We are a project-based company, designing and building one-off, bespoke robotic assembly systems for industry.

We currently use PDM Standard to manage our Release procedure, and an Excel-based Engineering Change Notice process to manage changes to released CAD objects.

We need a way to be able to come up with a concept design (typically model only, no drawings) and send it out to our customer for comment, approval, etc. At this stage, we would prefer not to be in the full Release procedure, because nothing is finalised and everything is very likely to change. However, we need to be able to have an audit trail of what model(s) were sent to the customer, at what Revision/Version. In the past, in other PDM systems, I have used a 'Baseline' function to achieve this, but I don't think anything like that is available to me in PDM Standard.

Our workflow includes a 'DEV' revision, in which the Versions go from 00 upwards, but I am wondering whether to add a 'Concept' revision (if that is even possible in Standard), to differentiate this state from the usual straightforward one.

I think I could achieve what I want with another state and a couple of transitions (see attached screenshot), but I am a little unsure as to how to set up the transitions and the state in detail. I think I would want to have a peer review process for the Concept Review Release transition, so the Editor could not Concept Release his or her own models, but freedom for the Editor to move it back into Work In Progress as and when appropriate. The Concept models would move through this loop as many times as it took to nail down the concept.

Once the concept was finalised, the models would be moved back into Work In Progress and would then move through the Submit For Check, Release transitions and enter the murky world of Change Control as usual. This would be the workflow in which items could be manufactured. We have watermarks on our drawings indicating the Status of the model, so we would add in a 'Concept' watermark as an additional safeguard against these less controlled models being used for manufacture.

Has anyone any experience of this kind of workflow? Do you think my idea would work? Am I able to add another Revision type in Standard? Is there a better way? What do you think, ​, ​?

SW 2019, SP2

Windows 10 Pro, 64 Bit

John