The Javelin Technologies Blog

Over the last 7 years I have been working with EPDM I have had many clients justify the investment based purely on performance increase. Many clients without a PDM system in place need to work off a shared network drive in order to centralized data for security and backups. It can be tempting at times to save designs locally for weeks at a time to get that local open and save performance off your hard drive. This technique is quickly regrettable however as files get overwritten, duplicated or lost very quickly.

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM is the absolute best solution for this common desire as it gives all the benefits of a coordinated design team but with local open and save performance. It has been tough over the years convincing customers of this real measurable savings so I have created an incredibly boring video to demonstrate exactly what I have been talking about for years. This video features opening a 1000+ part assembly that is ~500mb in size from three possible locations:

1) Network drive – Open Time = 9:19
2) Local drive – Open Time = 1:06 (88% reduction)
3) EPDM Vault – Open Time = 1:19 (86% reduction)

The measurable time benefits of opening files locally or in the EPDM vault are outstanding. In comparison to working off of the network, this video demonstrates that a local drive may result in 88% reduction in open/save time while the EPDM vault may result in a 86% reduction in open/save time. The most important factor I wanted to get across in this video is that opening from the EPDM vault is virtually the same performance as opening from your local hard drive. If precious time is wasted with opening and saving files from a network, I recommend using pack and go to transfer the assembly locally and measure the performance increase.

When translating to measurable savings, I would survey the engineering team to understand how much time they are spending waiting for their computers to open or save their assemblies on a weekly basis and use that number in this calculation:

It is also important to note that the impact of poor performance also results in increased frustration from the design team that my have other indirect costs such as a higher employee turn over or reduced moral.  This calculation can easily justify the investment in the EPDM solution and will open the door for a number of other benefits that will also have a positive financial impact on the company.

DS SolidWorks has included electrical routing in their SolidWorks Premium package for a number of years now, but with the release of the new SolidWorks Electrical 3D software provides a number of features which really enhance the routing experience.  The most substantial feature is the ability to define pathways for wires, cables and harnesses to run.  This leaves out a lot of the ambiguous decisions that SolidWorks Routing Auto-route did in the past and can create a route path which is in line with your requirements.

To illustrate this key functionality I have created this quick video to highlight both the wire routing and cable routing functionality.  I will leave the harness routing for a future post.  Please let me know if you have any questions related to this functionality.

I recently wrote an article for Electrical Business Magazine and it was published in the August edition.  Here is the link to the published magazine archive.  The article is on page 20/21.

Introduction

Selecting new software to use for electrical wiring design can be a difficult decision.  There are many considerations and the result can have ramifications for many years.  To start off with let me clarify that there are two main categories for ECAD design software: Electronics based software for printed circuit board design and design software focused on wiring.  This article is focused on selecting electrical wiring design software for interconnect electronics with cables and harnesses, or interconnecting electrically controlled components that are scattered around a design or in an electrical enclosure.

Read More »

If you’re reading this post, you’ve likely wondered at some point about how you can help rationalize what may be perceived by some as “intangible” – the return on your investment for implementing a data management solution.  Many of our customers have justified the purchase of EPDM because they simply wanted to get better with the right systems in place, but with today’s tight margins and cash flows, CFO’s are more frequently relying on their team to prove that there is a valid return on investment that is competitive with other investment options.  Calculating a return on investment for SolidWorks Enterprise PDM does not need to be complex.  It can be as simple as estimating some potential time savings in comparison to current methods and multiplying it by the number of potential users and average cost per employee.

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So you’ve implemented SolidWorks Enterprise PDM, you’re seeing some benefits, but what’s next?

With the growing list of customers that have invested in SolidWorks Enterprise PDM, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a list of common services and added functionality that customers have been requesting from us.  The purpose is to let our EPDM customer base know that you are not on your own and there are lots you can do with the system to get a bigger impact on your business.  This list is by no means all inclusive and if there is anything you would like help with related to EPDM, please do not hesitate to ask us.

1) Upgrading vault to 2012

Our most common services for our clients are assisting with upgrades to the latest release.  Enterprise PDM 2012 offers a number of enhancements including the new integrated search functionality, but most importantly offers support for SolidWorks 2012.  With so many people relying on the vault, it becomes risky business taking it offline for an upgrade but our professional implementation team know exactly how to do this without missing a beat.

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Javelin Technologies is aiming high with the creativity of coop students. Our electrical engineering coop Rami Eisawy, from Waterloo University, has just completed some fantastic work to help our client base by working on E3 library content; plus as a special project Rami figured out how to use Microsoft Kinect as an interface for E3.WireWorks.  It only took him a few hours to map some of the Kinect interactive controls to E3.WireWorks interface tools.  E3.WireWorks software has some similarities to AutoCAD Electrical, but is designed from the ground up for electrical design and has countless advantages.

Microsoft Kinect Sensor

It is of course a proof of concept at this point, but I am looking forward to the day that electrical design can be carried out in a virtual environment and gestures can be used to easily piece together a new design and document how it should be wired up. Have a look at the video below to see some of the interaction take place. Please share your comments or suggestions to help future Javelin coop students to take the concept further.

E3.WireWorks has been having a very positive impact on our clients, but just because the design team wants the tools, does not mean they can convince the ones that hold the purse strings to invest in it.  To justify the E3.WireWorks investment it is important to identify 1-3 areas where there will be a measurable return.  With the work that I have been doing with our clients over the last few years with E3, I have identified 5 top areas where a good return is possible.

1) Product development time shortened

A typical product development cycle for electrical engineering has a great deal of time spent on schematics and an equal or greater amount of time spent detailing panel layouts, cable or harness plans, and generating reports like bill of materials.  E3.Series and E3.WireWorks have the capability of greatly reducing this product development cycle by streamlining original schematic creation, partially automating panel and cable layouts and completely automating reports.  The graphic below shows how the typical design process may change.

Even more important than the time savings of the original design is the time savings of design changes.  With all electrical design fully associative, design changes will automatically propogate which avoids the extra time spent updating information in all appropriate places.

2) Manufacturing is easier

With drawing packages being done in E3.WireWorks, manufacturing will be more streamlined than ever.  The extra detail makes it a breeze to interpret and there are a variety of ways to consume the documentation electronically such as the intelligent PDF’s with hyperlinks between references.  You can even take it as far as building step by step instructions for panel building with the combination of wire reports and the E3 Viewer.  This video shows some of the ways to build from E3.WireWorks:

3) Common costly errors are avoided

Errors creeping into designs can be more than a nuisance – it can lead to many wasted hours of corrections,  unnecessary communication and ordering of materials.  If the errors make it through the manufacturing stages and into the field, there are even more costs related to making fixes out in the field.  E3.WireWorks plays a significant role in reducing the amount of errors that make it into the drawing package.  By keeping devices and wires organized and unique, it makes it easy to copy, update and reuse drawings without forgetting to do rename and make repetitive changes to multiple drawings and reports.  There are even online design rule checks that catch miswiring signals together, catching loops or in some cases performing online circuit calculations.

4) Get the information you need, when you need it

There is a lot of benefit to a company to get the information you need when you need it.   If high lead time items need to be ordered from an early bill of materials or milestones of work need to be shared with clients, it can be very advantageous to have a tool in place that avoids unnecessary work to hit your intermediate goals.  Even more significant is being able to leverage the work that has been done to speed up the remaining design steps.  WireWorks has allowed our customers to achieve this by keeping the entire electrical design associative on an electrical engineering database.  You can literally start anywhere in your design process and fill in the blanks elsewhere later on.

Here is a quick list of steps that can easily be the first on your list:

1. Bill of Materials
2. Detailed schematic
3. Single line schematic
4. Panel layout
5. Cable interconnects
6. Hydraulic or process schematics
7. Tag lists
8. Location and hierarchy planning

5) Sales boosted by increased competitiveness and quality

Up until this point  I have been focusing on reducing cash flow out of the business.  This is great, but many companies have been seeing a large benefit to the cash flow coming into the business as well.  With higher quality deliverables and incredibly quick turnaround times, customer relationships and margins have improved.  Both of these have lead to more dollars and cents in your pocket by increasing loyalty and winning more contracts.

Learn more on E3.WireWorks here: http://www.javelin-tech.com/main/products/electrical_design.htm

Many clients are looking for further integration between SolidWorks piping and process design and the schematics that dictate them.  In SolidWorks 2010, P&ID import was introduced but there was no clear contendor at creating the appropriate XML file.  This has changed over the last couple years because E3 has done the appropriate development to create the XML and integrate the two together.  At SolidWorks World in San Diego this year I have decided to put together a detailed presentation on how to do this integration.  Here is the presentation details:

P&ID – A New Design Flow for Piping – Eric van Essen, Javelin Technologies

E3.WireWorks intelligent schematics can be set up to quickly map out P&ID diagrams, which can be used as the driving force for P&ID imports in the SolidWorks routing module. This presentation will talk about the details required to set up the solution and make it work to drive your pipe routing.

P&ID Event is on Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 10:30 AM, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, USA

If you are able to make your way down to the conference, it would be great if you could come by and attend my session. Visit the following link for the SolidWorks World agenda, list of exhibitors, justification letter, and more: http://www.solidworks.com/sww

I laugh sometimes when I do demonstrations of EPDM because I feel like I’m demonstrating something which everybody lives and breaths every day when they are working with their Windows computers.  I’ve even been tempted to stop a demonstration after a few clicks before because at the core, EPDM is simply Windows Explorer with control and speed.  The everyday chaos of Windows Explorer can finally be tamed.

Special functionality of EPDM aside, I thought it would be worthwhile to put a quick list together about why this integration is so important.  This list is really about the great Windows Explorer functionality which will simply continue to work as you’d expect.  This can not be underestimated because it has made a world of difference to our customers and the success of the project.

1. Adoption

Adoption rates are much greator within companies becuase familiarity to what is already being used

2. Training

Training is quicker because users come in with half the knowledge already.  Most end user training classes are for about 4 hours.  It is rare to need to spend more than a day on training to really get a good handle with how to get the benefits from the system.

3. Enhancements

EPDM automatically leverages any new enhancements to Windows Explorer.  When Windows 7 came out, it was a little bit to get used to but overall a much superior system.  I was excited that EPDM flawlessly worked on top of it and leveraged a lot of the new naviation techniques.

4. Favourites

Redirects to favourite folders in EPDM can be managed identically to how Windows Explorer manages them.  This makes is easy to continue being more productive by keeping commonly accessed work close at hand.

5. Hyperlinks

The same way you can send someone a hyperlink to a shared network drive, you can send someone the link to your folder or file.  It will automatically have them navigate to their own view of the EPDM vault.  These hyperlinks are identical to what get’s sent out in e-mail notifications which will always point the recipient to the latest file even if there has been a new update.  (no more resending!)

6. Copy and Paste

How awesome is it that you can just copy and paste or drag and drop files into and out of the EPDM vault!

7. File Types

If you can put it in Windows Explorer, you can put it in EPDM.  I’ve had the same conversation a number of times:  “What about this file type?” – “Yes, even that file type!”

8. Right Click Menu

The same shortcuts you are used to in Windows Explorer (such as Send to Zip or mail recipient) are available from within the EPDM vault.  In fact, EPDM builds the list to add more that can help you get the job done quicker.

9. Searching

Although EPDM has it’s own super fast search tools, it is quite nice that the regular Windows Explorer searching and indexing still works the way you would expect.  Especially for searching within applications like SolidWorks.

10. Opening and Saving

This is also a funny one to demonstrate, but the fact remains – Opening and saving in any windows based application can be done directly from the vaulted folder.  This saves that tedious extra step of working with a cached area and conciously trying to check items in separately.

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Special thanks to Jeff Sweeney from 3D Vision to give me the idea for this blog from his search favourites: http://www.3dvision.com/wordpress/index.php/2011/11/11/adding-the-vault-to-your-favorites/

The bill of materials is such an important report yet it is surprising the number of users that do not have a formal strategy in place with how the bill of materials is created, edited and approved.  I’ve seen clients who don’t even use the SolidWorks bill of materials functionality and continue to use old techniques such as manually counting and entering lines in excel.  A number of years ago, there were good excuses why this still might be necissary but it is definitely not the case any more.

To understand a little more about the bill of materials frunctionality within SolidWorks and Enterprise PDM, I wrote down a few different versions of the bom you should be aware of:

1. SolidWorks BOM in an Assembly
2. SolidWorks BOM on a Drawing
3. EPDM SolidWorks BOM
4. EPDM Computed BOM
5. EPDM Saved BOM

When planning your bill of materials process, it would be advantageous to have a good understanding of what you can and can’t do with these BOM’s and the roles that they play.  Here are a few thoughts on the matter related to recommended process.

If there is a lot of rearrangement of the bill of materials, removed components, embedded cutlists, etc. then I would recommend the SolidWorks BOM in an Assembly be the best starting point.  It provides the most amount of control and manipulation with how the SolidWorks design is constructed.  This BOM can be placed directly on a drawing avoiding the need to recompute and rearrange the BOM on the drawing.   If the majority of your rearrangement of the BOM is due to what is on the drawing, you may consider starting on the drawing and avoiding the need for the assembly BOM all together.

If control over the bill of materials is required, EPDM can help there.  The starting point for the BOM in EPDM is either the “EPDM SolidWorks BOM” which is identical to the SolidWorks Assembly or Drawing BOM or the “EPDM Computed BOM” which is computed by EPDM on the fly based on file reference counts.  If there is no modification to the BOM in SolidWorks, these are likely going to be the same.  Both of these under revision control with the assembly or drawing which they come from.

To provide an increased amount of control, either one of these BOM’s can be saved to create an “EPDM Saved BOM”.  This treats the BOM as it’s own entity and provides the flexibility of changing pretty much what ever you want.

Regardless of the BOM’s you are using in EPDM, you always have the ability to compare and export which can help a tremendous amount to communicate with other departments.

To see a little of the EPDM BOM in action, I would recommend watching this video: