PDM and E-Drawings

[vacuumdesigner]

Does anybody know how nicely PDMWorks and E-Drawings play together? I've seen the E-Drawings options in the PDM Admin tool, but my distrivutor sold my IT guy on the PDM Web client. Do we really need these clients or can we use E-Drawings for all of this?

 

[ctopher]

What exactly do you want to do? PDMWorks is for file management, eDrawings isn't.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 2.2/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 03-11-07)

 

[vacuumdesigner]

I have sales staff and apps engineers, production people and the like; that occasionally need access to files that will be stored in my vault soon. My SW distributor sold us on the web portal viewer for PDMWorks when we but the package, I just want to know if those people who don't need or have a full seat of SW could use E-Drawings to access my vault to look at files.

 

[ctopher]

I don't know if PDM Web client will allow eDwgs to access PDMW vault.
I strongly suggest not having anyone outside of engineering and your machine shop have access to the vault. All others can access a directory where eDrawings are stored.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 2.2/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 03-11-07)

 

[vacuumdesigner]

I don't think I'm as clear about this as I want to be. I want to know if E-Drawings can access the vault on it's own, without the web client.

 

[rporter]

The web portal is a way to give people acces to the vault without having a full seat of pdmworks. without the portal everyone that needed acces to the vault would need pdmworks. We use the web portal just for this reason

 

[vacuumdesigner]

Then what are the E-Drawings settings for in the vault admin? For people with a full seat of PDM Works but no seat of SW?

 

[pdybeck]

vacuumdesigner,

You could do this... In the vault admin tool make sure the setting for "Keep extra copy of latest files" is checked. This will create a folder that you will not see in the vault through the standalone client, but nonetheless is there in the actual folder structure. Allow the vault some time to produce all the copies. In PDMWorks I have all our released drawings in one project - 7000 files. This allows us to access all the latest versions of these files using eDrawings. Browse to where your vault is located and understand the structure. Find the project/folder where all your drawings are. Find the folder titled "Latest" in this area. This folder contains all the latest versions (copies of) that you can open using eDrawings. Make this location a favorite so that you can revisit it easily without having to browse several folders deep. From within eDrawings, click open and then browse to the location. Open the drawing you are after. Voila.

Pete

 

[PDMAdmin]

eDrawings is only for viewing and (depending on which version you have) publishing eDrawings files. It can't access a PDM vault on its own; you need either Web Portal or the PDMW client to access the vault files. Once you have the files copied to your working directory from the vault, you can view them with eDrawings. (As I recall, starting with SW2006, eDrawings was able to load native SW files.)

 

[pdybeck]

Not necessarily correct PDMAdmin. See my post. You can access all the latest copies of files in the vault using eDrawings if you are a little clever in arranging files so they are all accessable from one folder... Of course you can't access older files this way, just the most recent revision. But this may be all that vacuumdesigner needs.

Pete

 

[EEnd]

Prior to 2007, PDMWorks used eDrawings as a viewer within the client. Perhaps the settings that you are seeing are for that purpose.

Eric

 

[pdybeck]

2007 still uses eDrawings as a viewer in the client. Nothing has changed there. These settings have been in PDMWorks since as long as I have been using it - prior to when SolidWorks bought DesignSource and took it over.

Pete

 

[vacuumdesigner]

I was just wondering what the purpose of the E-Drawings settings in the vault admin tool was for if E-Drawings can't access the vault.

 

[vacuumdesigner]

So the web portal uses e_drawings to view things?

 

[rporter]

Yes the web portal uses e-drawings to view the files.

You set up user accounts for users that will the web portal just like you would for a user that uses solidworks.

That is the nice thing about the web portal is people can view files without having a standalone clinet which can get costly if you had to buy a client for each person that dosent have solidworks.

 

[vacuumdesigner]

I see says the blind man. It all makes sense now, thanks guys.