SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021 Top 5 What’s New Enhancements
Article by Rod Mackay updated September 25, 2020
Article
DS SOLIDWORKS have added many new enhancements to SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021. The latest release provides new ways to manage your projects, edit your Bills of Material, and interact with suppliers, increasing your design management efficiency and collaboration like never before.
Check out what we think are the SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021 Top 5 enhancements:
01. Share File
You can share files from SOLIDWORKS Manage with anyone, even if they do not have SOLIDWORKS Manage installed. To share a file, right-click and select Share. You can then edit settings for each shared file from the File Sharing tab in both the desktop and the Plenary web client interface.
The Share command creates a special link to the files through the Plenary web client. You can copy, email, and password protect this link. You can also define a time limit after which the link becomes invalid.
Administrators enable sharing for users and groups and define limits on the number of files that can be shared simultaneously. They can also define the number of links that can be created for a particular object:
- File data can be shared with users who do not have direct access to system
- Ability to share files via web page link or email message; link is time-based and can be set to expire as desired
Benefits: Share file data with external users in efficient and controlled manner.
02. Bill of Materials Editing
SOLIDWORKS Manage offers more capabilities for managing and exporting Bills of Material.
- You can check out and edit the Bill of Materials (BOM) values of a parent file without checking out its child files or items (available only for limited field types).
- You can export a BOM in tree format with Export BOM items in Tree Style. The BOM export settings of the selected object are applicable for all files and items of the BOM.
- You can compare all the levels of BOMs by specifying the Multi-line compare option in the Bill of Materials (BOM) compare tool.
- You can create linked records directly from a BOM view even if the record is not checked out.
- Modeless windows now allow you to open multiple records and work in both at the same time, facilitating the ability to copy and paste from one Bill of Materials to another.
- From within a Bill of Materials, familiar editing tools like “cut” are now available. Cut items turn orange, indicating that they are currently undergoing a cut operation and once the Bill of Materials is saved, they disappear from the list as you would expect.
Benefits: Save significant amount of time when modifying bill of materials for use by other fields, like manufacturing.
03 Project Lists
Managing multiple projects is common for most project managers. New for Manage 2021 is the ability to create project lists. Lists can be created to meet individual needs or defined by an admin and shared globally. Project lists provide easy visibility to powerful resource management tools like scheduling, capacity planning, and load charts, helping you make informed decisions about project start dates.
- New Project List feature added to group multiple projects in single view for greater control over managing projects
Benefits: Streamline project management when multiple projects are connected to common project manager or program.
04 Automated Project Updating
Assigning tasks to users and allowing them to update their completion status and deliverables, is a powerful way to keep up to date on the progression of a project. New for Manage 2021 is the Auto Update Project Service. This background service can be configured to check for task updates and automatically update the completion progress of project stages. Additionally, any attachments that have been added to the task, can be automatically transferred to the deliverable section of the project.
- New data service automatically updates project stage progress, resources and deliverables from related task data at specified time interval
Benefits: Avoid need to update information on project-by-project basis.
05 Task Enhancements
SOLIDWORKS Manage 2021 provides new ways to visualize project tasks. Out of the box task dashboards are accessible directly from the project and provide clear visibility to project task burn down as well as status and priority. The task board can now be grouped by priority as well as status, allowing you to quickly visualize the assignment of tasks. With a simple drag and drop, tasks can be moved to In Progress. And, with a double click, task information can be accessed directly from the task board.
- Task Board is now accessible from Capacity Planning dashboard and My Work area.
You can group tasks based on priority or status. You can also order them by subject,
start date, due date, created date, or progress. - The following new context menu items are available for the Tasks in the My Work area:
- Assign To
- Mark as complete
- Delete
- In the Default Dashboard – Tasks, following enhancements are done:
- Part number and Priority columns are available.
- Urgent tasks are highlighted.
- The order of tasks is same as in My tasks.
- The user interface retains the order, filter, and item selection even after a refresh.
- The owners can control the tasks that an assignee can do. In the Task Templates form, under Allow assigned users to select the following:
- Add attachments
- Remove attachments
- Change details list
- The following options are selected by default to make the newly created tasks as
private:- Create new tasks as “private” in the My Options dialog box
- Private option in the Stage Task dialog box
- When you select Email task owner when task is completed in the System Administration tool, the owner of the tasks automatically gets notified on the task completion. The email is sent to the owners for the tasks that are created after you
select the option. - Tasks can have a main attachment such as a project or process that can be edited or deleted.
Benefits: Managing projects and tasks is more efficient with clear visibility of project tasks to all members of the team
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