Hello karmoh:
I am using DDM with Solid Edge. You can call me at 1-256-348-7550 or email me at ssheldon -at- maxvision.com.
I looked at the Siemens offerings for product data management (PDM), and we did a trial installation of their "free" PDM solution, "Insight". It is basically an interface for Solid Edge written to work with Microsoft Sharepoint Services. In my opinion, it was junk. It is completely non-intuitive to the usual engineering document management ways of maintaining revision control over documents. I was quoted an average of $20,000 USD for a basic Teamcenter installation.
Design Data Manager (DDM) was very easy to set up and is very intuitive to use. We currently have 3 seats, though I have been the sole user for just over a year now as there were issues with Alternate Configurations that DDM could not deal with that was a show-stopper for our other user. Thus I have not yet had the opportunity to use DDM in a collaborative environment, though I will soon as we have a new user who is going to be going straight into DDM working on a project with me.
DDM is a data management software that interfaces with several different CAD packages, including Pro/E, Solid Works, IronCAD, Solid Edge, and others. It will also manage non-CAD data.
For not being a Siemens product, it interfaces with Solid Edge fairly well, though there are some rough edges. It does recognize assembly/part/drawing relationships, obviously, so that if you pull down a drawing out of the database it pulls down the needed geometry into your working directory also. Likewise if you pull down an assembly, or a part with an insert-part-copy in it.
DDM now also handles Alternative Configurations of assemblies, which it did not until recently.
Though I have not tested it on the latest version of the software, DDM was a little touchy on how you "up-revisioned" parts. As you know, in Solid Edge, in the context of an assembly, you can either "edit" a component in an assembly or you can "open" the component and then work on it.
If you wish to bump the revision of a component in an assembly, you must OPEN the component and bump the revision, not edit.
Also, DDM does not set the read-only flag on parts it pulls down out of the DDM database, so if you pull down a read-only part, such as a released document, Solid Edge doesn't know that you can't modify it, and you can modify it all you want - it is not until you try and save it back to the database that DDM will stop you and tell you that you don't have write access. You can, of course, at this point still bump the revision if you wanted to.
As far as PDM goes, DDM functions just as you would expect an engineering document management system to function. It allows you to change the work state of documents (work, released, approved, etc.), and it allows you to change the revision level of the documents. You can limit this ability to certain classes of users. For example, "designers" may be able to roll the revision on documents, but only "releasers" might be able to release them. You have full control over these ACLs (Access Control Levels).
I do frequently run into bugs in the DDM interface, normally when searching it will come up and say, "null integer out of bounds" or something like that, which requires shutting down DDM and re-starting it, but that is not a terrible show-stopper.
One problem with DDM in the Solid Edge implementation is that it does not manage or clean up your working directory. Which means if you pull down a day's worth of work into your working directory you could have hundreds of components and drawings in your working directory. If you forget which ones you have saved into the DDM database and which ones you have not, you become afraid to "clean out" your working directory, and consequently you end up with thousands of files in your working dir. I haven't found a good way to deal with this except to say that every time you come to a good stopping point during the day you should save into DDM, rather than just doing a local save.
One benefit of the working directory is that it can be a local directory on your computer, so you can pull down an assembly from your network DDM server, then disconnect your computer from the network (say, go home), and work remotely, and then when you get back to work plug into the network and save into DDM.
At $1500/seat, with about $500 a year maintenance, I have found it to be a bargain for managing CAD data, and far superior to Siemens' offerings.
Also the folks at Design Data Manager are very responsive and helpful with problems.
Steve Sheldon
MaxVision
Note: I am not affiliated with Design Data Manager except as a customer.
