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,
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
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
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
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
Bradley
RE: SW2005 and Smarteam
Are you telling me that you used Smarteam and moved over to PDMworks?
Macduff
Meggitt Airdynamics Inc.
RE: SW2005 and Smarteam
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Pete
RE: SW2005 and Smarteam
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
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
Thomas Söderholm
Sweden
RE: SW2005 and Smarteam
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
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
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
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
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