The Javelin Technologies Blog

A license of SolidWorks Workgroup PDM Advanced Server is required for use of the Solidworks Workgroup PDM Viewer. The SolidWorks Workgroup PDM Advanced Server is not included with Solidworks Basic Professional or Premium and must be purchased separately. Once SolidWorks Workgroup PDM Advanced Server has been purchased, there are a number of steps that must be completed in order to allow access to the Viewer.
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Sometimes when files are moved, renamed or deleted, file references can be broken. Update References can be used to re-establish the file references.
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A new EPDM license file is required when you update to a new release of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM or if additional licenses are purchased. Your EPDM License File can be obtained from the SolidWorks Customer Portal at www.solidworks.com by following this simple procedure:
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Changing the value of a variable in the Folder Card may not propagate to File Card, even though the File Card is set to inherit that value from the Folder Card.

The “Update Values in Files…” utility can be used to update the values of a variable for multiple files within a folder.
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The SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Report Generator can be used to search in a selected file vault for information that you can specify in one or more queries.

A number of sample queries are distributed with SolidWorks Enterprise PDM and can be added to the report generator. The sample reports can be accessed on a client, by clicking on Report Examples 1.crp in the SolidWorks Enterprise PDM installation directory. The sample queries include ‘File Details’, ‘List all Referenced Docs’, ‘List Work Flows’, ‘Group Members’, ‘Documents in Workflow State’, ‘List Assembly Tree’ just to mention a few.

When you double-click on Report Examples 1.crp, you will be presented with a series of screens that allow you choose which users have access to each Report Generator queries.

Provide user access to a report

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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.

EPDM variables can be mapped to a Microsoft Office document. This can be used to automatically populate documents such as ECN’s (Engineering Change Notices).

The first step is to define variables in EPDM:

Right Click on the Variables node in SolidWorks PDM Administration and choose Open.

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Businesses want to automate the connection between Product Design and Operations to be more efficient and innovative throughout the product lifecycle. But traditional, top-down approaches to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) are often too complex, time-consuming, and costly—making PLM impractical for many businesses. Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. has radically simplified the approach to Product Lifecycle Management—just like they simplified product design by making parametric 3D design easier to use and available on Windows.

Companies can build PLM strategies on three pillars:

1. Simple integrated design, simulation, documentation and data management solutions from SolidWorks;
2. Links to critical production systems (such as ERP, MRP and CRM) using industry standards;
3. Integration with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Microsoft SQL Server for business collaboration.

Simple technologies, familiar or attractive to business and engineering professionals—can help you gain control of your product data and make it an asset that complements Operations.

A more productive Product Development organization not only achieves time-to-market goals and project cost reductions, but also dramatically improves company operations with higher-quality products and reduced material, labour and scrap costs. By focusing on the practical problems that PLM is trying to solve, Javelin Technologies with DS SolidWorks solutions is helping many businesses achieve their PLM goals faster, with better performance, and at less cost than with traditional approaches (see the figure below).

SolidWorks PLM Process

What is a Practical Approach to PLM for my business?

If you are considering a data management solution or just want to know how to better organize your business then download the step-by-step guide on a practical approach to using and implementing PLM:

If you ever needed to link a non-SolidWorks file (Excel, Word, PDF…) to a SolidWorks file, then here’s the steps to accomplish this:

1. Right-click the parent file and select Check Out.
2. Select the file(s) to reference.
3. Right-click the file(s) and select Copy.
4. Right-click the parent file and select Paste as Reference.
5. In the Create File References dialog box, enable these options as needed:
   

• Add Reference, creates a reference to the file.

• Show in Bill of Materials, includes the file in the parent file BOM.

       Click OK. 

       6.  Check-in the parent file(s)

Now the non-SolidWorks file will appear under the “Contains” tab of the local vault view when the SolidWorks file is selected.

In SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2011 many of the commands that I used from the right-click menu, in Explorer Vault view, were moved to SolidWorks Enterprise PDM menu bar. I missed being able to right-click and quickly “clear the local cache”. Luckily in SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2012, menus can now be customized to include my favorite commands, including adding “clear local cache” to the right-click menu.
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