship. The team's own announcement put it simply: every CAD file managed in Sibe, directly in SolidWorks.
What the workspace gives a team working in the same assembly:
- Check files in and out directly in SolidWorks, with assembly references resolved
- Every version and revision tracked automatically, so nobody overwrites a teammate's work by accident
- See who has a part checked out and where every file stands, from the status icons in the local cache
- Roll back to an earlier version when a change does not work out
- Send a public share link to a sponsor, an advisor or a judge with no Sibe account and no CAD license
No servers, no VPNs, no admin hassles.
Next stop: Michigan International Speedway
The team's main event is Formula SAE Internal Combustion at Michigan International Speedway in May 2027. Design judging there asks every team to explain its decisions, and a decision is easier to defend when the revision history behind it already exists. With the whole car in one workspace, that history builds itself as the students work.
We will be following the build.
If you run a student engineering team in SolidWorks, get in touch. We would like to hear what you are building. More student teams on Sibe: IZTECH Racing, UNLV Formula Racing and Lassonde Motorsports.
Running the same problem on a production team? Book a free 20-minute demo.
Book a free Demo with Ken to see Sibe in action
Ken Maren
Chief Solutions Architect
SolidWorks Expert with 30+ Years Experience
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