Mirroring the PDMW Vault
Mirroring the PDMW Vault
(OP)
I know I saw a thread on this topic, but I can't find it now...
At my company, we use two outside contract design and drafting services. One is in the U.S., but in a different state from us, and the other is in India. I spend a huge amount of time getting files for them and trying to control what files they can and cannot change.
I would like to somehow mirror our PDMW vault, with the Advanced Server Web Access, and give them access to the files they need. I would need control over what they see, to protect intellectual property rights.
Is this possible? Has anyone done it? How difficult is it? How well does it work?
Thanks,
Valerie
At my company, we use two outside contract design and drafting services. One is in the U.S., but in a different state from us, and the other is in India. I spend a huge amount of time getting files for them and trying to control what files they can and cannot change.
I would like to somehow mirror our PDMW vault, with the Advanced Server Web Access, and give them access to the files they need. I would need control over what they see, to protect intellectual property rights.
Is this possible? Has anyone done it? How difficult is it? How well does it work?
Thanks,
Valerie






RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
There's a number of ways to provide them with access to read files, it's another story entirely if they need to modify files. If you mirror, how do you guarantee that they're always looking at the latest version if it's uncontrolled?
We are looking at a PDM solution called Conisio to do this very thing.
Another option, if those other locations don't care too much about high-quality graphics and there's only a few of them is to use Remote Desktop Connection to control a computer that is in your office, then work on the local files from there.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP1.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
Jason Capriotti
Smith & Nephew, Inc.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
The guys at mechworks have been great to work with. Any issues we have had so far have been addressed quickly. Some are even new features in the core product now.
Are you guys still looking?
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
We just implemented PDMWorks about a month ago. It's not feasible to switch gears now, but I'm going to keep my eye on DBWorks. I'll submit a feature request to PDMWorks. Maybe they'll feel like being competitive and save me the trouble of switching.
Thank you, everyone, for some great info.
-Valerie
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
My old company is still waiting..........
Jason Capriotti
Smith & Nephew, Inc.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
PDMW may eventually get there. At the time we were evaluating, SWx was pushing SmartTeam as their enterprise solution so they did not seem like they were doing much with PDMW. Now may be different. We don't like to make decisions based on "eventually".
Gildashard,
We did look at MatrixOne, and the complexity was scary! We only have to tie in Swx and ACAD so we didn't need the highly complex, do everything packages like you might need with UG. And it was still lacking in some of our requirements.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
UG has it's own big PDM called Teamcenter but it's complex as well I believe.
Jason Capriotti
Smith & Nephew, Inc.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
It is possible, and several of us in this forum have done it, including me. It is quite difficult, and you need to work with people who really know what they are doing; otherwise you could end up with a corrupted vault. If done right, it works very well. However, SolidWorks does not support that kind of vault replication; in fact, their official position is that they don't recommend manipulating vault files in any way.
The most reliable setup I have found is to use Unix servers along with the "rsync" command. However, you need to do extensive testing to make sure it will do what you need it to do.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
J
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
Jason Capriotti
Smith & Nephew, Inc.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
You CAN replicate data between vaults, but it has to be done as a "batch" process. Once the PDMWorks vault has started up and cached everything in to RAM it doesn't pay much attention to what exists in the directory structure anymore. So files could be replicated/modified while the PDMWorks vault service is running BUT it's likely that corruption will result when the service has to go back to the directory to look for certain files and they're not there or they're different.
You therefore can't have real-time replication.
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
Plan B: It would cut down on a lot of hassle if the offsite folks could at least access and download files for themselves.
engAlright said, "There's a number of ways to provide them with access to read files." What are the best options to give them read-only access?
RE: Mirroring the PDMW Vault
-once a day batch download to the remote server from the vault using the PDMWorks api (if you have advanced server) - you could set this up to download the contents of an entire folder, or maybe documents modified in the last day
-PDMworks webportal - though I would be a little concerned with security
-remote user's can VPN in to your office and access the vault the normal way with the client or...
-remote user's can VPN in and use remote desktop sharing to a local computer to manually copy over what they need, or if your network supports it, work on the documents directly