Most comparisons of first-article tools start with features. For aerospace work that's the second question. The first is simpler and harder: where does the drawing physically go when you open it?
Both models are legitimate. They just fail in different places, and the failure modes matter more than the feature lists.
Why location is a compliance question
An engineering drawing for a defence or aerospace part is frequently controlled technical data. Under export control regimes, making that data accessible to a foreign person can count as an export — even if nobody sends it anywhere, and even if it happens inside your own country.
That's why "where is it stored, and who could access it" is a question about servers, support staff, backups, and sub-processors, not just about encryption. Cloud vendors serving this market are generally aware of it and offer controlled environments; the point is that it's a question you must actually ask, with an answer you can show an auditor.
Ask any tool vendor: in which countries is our data stored, who among your staff can access it, which sub-processors touch it, and can you commit to that contractually? A vendor set up for this work will answer immediately. If the answer is vague, that's your answer.
What each model is genuinely good at
Cloud tools
- Collaboration. Several inspectors on one package, live, without passing files around.
- Central visibility. A quality manager can see every open FAI across sites without asking anyone.
- Nothing to install or update. Meaningful when IT controls the desktop tightly.
- Backup and continuity handled for you.
- Supply-chain workflow. If your customer already runs a portal you must submit through, integrating with it beats fighting it.
Offline tools
- The data question disappears. Nothing leaves the machine, so there's no storage location, no sub-processor, and no access list to audit.
- Works on an isolated network, or on no network at all — including the segregated cells that controlled programmes often run on.
- No dependency on a vendor's uptime. Your ability to close out a FAI doesn't rest on someone else's service being available.
- Usually bought once rather than rented, which changes what happens if you stop paying: with a perpetual licence the tool keeps working.
- Simple procurement. No data processing agreement, no security review of a third party's infrastructure — often the difference between deploying this quarter and next year.
What offline genuinely costs you
Any honest version of this list has to include the other side, because these are real:
- No central dashboard. If you want to know how many FAIs are open across three sites, an offline tool won't tell you. That's a genuine loss for a quality manager, and a spreadsheet is a poor substitute.
- Backup is yours. Project files live on a workstation. If that disk dies and nobody was backing it up, the work is gone.
- Sharing is manual. Sending a package means sending a file, with all the version-control risk that implies.
- Updates are a deliberate act. Somebody has to install them.
- No live multi-user editing. Two people can't balloon the same drawing simultaneously.
Choosing between them
| If this is true | Lean |
|---|---|
| You handle ITAR/EAR-controlled drawings and your compliance officer asks where data goes | Offline |
| Machines are on a segregated or air-gapped network | Offline |
| You're a supplier producing FAIs for others, and you own your own records | Offline |
| Procurement will not sign a new data processing agreement this year | Offline |
| Multiple sites need one live view of FAI status | Cloud |
| Several inspectors work one package simultaneously | Cloud |
| Your customer mandates submission through their platform | Cloud, or both |
| You have no reliable backup discipline on workstations | Cloud, or fix the backups |
Plenty of suppliers end up running both, and that's a reasonable answer rather than a failure to decide: prepare offline where the drawings are controlled, submit through whatever portal the customer requires.
The questions worth asking either way
- Where is our data stored, and who can access it?
- If we stop paying, what happens to the software and to the records we've already produced?
- Can we get our data out in a format something else can read?
- What happens when the vendor is unavailable — or gone?
- Does it produce output our customer will actually accept?
Question three deserves particular attention. A first article is a record you may need years from now. Whichever model you choose, being able to export your characteristics in an open format is what stops a tool decision from becoming a permanent one.
Export control obligations depend on your specific data, jurisdiction and contracts. Nothing here is legal advice; your export compliance officer and your customer's flow-down are the authorities on what your drawings are allowed to touch.
See the offline case for yourself
FAIRmark runs entirely on your machine and makes no network calls at all. Fourteen days, everything unlocked.