I'm trying to determine whether it would be worthwhile tobegin using Workgroup PDM to manage our Solidworks files. I don'thave a lot of experience with PDM, but I have set up a vault on mylocal machine to play around with.
To date, all our company's solidworks files have been stored acrossthe network on a basic network share. We organize and sort thefiles by a directory structure based on part number ranges, whichhas been working pretty well for us. We have 3 seats of solidworks.Of the 3 of us I am the only one who is using it extensively. All 3have a license for Workgroup PDM presently.
I often work on large assemblies and a significant portion of myday is spent opening or saving these assemblies remotely. To speedthings up, we've implemented a RAID array on the server and utilizeGigabit Ethernet between our engineering computers and the server.In spite of these improvements, opening and saving large assembliesremains painfully slow.
I am considering the use of Workgroup PDM for the simple fact thatcheck-in/check-out allows us to store and share our data remotelyin the vault, but lets us download and work locally to speed upsaving my work.
I am largely uninterested in the revision tracking. The vastmajority of our work is custom and while we will sometimes reuseparts as-is, any changes to a part for a new machine will receivean entirely new part number rather than a revision.
I also need to allow manufacturing to retain the ability to viewand print our drawings, which they have been doing up to this pointusing the e-drawings viewer. I am afraid that by locking updrawings in the vault, they will have a difficult time accessingthem.
I'm also not sure of the best way to integrate our existing partsinto the vault. As I said, they are organized by sequential partnumber so they can be easily browsed, but but this system does nottake into account the type or family of part, nor does it sort byproject. Everything is basically lumped in together.
Most of all, I'm sure there are other headaches and things toconsider which I am not even aware of. Supposing 2 months down theroad I realize that PDM was a mistake, how hard is it to back outof the system?
Considering that the only thing I want to do is work locally onshared files to speed up opening and saving, is PDM even worth thetrouble? Is there a better solution out there?
Any insight is greatly appreciated.
SolidworksWorkgroup Pdm
To date, all our company's solidworks files have been stored acrossthe network on a basic network share. We organize and sort thefiles by a directory structure based on part number ranges, whichhas been working pretty well for us. We have 3 seats of solidworks.Of the 3 of us I am the only one who is using it extensively. All 3have a license for Workgroup PDM presently.
I often work on large assemblies and a significant portion of myday is spent opening or saving these assemblies remotely. To speedthings up, we've implemented a RAID array on the server and utilizeGigabit Ethernet between our engineering computers and the server.In spite of these improvements, opening and saving large assembliesremains painfully slow.
I am considering the use of Workgroup PDM for the simple fact thatcheck-in/check-out allows us to store and share our data remotelyin the vault, but lets us download and work locally to speed upsaving my work.
I am largely uninterested in the revision tracking. The vastmajority of our work is custom and while we will sometimes reuseparts as-is, any changes to a part for a new machine will receivean entirely new part number rather than a revision.
I also need to allow manufacturing to retain the ability to viewand print our drawings, which they have been doing up to this pointusing the e-drawings viewer. I am afraid that by locking updrawings in the vault, they will have a difficult time accessingthem.
I'm also not sure of the best way to integrate our existing partsinto the vault. As I said, they are organized by sequential partnumber so they can be easily browsed, but but this system does nottake into account the type or family of part, nor does it sort byproject. Everything is basically lumped in together.
Most of all, I'm sure there are other headaches and things toconsider which I am not even aware of. Supposing 2 months down theroad I realize that PDM was a mistake, how hard is it to back outof the system?
Considering that the only thing I want to do is work locally onshared files to speed up opening and saving, is PDM even worth thetrouble? Is there a better solution out there?
Any insight is greatly appreciated.
SolidworksWorkgroup Pdm
