The SolidWorks Blog

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2010 Beta: Resource Pain Relief

A few months ago I was talking to my brother, who is an IT manager for a local company that uses SolidWorks for design, and I asked him what his biggest challenges were when rolling out new software.

Not surprisingly he said it was making sure that new releases played nice with their other systems and software. He believes that taking part in beta is a wise investment in ensuring that software upgrades run smoothly. His only wish is that he had more resources.

While talking to customers about beta participation it became clear that the lack of resources, both hardware and time, delayed or prevented participation.

In an effort to alleviate part of the resource issue, the SolidWorks Beta team has created a "Hosted EPDM Beta Environment" that our EPDM customers can use to beta test with minimal effort.

SolidWorks supplies the database and archive servers and all the customer has to do is install the corresponding beta client. The customer has the ability to try out new functionality by creating their own vault or using a pre-populated test vault.

Sound intriguing? If so, sign up for beta via the customer portal.

Product Data Management (PDM) Basics II

Thanks for reading and commenting on this blog. In this installment, we will explore three important areas of Product Data Management (PDM) – Where Used, Contains and Bill of Materials (BOM).

Where Used?

Whenever a change is being made to a part, it is important to know all the assemblies that currently use this part. A change made to a part may make sense in one assembly, but cause a form, fit or function problem in another assembly. Prior to PDM, the task of finding the relationships between a part and the 1 to 100 assemblies that may rely on this part was difficult and time-consuming. With PDM, this task is reduced to clicking on the Where Used tab for any part and instantly viewing the list of affected assemblies. This can be accomplished by the non-CAD user, as it does not require opening the parts or assemblies in SolidWorks.

Contains

Another important task is to get a complete list of parts that are contained in an assembly. This is the reverse of the Where Used in that you find the assembly first and then click on the Contains tab to quickly get a list of all the parts that make up that particular assembly. You can then Browse to any given part in that assembly to see and use the Where Used functionality above to see what other assemblies are using that part.

Bill of Materials

Closely related to the Contains tab, which provides a quick snap shot of the parts in an assembly, is the more complete and flexible Bill of Material or BOM view. In this view you also get a list of the parts in a given assembly, but with more flexibility and control over the information displayed. SolidWorks Enterprise PDM will read in BOM information from SolidWorks (and other supported CAD packages) either based on the file structure of the assembly or by directly reading the customized Drawing or Assembly BOM.

The BOM information can be viewed in different ways by various users and departments. For example, the BOM may be viewed Indented (Nested), Parts Only and Top Level. Users may have different column information displayed from all the information contained in the PDM Vault. Columns may be sorted to re-order the information and two different BOM’s can be compared. This comparison features allows users to understand what has changed between two different versions of an assembly by seeing the additions, deletions and changed quantities in BOM format.

The BOM information can also be edited within PDM and then saved out to an external file such as ASCII text format, Excel or XML, where the BOM can be used by downstream applications including PLM and ERP. This can greatly reduce manual data entry and improve accuracy of As Purchased and As Manufacturing bills of material.

In order to share BOM information throughout the organization, the BOM can be sent through a pre-defined process, called a workflow, which will automatically route the BOM to other users within the company for comments, suggestions and final approval. This can be a great way to communicate Engineering information to the rest of the company including Purchasing, Quality Assurance, Sales, Marketing and Manufacturing.

Conclusion

Understanding and finding the relationships between parts and assemblies can be accomplished very easily, simply by having files in the PDM Vault using the Where Used and Contains tabs. Viewing, editing and sharing detailed Bill of Material information can be accomplished using PDM and does not rely on each user having access to the native CAD package which opens up the information to more people and more departments, improving overall productivity and communication.

Stay tuned for the next issue when we talk about the built-in time machine included with SolidWorks Enterprise PDM!

Cool PDM tool: embed an SQL query within Excel

One of the things I love most about attending SolidWorks World (SWW) is the learning. As someone who teaches regularly, it’s great to meet up with colleagues and customers and learn from them how they have applied their learnings to solve unique customer challenges.

One such meeting I had was with Ernie Noyce, an Application Engineer with TriMech Solutions. Ernie showed me how he was executing T-SQL queries from within an Excel spreadsheet to generate status reports.

The status reports were tied to the Enterprise PDM database and detailed the various workflow states in the vault, which documents were in each state, and how long each document had been in each state.

He utilized a freeware tool appropriately called SQL Excel. You can learn more about this tool at: http://www.sqlexcel.net/

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM - A Geek's View

This is my first post to the SolidWorks Blog. I will be posting on the technical aspects of the SolidWorks data management products.

The 2009 release of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM (EPDM) includes support for Microsoft® SQL Server 2008. Since I was updating to the recently released EPDM SP2 I decided to update SQL Server at the same time.

Here are some of my thoughts and suggestions for those of you moving to SQL Server 2008:

• Before updating, be sure to perform a full back-up
• The installation is slightly different than the 2005 version but pretty straightforward. The details of menu selections can be found in the EPDM Installation Guide.
• If you want to install the Microsoft sample AdventureWorks databases on x86 platform, make sure "Full Text Search Feature" is turned on AND enable "SQL Full-text Daemon Launcher (MSSQLSERVER)" service, before installing the sample databases. This should be done during the SQL Server install.
• If you use SQL Server Management Studio to run T-SQL queries, you’ll be excited by the new T-SQL IntelliSense support – very cool!
• In SQL Server Management Studio, the Design Query in Editor… icon is no longer on the toolbar by default, but if you right-click in the query window you will find it there.
• Reporting Services has also been improved. If you have not explored this functionality, it allows you to generate a wealth of standard reports that can be accessed via a web interface.

In conclusion, the move to SQL Server 2008 was almost seamless and offers some cool new features that can enhance any EPDM installation.

Product Data Management (PDM) Basics

This is my first blog post so bear with me as I adjust to this new communication form. I thought of starting with the basics, so why not Product Data Management (PDM) basics?

Product Data Management (PDM)

Everyone creates and consumes more data today that at any point in our history. We each experience the frustration of not findining that letter, presentation, email or part file we need on a daily basis. The basics of Product Data Management (PDM) provide the tools to help organize your data and find your co-workers data as well.

Vault

In order to provide a centralized and secure location for all important data related to your product, PDM provides a Vault, similar to a shared network drive, where all data can be stored and shared. In order to prevent data overwrites, where one person accidentally destroys another persons data, the concept of Check Out and Check In are introduced. You can't edit a file without Checking it Out and this lets others know that this file is out for use. In a way, it is like the library, where only one user can have a particular book at a given time.

Data Cards

Each file in the vault is associated with a data card that contains information about that file. This data can include Custom Properties, which can automatically populate the data cards or can be additional data. In the case of a manufactured part, perhaps you want to associate data such as description, part number, cost, vendor and material. This data can be customized and changed at any time.

Version Control

Each time a user checks a document back into the Vault, it's versioned. This means a new copy is stored and a data field called version is automatically incremented. This provides a new level of safety and backup, in that you can go back in time multiple steps without having to do a Save As and manage multiple file names.

Search

Even a one person CAD department can benefit from the search tools available with a PDM system. Not only can you search on the file name, but any of the data fields that were entered as Custom Properties or additional data fields can be searched on in a variety of ways. The ability to find documents more quickly and easily is one of the compelling advantages of PDM for small and large organizations alike, as studies show that we spend up to 30% of each week, just searching for information!

Conclusion

While PDM systems can solve a variety of communication, collaboration and control challenges for manufacturing organizations today, the basics of PDM can help virtually every CAD user by centralizing, backing up, protecting and finding your valuable data.

Come and learn more about PDM at SolidWorks World in February!