Hi all, I'm not a solidworks user, but I've been poking about in EPDM trying to work out what it's capable of, and while I understand a bit about data cards, and even that I should be able to use word doc and excel templates to display EPDM properties, I have some bigger questions about things maybe related to APIs and what could be theoretically possible.

so first up - Is anyone here looking after electronics CAD files in EPDM?

We have a new system at the moment that is working quite well as we build it up with mechanical solidworks assemblies, and it seems pretty amazing with the level design revision it can control, but it's really working on an understanding of internal file links of the solidworks cad files in order to provide solid revision control of output files. And - we are wanting to make EPDM the source of all information for manufacturing, so that when things are ordered, everything needed to make the order is there, and accessible, and linked into system level assemblies (made of sub-assemblies, which are in turn made of sub-assemblies, etc etc).

Anyway - I use a program called Altium Designer for electronic schematic capture and board design with its own proprietary file formats... It has production output files (for instance, I usually generate a set of gerbers for a PCB layout revision release, and will do excel BOMS based on configuration setups for different build variant revision releases) that are the actual artifacts sent to production when I want a design built.

so - is it at all possible that solidworks EPDM could revision manage things at the design level? Could it ever be made to understand a binary PCB project file that has links to schematic files and a pcb document file and understands build variants and output jobs and what needs to be autogenerated when any of these things are changed? or are we looking at having to keep the actual design revision control out of EPDM, and make release file "bundles" - for instance a zip file of gerbers to represent a released PCB revision? and revision controlled excel files (which are actually autogenerated out of my cad system design) for board component BOMs?

While I'm at it, does anyone use EPDM to manage source code? or is the best I can expect to do is handle the sorce revision management outside of EPDM in somethingl like SVN like I'm used to, and just release a zip file with hex files and chip configuration files for each production revision as the designs grow? I imagine if anything non-solidworks is going to be doable in EPDM, then a simple c project with standard makefiles might be able to be controlled.

While I'm asking questions - does anyone here even use EPDM to control the release of manufacturing documents generated from non solidoworks CAD stystems?