Introduction
No matter whether a customer’s products consist of a small or high number of components, during the design process its common practice that multiple people or teams will be responsible for creating and modifying different aspects of the design, and often at the same time. For customers that need to work concurrently on the same design, 3DEXPERIENCE in combination with SOLIDWORKS provides a managed design environment that enables all stakeholders to keep track of who is working on each component, along with the modification, and revision status of each.
This chapter explains the basic concepts, plus recommended best practices and settings for configuring the SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE environment
Users that intend to work concurrently on the same design together will require a clear understanding of how to structure their working practices correctly in both SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE.
Understanding the modification status of files in the SOLIDWORKS MySession Taskpane
The first step for every user is to have a clear understanding of the information presented in the SOLIDWORKS MySession Taskpane, and how that relates to the files stored in their local working folder, and those saved to 3DEXPERIENCE on the cloud.
Opening Designs from 3DEXPERIENCE
The first stage of any concurrent design activity is for each user to open the design. There are a number of different ways a SOLIDWORKS design can be opened from 3DEXPERIENCE, and it is important that users understand the impact of each method, and how it relates to the MySession status display.
Starting with an empty local working folder, when a user opens an assembly from either 3DSearch results, or a Bookmark, the files are downloaded to that user’s local working folder. The MySession Taskpane will display the current status of the content in the cloud that is now open in their SOLIDWORKS session for example, modification status, revision, maturity state etc.
When opening an assembly from 3DSearch results, a Bookmark, or directly from the local working folder, if some of the referenced files already reside in the user’s local working folder, the local versions of the files will be loaded into the SOLIDWORKS session instead of being downloaded from the cloud. This behaviour decreases the overall load time by only downloading files that are necessary.
To ensure that the modification status of any files loaded from the local working folder is up to date, it is recommended that the SOLIDWORKS MySession setting “refresh my session after opening files” is enabled. If not, the user will have no indication whether another user has modified some or all of the files loaded. When this option is enabled the refresh of MySession information is only triggered when opening content from 3DEXPERIENCE, and not when opening files directly from the local working folder.
Concurrent Modifications
When other users open, modify, and save their changes back to the cloud, the MySession task pane provides each one with the modification status of the files they have loaded in their SOLIDWORKS session, and the lock status (who’s working on them) of the files.
Any concurrent changes to items open in SOLIDWORKS made by other users will be displayed here. The modification status column does not update automatically. Users must select the MySession refresh command to manually refresh this information from the cloud.
If a user forgets to refresh their session information, when saving their changes the Save to 3DEXPERIENCE operation will automatically check the latest cloud status of all loaded files. If modifications to any files are detected, the user will be warned that their local copies of those files are not the latest versions. At this point the user has the option to cancel the save operation to go ahead and reload the out of date files first, before saving their own changes.
General Recommendations and Best Practice
Having a situation where components are modified ad-hoc by different users without any planning, can be difficult to manage. This is the same no matter what CAD tool and PDM/PLM solution a company is using. Therefore, it is recommended that whenever possible customers dedicate time to planning which users or user groups will be responsible each area of an assembly structure. This will enable everyone to work in an efficient and structured manner avoiding conflicts
Before making any modifications in SOLIDWORKS, users should always lock the items that they intend to work on. This will ensure that no situation occurs where more than one person has modified the same file in their local working folder, and then attempts to save it to 3DEXPERIENCE.
In a concurrent user environment, SOLIDWORKS files should always be opened using one of the 3DEXPERIENCE apps, or from 3DSearch and Bookmarks in SOLIDWORKS Open. Files should not be opened directly from the local working folder. When files are opened directly from the local working folder, the “automatic refresh my files on open” option is not activated.
For a detailed overview of this topic including a use case example, please refer to the post titled Concurrent Design Using SOLIDWORKS in the WORKS | Onboarding and Adoption community.
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