×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

SW2005 and Smarteam

SW2005 and Smarteam

SW2005 and Smarteam

(OP)
Hi all,
Is anyone using SW2005 with Smarteam? I was just wondering how the two play together. We are planning moving to Smarteam by the end of the year as well as moving to SW2005 after the first service pack.

Also, can PDMWorks be used with Smarteam? I was thinking about using PDMworks for our developement designs and pushing the data into Smarteam for production.

Any feedback would be good!

Thanks,

Macduff
Meggitt Airdynamics Inc.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Smarteam is not ready to upgrade to SW05 yet. You have to wait for Smarteam if your using it.

I don't have the email anymore about it, but that is essentially what you have to do.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
http://www.3dvisiontech.com
http://www.scottjbaugh.com

If you are in the SW Forum Check out the FAQ section

To make the Best of Eng-Tips Forums FAQ731-376

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Forgot to add:

I think PDMworks is a replacement to Smarteam versus using both products. I know customers that got rid of Smarteam and now use PDMworks primarily.  Smarteam doesn't keep up with the changes vs. PDMworks. PDMWorks is avaiable at ever major release of SW. ST you have to wait for. If I were you, I would investigate switching to PDMWorks.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
http://www.3dvisiontech.com
http://www.scottjbaugh.com

If you are in the SW Forum Check out the FAQ section

To make the Best of Eng-Tips Forums FAQ731-376

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

(OP)
Scott,
We have PDMworks and love it. Our sister companies use SW but don't have PDMworks, and there file structures are a complete mess. So there thought is to move everyone over to Smarteam. I do not want to make the move over to Smarteam because we have so much invested in PDMworks. Also, the Smarteam VAR said the the data will transfer from PDMworks to Smarteam 1 to 1 without any links being broken in assemblies and drawings. But I highly doubt it. Nothing is ever that seemless.

Thanks,

Macduff
Meggitt Airdynamics Inc.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

With companies trying to save every dollar, check the total cost of SmarTeam verses PDM\Works. We had SmarTeam and the cost just to upgrade for 21 users and fixing our mistakes was over $27,000. PDM\Works at the time was around $500 per seat. We did spent lots of unseen dollars converting SmarTeam drawings over to PDM\Works ourselves. Well worth it.

Bradley

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

(OP)
Bradley,
Are you telling me that you used Smarteam and moved over to PDMworks?

Macduff
Meggitt Airdynamics Inc.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Macduff,
Yes, and never, ever regretted the move. What I like best about PDM\Works is how easy it is to use. When we had SmarTeam, Engineers would be asking for new settings in SmarTeam. Which SmarTeam would almost certainly have done with a little work.  Now they do not ask, because they know PDM\Works will not do it. The hardest request I get now is to add a user to the system.

Bradley

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Bradley,
We have reached the breaking point with Smarteam for many different reasons and are now seriously considering switching over to PDMWorks. However, as you can imagine and probably already know from experience, our biggest obstacle is how do we get all of our data into PDMworks?

Can you shed some light on the subject for me? How did it go? How involved was it?

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

norman888,
The change over was a big mess. I am very glad we did it though. The mistake we did was to check in big assemblies into PDM Works from SmarTeam. Instead I would have like to start from the bottom up. I would start with a part and its drawing. Check in, and then move up to the sub assembly, then next assembly.
We have 1,000’s of drawings that lost the link between model and drawing. It is no big deal but it does take time to re-link them.

Bradley

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

(OP)
Bradley,
That's just good PDMWorks check-in practice. Good advice to other users.

Best,

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Sr. Mechanical Designer
macduff's SW page
Inhouse System
Pentium(4)2.80GHz
Ram 1.00 GB
SW2005 Office SP 3.1
Windows 2000 SP4.0
NIVIDA Quadro4 750 XGL

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Hi Colin. We learned a couple weeks ago we are installing SmarTeam. We are keeping PDMWorks for SW, but SmarTeam will take care of BOM's and other docs...then eventually link to other sister companies.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

(OP)
Oh boy, I smell problems coming your way Chris. How are you bridging between the two software’s?

My condolences,


Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Sr. Mechanical Designer
macduff's SW page
Inhouse System
Pentium(4)2.80GHz
Ram 1.00 GB
SW2005 Office SP 3.1
Windows 2000 SP4.0
NIVIDA Quadro4 750 XGL

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

I'm fighting to keep PDMW and ST away from each other. I do not want any links. So far I seem to be winning, not sure until ST is fully implemented.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Bradley,
We also use Smarteam and are contemplating switching to PDMworks. How long did you change over take? I was hoping that there might be a program or script file or macro of some sort written somewhere to make the transition go smoother. It sounds like there might not be an easy process to do this.

Other that starting from the bottom up do you have any other tips that might be helpful?

It sounds like Norman8888 and I are in the same boat? Our
biggest reason for wanting to switch is so that we may keep up with the SW releases. Smarteam currently only supports SW2005 sp1.1

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Chris,
Good luck with the two programs. I always thought it was one or the other. If anything keep ST away from SW in order to keep up with SW. I see that you are already a few service packs ahead of what ST officially supports.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Chris,

   Check out Arena PLM.  I have read a little about it lately, as they seem to have an interesting business model.  There is a module that will allow PDMWorks customers to publish their product structure (BOM) to Arena.  I believe it can constantly monitor the PDMWorks vault and publish info to Arena when needed.  Arena seems to be a much lower cost than Smarteam to get PLM functionality.  Thought I would mention it, as I will be keeping my eye on it and seeing how it progresses.

Pete

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

My company is considering implementing Smarteam not only for SolidWorks documents, but for everything.  It makes me nervous to hear that people are switching from Smarteam to PDM/Works.  We have more than one location and support about 50 engineers, including a dozen mechanicals currently using PDM/Works.

Is the delay in supporting new releases the main reason to stay with PDM/Works?  If so, how long does it usually take for them to support a new release of SolidWorks?  We usually don't upgrade to the new release until SP1 anyway.

We would like to automate the process of approving documents during the ECO process.  Does this work as smoothly as advertised?  In our current manual system engineering change documentation can get misplaced or sometimes sits on someone's desk for weeks without being reviewed.  We need to be able to track the approvals and eliminate these delays.

I would also like to hear any experiences with transferring data to/from ERP systems.  How much time and money should we budget for the initial implementation?  Is it better to take this on ourselves or have it done by the seller?  

Has anyone done any customization or added any functionality?  We have a lot of programming skill here, but would really need some decent documentation in order to do this.

For those who have dumped Smarteam, what exactly was the reason?  It can do a lot more than the revision control which you get from PDM/Works, but what was the problem with it?  I need to know if these problems were due to the product itself or the way in which it was implemented.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

(OP)
Guys,
We need to get user "PDMadmin" involved in this thread. He will be able to shed some light on this situation.

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Sr. Mechanical Designer
macduff's SW page
Inhouse System
Pentium(4)2.80GHz
Ram 1.00 GB
SW2005 Office SP 3.1
Windows 2000 SP4.0
NIVIDA Quadro4 750 XGL

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Thanks guys. I am admin of SW/PDMW and have control over them. But, mngmt has control over everything else. I have no say in bringing in ST, but will fight to not have the two software working together. If it comes down to they want me to 'convert' from PDMW to ST...they are on their own!

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

(OP)
It's funny how the two software's don't play well together. Being a Dassault system product and all. I even heard horror stories about CATIA V5 and Smarteam.

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Sr. Mechanical Designer
macduff's SW page
Inhouse System
Pentium(4)2.80GHz
Ram 1.00 GB
SW2005 Office SP 3.1
Windows 2000 SP4.0
NIVIDA Quadro4 750 XGL

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

OLID,
It must be over 4 years now and we are still working on it. Of course we are working on jobs at the same time. Everything is in PDM now, we are just re-linking parts to drawing on a “as touch bases”. I would suggest getting every part and its drawing into the PDM as soon as possible. I have found that engineers do not like looking in two different places for parts to reuse. If an engineers remodels a part that you already have you know what happens to the mates. You can have your administrator do a bulk check-in which is easier.

Bradley

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

I am wondering if a company like UGS has the brightest future right now.  They seem to have a much more scalable total solution as SolidEdge (with insight), NX, and Teamcenter are beginning to play nicely. (notice I said seem to have as that depends on how nicely they play together).  Even AutoDesk seems to get it with integration of thier Vault product with their PLM systems(did I say that).  It seems that Dassault and SolidWorks are very much lagging behind in this regard, and its beginning to concern me.  Does anyone else see warning signs in this, or is it just me?

Pete

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

We are 12 designers using SmarTeam (plus a few occational other users). We store mainly SolidWorks data, but also thinking of puting some Word/Excel files there. We're running V5R14SP6 and are quite pleased with some areas and shouting loud about others... One of the biggest drawbacks is the lack of support for SolidWorks! We are stuck on SW2004SP5 since SmarTeam only supports SW2005SP1.1 and NO other releases will be supported until SW2005SP5 which is scheduled for November/December 2005. SW2006 isn't supported at all, and I can't get a date for that. Howcome the so called GoldPartner SmarTeam, which is within the same company as SolidWorks, don't support every ServicePack of SolidWorks?

As a designer, I'm NOT interested in what version of SmarTeam I can use, it'is my design tool that makes my work done!

Thomas

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

We recently upgraded to ST V5R14SP7 w/ SW2K5SP1.1 and have had no major issues to speak of. I certainly can feel everyones pains of ST and SW not being compatible with each new major/minor release. SW made a some change after SP1.1 which broke something in ST. I have been told that SWSP5 has actually corrected the break in ST and I know of a company that is using SP5 and ST without any problems. ST will just tell you to wait until December (19th I believe) for R14SP8 before officially supporting SWSP4 or later.

PDMW will give you basic document management and revisioning. Which for the smaller companies is perfect, but for larger ones you will need something more robust like ST. Can PDMW allow you to route an ECO via an electronic workflow? Can PDMW allow you to electronically capture siginoffs of drawing changes? Can PDMW allow you to have a central vault and DB replicated and synchronized to global locations? Can PDMW allow you to control BOMs and push/pull data to and from your ERP/MRP system? SMARTEAM is a PLM system and offers much much more than a PDM system can. It's entirely possible that VARs sold people something more than they needed.

I also recently had a face to face talk with a Dassault SMARTEAM customer service rep. from CA. In my conversations with him I expressed my two biggest complaints: 1) SW and ST release incompatibility and 2) Web based product upgrade issues.

Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

After reading the SW2005SP1.1 release paper plus doing some tests with our assemblies and drawings we came to the conclusion that we couldn't live with it. This is for us such a showstopper that we're looking for alternatives for (Un)SmarTeam. Their incompability problems must be solved quickly in order to keep customers. GoldPartner, yeah right...

Thomas Söderholm
Sweden

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Our biggest gripe with ST is the incompatibility with the latest SW release. As far as workflow, multiple locations, and bom capabilities are concerned. Yes, Smarteam will handle all of those situations and many others quite well for an additional cost of course.

We recently upgraded to SW2005 SP1.1 and STV5R14 SP 7 as well and have uncovered a major bug that if found during our testing would have been a show stopper. Are there work arounds? Sure. Should we have to wait until mid December for a solution? Not if ST already has one. Support for SW2006 when?

We have 12 users of SW and ST in one location and are probably considered a small company. We have other SW users back east and over seas that we have decided not to introduce to ST because of cost considerations. ST is a powerful program and we have been using it for over 5 years. However, we have decided that we can live without all the extras and extra cost. We just want to control our SW data and use the latest design tools made available to us from SW.

We will be looking for alternatives to ST for many reasons but the lack of SW compatibility is at the top of the list. Who knows maybe no one else besides PDMW keeps up with SW either. If that’s the case then PDMW for us it is since it does the two things that we consider most important to us. Which are keep pace with SW releases and revision control of our SW data. Will PDMW evolve into something bigger and more like a ST? Perhaps. Is it important to us that it does? Not really.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

OLID,
All of you points are valid and back 5 years ago PDMW didn't exist. There were only a handful of players in the market for PDM packages. Back then ST won due to it's tighter integration with SW. We start with SMARTEAM back in 1997 when it was first developed, one of six or so companies willing to take the plunge into what was called PDM at that time.

PDMW and ST each have their own place in industry. I personally like ST but still have dislikes as well. It does what it claims and does it well. I guess there are those who like to be on the cutting edge, but I can wait for a SP or two before implimenting a CAD upgrade especially since SW does it so well now a days.

I'm curious to know what it was that you uncovered that was a show stopper for you. Also, have you done any testing with SWSP5 and R14SP7? You might find that your show stopper is fixed, but don't ask for support until after R14SP8 though as you'll get the cold shoulder from your ST VAR.

Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

kcarpenter,

You are correct. When the decision was made 5 years ago to go with ST there were not many other players. I was not involved in the selection or testing process but I heard that PDMW was one of the few also looked at. PDMW was not a SW product at the time but was eventually bought by SW. It appears that PDMW has come a long way since then.

The problem is ST is not removing the read only flag from SW files when you rename a SW file in order to create a new one.

Check out an assembly then rename in SW, files save as, a component from the assembly to create a new SW file. Go back to you ST DMT and you will not see the new file. Go back to your new SW file and you will notice that it is read only even though it is a new file. Try it. You won’t like the result.

As far a testing SW2005 SP 5. I just downloaded it and will do some testing today. I don’t think it will help though because I have already tested it with SW2005 SP4.

SW is not totally pain free either. We need to move up to up to later SP because of bugs in SW that get fixed in the later SW service packs. Doing that however basically leaves us with no support ST. We are trying to minimize the amount of user frustration while staying productive. Not an easy task.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

Too many crashes plus that our assembly drawings of the projects we were working on at the time didn't look the same as in SW2004 made us reject SW2005SP1.1. And we're still in SW2004SP5...

We have not the time to try every release with eachother to see if we can accept the problems or not. We're told not to use SW2005SP5 with SmarTeam until ST V5R14SP8 due to risk of loosing the SmarTeam tree in SW. Don't want that...

The other week I got the yearly invioce, with raised prices for SmarTeam. I told them I didn't understand why I should pay more when SmarTeam is the reason we're still in SW2004. Asked when SmarTeam will support every minor release of SolidWorks. We'll see when I get the answer for that...

As OLID says, productivity is essential. And with 12 designers it is impossible to play around risking downgrading after a week or 2. We will never upgrade the same week as the new releases are issued, but when we are over a year after the release of SW2005 it maked me wonder why we pay the yearly fee.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

vgthomas,
I would never suggest upgrading a production environment without some good testing. We have a complete copy of our production systems setup on test servers along with several clients to test applications. There is no way feasible to make sure you'll not get into trouble with an upgrade except by testing it separately outside of production systems. It sounds as though you don't have a test environment nor do you have a PLM/PDM admin. Both of these are very important to have in-house.

There will always be bugs in software, some you can live with and some you can't. It's always better to find them before you rollout a new version of any software. Also, it's not impossible to play around with the new releases. You just have to know how to do it, i.e. test environment. Worst case you use an old workstation, or do like I'm doing. We have our test servers, but I also run tests on my laptop. Copies of the production DB completely set up just like production. It's not as fast as the servers, but I can play all I want without taking the entire community of user down.

I have 60+ local users along with another 20+ global (Mexico, China, etc.) users using ST Editor. On top of that I have some 400+ users of Navigator. I know what it's like to have the system down and users not being productive. It's a challenging task to say the least.

Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.

RE: SW2005 and Smarteam

I have a question about new releases of SWX.  How exactly is Smarteam incompatible when new versions/SP's of SWX are released?  For example, can you run SWX2006 right now?  If not, what exactly is the problem?

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources