Hello all,

I am preparing a report outlining different PDM options for my company. I have been primarily looking at Workgroup PDM and Enterprise PDM for this. I understand the difference in features between the two, so I'm not looking for a feature comparison so much as opinions as to which is more appropriate for a small company. I am also looking at Adept by Synergis Software, though so far I know less about this product.

People using SolidWorks:

• 1 CAD user (myself currently, will be a new employee in a few weeks)
• 2 supervisors/reviewers (the owners)
• potentially 3-4 people is sales
• potentially 1-2 people in purchasing (currently this is done by my supervisors and I)
• our fabricators also use SolidWorks, so there is potential for sharing drawings with them as well

We maintain a standard set of models and drawings that rarely go through revisions. We are also gradually building a library of off the shelf parts that require no revion management. For most customer projects, a standard assembly is copied to the project folder and modified as needed. Currently, revisions of customer parts are tracked on the drawings and usually begin after being submitted to the customer for an inital review. A more refined revision scheme would probably be useful. We have less than 10GB of SolidWorks (and AutoCAD) related data, including archives and legacy files.

What we need to get out of PDM is data security, speed (searches, rebuild, load, etc.), clean folder sturcture with no unnecisary duplicates, revison scheme and room for growth.

What we would also like, but don't need is workflow automation, searches by custom property and controlled external access to files.

I appreciate any feedback. Thanks!