SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News – December 2019
Hello to all,
Welcome to the new edition of the SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News! This monthly news blog is co-authored by members of the SOLIDWORKS Technical Support teams worldwide.
How to display the SOLIDWORKS PDM workflow state in a SOLIDWORKS Manage report
By Kevin Crawford
There may be times where you will want a Bill of Materials report in Manage to display the SOLIDWORKS PDM workflow state. To do this requires some additional setup work.
To display the PDM workflow state in a Manage report you first need to create a PDM variable and add it to the data card. To avoid any manual changes, the text box should be read-only and have a default value of the first workflow state for newly added files. In the below image, a variable called “PDM Status” was created and connected it to a text box on the data card. The text box is read-only and has a default value of the first workflow state, “Development”.
Edit the workflow and modify the transitions to include an action to set the “PDM Status” variable to the destination state name. Adding the action to all transitions will update the variable anytime the file changes states.
In Manage, edit the PDM Object (Options > Administration Options > Structures > Documents & Records, and edit the PDM vault). On the Connection page of the wizard, select “Enable Synchronization and get all PDM objects” and run the synchronization.
The “PDM Status” variable will now be seen on the Fields page.
On the Bill of Materials page, edit the BOM and create a new field.
The new field will be a Mapped Field.
Under the Options tab, you’ll need to map the field to the field of the file.
On the Views tab, edit the view and set the PDM Status field to visible.
On the Reports page, edit the Report
Add the PDM Status column to the report.
Now, after files are transitioned through the PDM workflow, the Manage report will now contain the PDM Status.
About DWG Files in SOLIDWORKS PDM
By James Falconer
DWG files are one of the most popular filetypes that SOLIDWORKS PDM manages within a vault. Did you know that both SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard and PDM Pro give you the ability to manage these files? And no add-ins are needed when you are using Windows Explorer to manage them!
How is SOLIDWORKS PDM able to manage DWG files?
We use the ODA API to read DWG files. The ODA (OpenDWG Alliance) is a group of over 1,000 companies that support the development of tools that allow our software to read and write to DWG files.
Are there different DWG file formats?
About once every 3 years there is a new major release of the DWG format. You can tell which version file format you have by simply opening the DWG file in a text reader, such as Notepad (for small files), or Notepad++ (for larger files).
The first 6 characters will tell you which DWG file format you are viewing. In the image above we can tell it is a DWG file format from 2018 – 2020 because the first 6 characters are AC1032.
For reference, here are the DWG file versions for the previous 12 years;
AutoCAD 2018 – AutoCAD 2020: AC1032
AutoCAD 2013 – AutoCAD 2017: AC1027
AutoCAD 2010 – AutoCAD 2012: AC1024
AutoCAD 2007 – AutoCAD 2009: AC1021
Does SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard support DWG files?
Yes! SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard allows you the ability to manage DWG files in the Windows Explorer Vault View. You are able to manage DWG files just like many other filetypes; Push them through a workflow, check them out, view the data card, etc.
Do I need the AutoCAD, or DraftSight add-in to manage DWG files inside a vault?
No! You only need to own a license of SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard or SOLIDWORKS PDM Pro to manage DWG files from within the vault. The ODI integration is part of both SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard and SOLIDWORKS PDM Pro.
Noteworthy Solutions from the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base
Technical Alert: Important Information Regarding SOLIDWORKS 2020 SP0
For more information, check out Solution Id: S-077218.
If SOLIDWORKS® Electrical crashes on startup how do I fix a problem where the event log shows that the SOLIDWORKSElectrical.exe error model is ole32.dll?
For more information on this, see Solution Id: S-076997.
General Hotfix for SOLIDWORKS® PDM 2018 and 2019 – File Version Upgrade Tool (SPR#1151052)
For more information, see Solution Id: S-077143.
For a Nonlinear study that uses viscoelastic material under constant loading, why do the stress results show no sign of stress relaxation no matter how much I increase the total solution time?
For more information on this, check out Solution Id: S-076990.
In SOLIDWORKS® Flow Simulation, is it possible to simulate an adiabatic compression like in a combustion engine?
For more information, check out Solution Id: S-077066.
That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading this edition of SOLIDWORKS Support News. If you need additional help with these issues or any others, please contact your SOLIDWORKS Value Added Reseller.
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