PDM

[ctopher]

I was an admin for PDMWorks for a few years with SolidWorks. I never used it for AutoCAD dwgs. Have any of you used it for ACAD? If so, how well does it handle xref's and general dwg? Or is there an ACAD PLM that works as good or better? I didn't want to ask in the ACAD forum, too much one sided IMO.
Thanks, Chris

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[pdybeck]

Chris,

I am in charge of overseeing users that manage roughly 6,000 dwg files in PDMWorks. Could you be more specific? For us, PDMWorks does all that we need it to as far as handling DWG files. The bulk import in the admin tool worked wonders for getting all 6000 of our files out of another data managment vault and into PDMWorks. Joy Pineau contacted us during the development of the bulk load tool and we gave our comments on an alpha version. We were very pleased in how well it migrated our files over. We were able set up attribute maps so that all the information in our DWG title blocks were read and written to file properties in PDMWorks. All of our DWG files are now searchable within PDMWorks. As far as XREFs, our files contain XREFS to basic elements of the drawing format that are outside the vault. There are no issues with XREFs for us, but we may be using them totally different than your company may be. If you could be more specific I could maybe give some answers and run a few tests. eDrawings (the built in viewer in the vault) does a pretty good job at viewing the DWG files as well. There is a setting under tools, options, for it to search known locations for XREFs so that they too are viewed in the DWG file.

Pete

 

[Badwolf]

Hi,

We have around 30000 AutoCAD drawings in our system. Generally it works well. We had to get used to the fact that there is no interaction between PDM and a drawing. Without coding, all the transfer of information is one way - from the drawing to PDM - nothing backwards. If you can manage with that, then it's ok. When we installed PDM (2 years ago) it wouldn't work with xrefs, so I bound them in, but now I understand it works with them. Dunno how well though!

 

[ctopher]

Thanks guys. I understand PDMW very well. You answered my question about ACAD. I have a project to transfer thousands of ACAD dwgs to our server from several engineers. The engineers have stored these files on various servers and hard drives. I need to xfer all to one place and have some file mngmt in place. My first thought was to go to PDMW. My biggest hurdle, I was told by their manager, they are all not very computer litterate ... as I expected.
So, do I train them in PDMW, or find a AutoDesk PLM product that they can understand better? I'm leaning toward PDMW for now. Thank you for your input.
Chris

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[J-C]

Being as simple as PDM/works is, I don't think you'll find anything simpler for them to learn. There may be better PDMs that handle ACAD file better but I doubt they are any easier.

Looks like training time.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2005 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2
SolidWorks 2006 SP3.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[pdybeck]

If all they would need to do once the drawings are loaded into PDMWorks is to view them, then the web portal (part of Advanced Server) is about as easy as it gets to view them. Its a different story if they need to be able to check in, but I think I might agree with Jason - PDMWorks is about as simple as a pdm tool gets if they need to manage their own files.

Pete

 

[ctopher]

Others need to view them, engineers need to edit them, I need to manage them. I'm going to get a demo of PDMW for them to see. thanks

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[kcarpenter]

If you know PDMW I'd stick with that. You don't want to have two different PDM's to manage...different rules, LFO's, UI's, training, etc. Not worth the trouble if you ask me.

Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.

 

[ctopher]

The problem here is, there isn't any type of PDM at all. My job to emplement it.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 05
AutoCAD 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716