Show Primary Revs only in a Revision Table? PDM help 1

[NuclearNerd]

Hi all

We have been using Solidworks for five years or so, but we're only now starting to implement the PDM Vault. The reasons we want to start using PDM are:

1) Better collaboration between multiple engineers and draftsmen
2) Revision control to allow us to retrieve older copies of drawings if a particular design direction doesn't pan out, or to support earlier designs already shipped
3) Less manual typing in drawing templates

To support reason 3, I wanted to upgrade our standard title block to incorporate a revision table. However it seems that the SW revision table uses the "REVISION" field to populate rows in this table in the form "PP-SS" (where PP is the primary revision, and SS is the secondary revision. I would rather the revision table only show the primary revision. I could eliminate the secondary revision number in the VaultAdmin and just use "working copy" revisions all the time *but* this means that almost every check-in will erase the last version in the vault, which ruins my reason #2 for using it. How do I get SW to only show the primary revision in rev. tables?

Bonus question: it seems like incrementing the revision adds a row to the rev. table *after* the check-in. This means that the drawing has to be re-opened to change any non-linked fields in the revision table and to make it look pretty, then checked-in again (being careful not to change the revision number this time). There has to be a better way to do this. Can the revision be incremented before check-in?

 

[fcsuper]

Unfortunately, my advice is to skip Workgroup PDM and look into Enterprise PDM or one of the more capable PDM's from one of the Gold Partners. You are already getting outside of Workgroups PDM arena if you need this kind of control.

As far as "non-linked" fields, Notes should drop in just as you type your field in the check-in screen. Date should be automatic. Drop "approval" fields as in most modern systems, these have no value unless you linked your PDM to a validated Part 11 electronic signature system.

Just some thoughts. Matt Lorono Lorono's SolidWorks Resources & SolidWorks Legion

 

[EEnd]

Check out: thread559-257714 for a closly related discussion.

Eric

 

[NuclearNerd]

Thanks EEnd. That post refers to the same problem: I want to use the secondary revision as a "version" or "iteration" (as referred to in PDM Enterprise and PTC Windchill respectively). Unfortunately that thread did not find a solution either.

Here's what I've found after a night of fiddling:

1) In VaultAdmin, if you set "Revision Table" to "Enabled", "Add Rows for revisions which have the following revision level" as only "Primary" AND "last revision type optional" to checked, the drawing revision table will *mostly* behave as desired, namely:

- A row is added to the revision table for every primary revision change during checkin. The "Rev" field of the revision table will mark only "A", "B" if the revision scheme is "A-01", "A-02", "B-01", "B-02" etc.

- The description field of that row is populated with the "notes" field from that checkin. (not to be confused with the note you can add to a file in solidworks explorer - ugh)

There are some unexpected behaviours though:

- The primary revision is now incremented by default during checkin, rather than the secondary. This will get us in to trouble I'm sure.

- You can still add rows manually to the revision table by right clicking and checking "add revision", but these are not kept in sync with the Vault revision. Similarly changing the description field of an earlier revision does not update the vault history.

2) Setting the same VaultAdmin settings as before but leaving "last revision type optional" unchecked breaks the link between the revision table and the vault completely. Rows are no longer added automatically during checkin no matter what revision level change.

I think I will go with solution #2 and manually sync the revision table with the Vault, but what a disappointment. I don't think my intent is very complicated! Why should I have to pay for PDM Enterprise just to have a system that both keeps old versions of documents and manages revision levels? As far as I'm concerned, the implementation in PDM Workgroup is broken, so what good is up-selling it as a feature in Solidworks Professional? Grr!

 

[fcsuper]

Workgroup PDM is a good starter PDM for start-ups and small operations. It is difficult to implement when there are older systems in place that need to have functionality matched up. At my company, we enter Revision manually and do not use the automated revision functions. I made a macro that allows for the quick creation of revision rows:

http://sw.fcsuper.com/index.php?name=UpDownload&req=viewdownloaddetails&lid=65

Matt Lorono
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources & SolidWorks Legion