Background - We installed EPDM about 5 months ago. The way it was originally installed we filled in the data cards before the part/assy/drw was created and this in turn filled in custom properties in the model. However we had problems with the slddrw template file and had to abandon using the built in template from the admin panel and resort to using the %%%dot style templates. This all works now but it means the cards are filled in after the model is created. This is a bit of a pain as I am having issues getting some of the attributes to match.

I see no benefit in our configuration to using datacards for our Solidworks models and I am thinking of abandoning them.

Does anyone know of a downside to not using cards, like searching metadata etc?