Rebuild issues with drawings

[SJ]

Hello All! Have a problem with some of our offices. After checking the parts/drawngs/assemblies into our PDM software (SmarTeam) and then when our shopfloor tries to view the drawings thru e-drawings and our companies intra-net, drawings can show up without any of the assemblies visible, only the balloons. We got a tip at our local user group meeting to always hit Ctrl-Q before we save and check into the PDM software. Our question is, is there a way hook this Ctrl-Q with the checkin and release features of SmarTeam, our attemps at macros have failed and our VAR is reluctant to attemp this. Thanks!

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Are the SW drawings and eDrawings correct when opened normally? (in the office, not the shop floor)

You say "can" show up. Does this mean that it sometimes works?
Can the problem files be opened on other machines?
Can the problem machines open files which are known to open on other machines?


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[SJ]

Yep, they show up just fine when we look at them in the office

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

What about the other questions?

Also what are the video card specs of the shop floor computers?

Are the shop floor computers opening the native SW files via the eDrawings program? ... or are the files saved out as actual eDrawing files?

Are the eDrawings files controlled by SmartTeam?


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[SJ]

Sorry, here's the rest of the answer. Sometimes when we release the drawings the they will go into our pdm system just fine, other times we get the missing views and only balloons, not consistant by location or machine, the only thing that is consistant is that anyone using e-drawings on our shop floor will get the drawings without views and only balloons, but this doesn't happen on all drawings. Seeing a pattern here. Here's a frustrating thing, we have multiple page drawings, some pages will be fine others will be missing the views on the same drawing.

 

[kcarpenter]

When you ST save/check-in/release your drawing (from within SW) it should automatically force a SW save and thusly a rebuild. So I'm not sure of the need to perform this function with some code. But in any case it should be "do-able".

We have also seen this problem, but we think it's due to something else we can't pin down. Our VAR has suggested this quick test to see if it's ST or SW that's messing things up. If the file doesn't view properly try opening it up in SW in view only mode. If it still doesn't display properly then it's likely SW didn't save the file correctly.

While we don't use eDrawings we do use Navigator and the Cimmetry viewer and again this problem is evident. Viewing native files is a pain and we will be switching to something else, more than likely PDFs.

Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.

 

[SJ]

CorBlimeyLimey, you're one step ahead of me today. We are using WinTerminals out on our shop floor. Don't know the specs on those (top secret IT stuff that the computer Dept doesn't want anyone to know, you know ultra top secret)They are viewing our Solidworks native files with E-drawings.

 

[SJ]

Ahhhh, too fast to keep up with the replies, our VAR has come up with the same thing your's did, when you view a SW file thru e-drawings the people out on the floor are getting a "view only" file which is a snapshot in time, and when we look at a drawing thru SW in the Eng. Dept. if refreshes for us so we see everything as it should be.

 

[SJ]

Beware the .pdf route, our company has already tried that. IT DOESN'T WORK WELL. Our IT program deleloped a program that when checked drawings into our SmarTeam it also created a .pdf, then the people out on the floor could use a program to access the .pdfs, great all around but the same things happen with the .pdfs, no drawing views and only balloons.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

A quick & simple test:

Bring a complete system from the shop floor into the office & try to open the files, then take a complete system from the office out to the shop floor & try to open the same files.

If the SF comp' can open the files & the office one cannot, then it's a network problem.
If the SF comp' cannot open the files & the office one can, then it's the SF comp's.


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[kcarpenter]

Well...even though this is a problem it's nice to know I've finally met someone who has seen it to. My VAR has not heard of anyone else with this problem.

I have not posted it on the smarteam users forum, but I should to see if anyone else is getting it as well.

We were thinking that ST is updating the objects in the system behind the scenes, but we have disabled all the automatic vault updating.

Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.

 

[kcarpenter]

We've seen a new app called Connexus from Actera Solutions that looks promising.

CBL...from all the tests we've done it does not appear to have anything to do with the SF comp's. In SJ's case they have locally installed software while we use a web based product. I guess it's worth a shot for him test it none-the-less.

Kevin Carpenter
CAD Systems Specialist
Invacare Corp.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

We are using WinTerminals out on our shop floor. .... They are viewing our Solidworks native files with E-drawings.

I'll bet that it's a video card problem then ... but I have been known to lose bets before.
The test in my previous post should prove/disprove that.


Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091

 

[SJ]

Yeah, that Smarteam is frustrating when trying to track the problems down. Is it SolidWorks or SmarTeam or a combination causing the problems. We have submitted 3 bugs to SmarTeam in the last month alone. Children not linking to Parents, updating of the prints. We've been pretty lucky that our IT support guy has dug enough into it to know that something is not right with the way the SmarTeam is dealing with parts/assemblies/drawings when it goes into the vault system. Getting SmarTeam to admit that is another. We've gone to SolidWorks World, our local Midwest SolidWorks user conferences and talked to SmarTeam directly. We even called Israel a couple of times. The answer we got was to stop calling and send any problems to our VAR. Not a lot of help there, they submit the problem to SmarTeam and get stonewalled.

 

[ctopher]

ST is slow to update their versions with SW versions. I have not heard of anyone that has not had problems with them.

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

 

[MElam]

Not sure if this is your issue, but do you have the following set under Sysem options, Drawings?

Save tessellated data for drawings with shaded and draft quality views

Save tessellated data for drawings with shaded and draft quality views. If cleared, file size is reduced by not saving tessellated data in drawing documents with shaded and draft quality views. If needed, the data is read from the model file. In view-only mode and in eDrawings, nothing appears in the drawing view. For drawings with high quality and other display types, tessellated data is not used, so file size cannot be reduced.

The draft/high quality setting could explain some of the "randomness"

 

[SJ]

Just got done checking the Dept's setting in SW. The save tessellated box is checked on all of out tubes.

 

[EEnd]

I have run into something similar when creating PDFs of multi sheet drawings. One thing that I have gone to doing which seems to have helped is to tab over to each sheet before I save it as a PDF. It seem like if the drawing sheet has not been viewed in the current SW session it is not always generated correctly.

Eric