The current climate of economic competition forces businesses to adapt to the expectations of their customers. To achieve this, in spite of the increasing complexity of mechanical systems, it becomes necessary, amongst other things, to reduce design time. Faced with new challenges, practices in design training must evolve to allow students to be mindful of these evolutions as well as to be able to manage projects in these new work environments. After presenting a state of the art of collaborative tools used in product design, our paper presents an experiment focusing on the reverse engineering of a complex mechanical product. This experiment was carried out between two centers of the Arts et Métiers ParisTech School of Engineering, located in Paris and Angers.Weanalyze the results obtained in this experiment and propose a collaborative environment that is well suited to our needs for design education, based on ''Product Lifecycle Managament'' (PLM) concepts. Finally, we present some modifications in collaborative design courses for our students, and we implement network modifications in order to significantly improve the ease of use of the design environment.