Hi All,
I know this has been discussed before, and I have gone through all of the threads on this group I could find, but I'll bring it up again...
Can anyone offer any advice on the various PDM solutions out there? From what I have read, I can see the following alternatives:
1) PDMWorks - Seems to be popular, but doesn't have a whole lot of potential for extending or integrating with other systems such as purchansing, inventory control or customer database?2) DBWorks - This looks to be the best in terms of talking to other SQL systems from what I have seen. What else can it do? The website isn't all that informative.
3) DesignDataManager - This looks very promising, but looks like unless you use Windows and SQL Server you are out of luck.I have an existing system using a Subversion repository I set up, but it is limited and not all that reasonable for a real system unless I do a lot of custom programming on top of it.
I have an exisiting Linux server (RedHat 9.0) and can set up any of the standard SQL databases available on Linux (MySQL, Postgresql, etc.) I'm hoping I can use the PDM system with this configuration. I really do not want to shell out a whole pile of money for a new server, Windows license and SQL Server license.
Additionally, the ultimate goal is to get a "universal" system (well, don't we all want to do the same thing, really? ;o) ). We would like to have inventory management, part number generation, CAD data vault, customer database, general document management, NC file management, etc.
- all in the same place, or integrated. I do not want to go the route of Visual Manufacturing or something along those lines (i.e. HUGE systems costing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars that are really tailored to make consultants money ;o) ) - I feel it is simply overkill, too expensive, and generally not appealing at all.
I am willing to do customizations myself, so the system must be extendable. COM or something I can talk to with Python would be preferable.
Can anyone comment on any of the above 3 solutions with respect to my setup, or recommend anything else that may be good? Obviously price is a factor as well. I am looking in the hundreds or thousands of dollars range - not the tens of thousands...
Thanks in advance, Markus.