Autocad has had a feature that keeps track of total editing time since the DOS versions. Does SW (2012x64 SP1.0) keep track of time spent?
Thank you for your time
It's theoretically possible, but I hope it is either not implemented, or not easily accessible to management, given all the days I wasted trying things that didn't quite work, and trying to make sense of how 2005-ish tutorials applied to the 2009-ish versions I was using.
Did anyone ever try to really use the 'editing time' records kept by AutoCAD?
This has been brought up before. It would be somewhat possible to implement with a macro (I messed around with it some). The problem is getting data that's at all meaningful or useful. With a 2-D AutoCAD drawing, all of the time that a document is active is time that is (or could have anyway) spent editing that document. With SolidWorks, the document actually being edited may not be the active document. You can modify parts and assemblies from an open drawing. You can modify parts directly from an assembly. You can modify a base part while a derived part is actually the active document. Modifying a base part might make significant changes on the assembly or drawing without even opening the asm/drawing file.
Take a look at ManicTime (do a web search) this records time against a number of attributes. Its been a while since I used this but it was stable in Win7 and gave quiet a lot of info for usage.
Regards
We use JTB World for tracking all of our licenses (Solidworks and AutoCAD). It does track license usage in hours, but it only tracks how long the license is being used. There is know way for it to determine if the software is actually being used. Either way it doesn't matter to us, because if a license is in use that license is being taken from the pool and could be used some where else if the user just has it open and is taking a break. That is why we track this so each dept\division can fork over some money for Subs when the next year comes due. Maybe then they won't just leave it up and walk away.
I don't think this is the answer you are looking for, but I thought I would post this in case some thing this will work for your needs as well.
Regards,
Scott Baugh, CSWP
Berry Plastics
Cad Admin\Design Engineer GEASWUG Greater Evansville Area SWUG Leader
SolidWorks 2013 Implemented a Administrator Option for Querying SolidWorks performance via the Web but the Report Disk Usage/Statistics must be in the Registry Settings for this to be possible. It can monitor Performance but to my knowledge hasn't been designed to track actual model edit time.
You may be able to track usage using the SolidWorks Jornal Files but that would require a script to copy the reg file out of the user's journal file folder or have them do a SolidWorks RX after each session which may waste more time than not tracking your users so harshly.
Unsure of Current Journal File location check the folowing Registry option Run regedit
My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Solidworks\SolidWorks 2YYY\ExtReferences\SolidWorks Journal FoldersThis can be/should be customized if need be but is usually in My Documents. If you are not comfortable browsing your Registry Files *.reg
You can Search for "swxJRNL.swj" on your C: or Install Drive
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