PDMWorks Viewer question

[Olid]

Hello all,
We use PDMWorks and recently started checking in Office files, mainly Word and Excel. I know that PDMWorks uses Edrawings for viewing SolidWorks files and according to my VAR, Edrawings does not work with Office files. My question is this; does anyone know of a way to be able to view Office files inside of the vault? Is there perhaps another Viewer available or can Edrawings be tweaked to allow it to view Office files?

Regards,
Dan Olid
SW2009 SP4.0
PDMW 2009 SP4.0
Cad Designer/PDMW Admin

 

[NL8]

Dan,

The viewer will use whatever native program you have to view the file in question, Word if it is a .doc, Excel for an .xls, etc. The only difference is that you will download a copy of the document to a temp directory to open and view, instead of using the more standard view command available to E-drawings for parts, assemblies, and drawings. I have yet to see a tweak that will let E-drawings open non-CAD files and couldn't imagine a scenario where I would want a program like that letting me view these docs, especially when your machine should already have a perfectly good editor in the standard MS Office Suite.

Joe Hasik, CSWP/SMTL
SW 09 x64, SP 4.1
Dell T3400
Intel Core2 Quad
Q6700 2.66 GHz
3.93 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600

 

[Olid]

Joe,
You are correct that my machine already has MS-Office on it and yes I could easily copy out the file or files in question to view them on the native program. I am just trying to eliminate the step of having to copy the files out of the vault. Also, it would be nice if we could print our Word or Excel files directly from the vault without having to open them. Years ago when we used Smarteam for our PDM system, if I recall correctly, they used a viewer that could preview just about anything.

Would you happen to know if PDMWorks Enterprise has that capability?

Regards,
Dan Olid
SW2009 SP4.0
PDMW 2009 SP4.0
Cad Designer/PDMW Admin

 

[NL8]

Enterprise is integrated with Windows Explorer, meaning that you can access files in the Enterprise vault the same way you would access any networked document. I'm not up to speed on all the little details of Enterprise, i only Admin a Workgroup vault. Given that, I'm pretty sure that Enterprise can do what you want. Workgroups just isn't as robust as Enterprise or SmarTeam.

Joe Hasik, CSWP/SMTL
SW 09 x64, SP 4.1
Dell T3400
Intel Core2 Quad
Q6700 2.66 GHz
3.93 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600

 

[RawheadRex]

Hi Dan,

Yes, Enterprise has a view that can do what you're asking. That's one of the advantages it has over Workgroup.

Best regards,



Chris Gervais
Application Engineer
CSWP, CSWST