Best of breed PDM

I'm sure this has been asked before,

What is the best PDM system for Solidworks (or best bang for the buck).

I want to be able to manage all drawings, parts, assemblys with full web interface. I would like to be able to enforce some standards and naming conventions into this config as well as permissions. Something else that would be of great benefit would be an accessible database format that I could use for creating some additional custom web capabilities.

I believe most of my other requirements are standard throughtout the entire PDM world.

Thanks in advance for everyones feedback.......

Hack

Reply to
Hacknwhack
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Of course you're going to get the obligatory "DBWorks can do that" answer, so I'll just leave that to the ng resident shill.

You may even get someone who says something about SmarTeam, but SmarTeam should be the first one eliminated from your list. Many more bad references than good ones. Ask people about their upgrade experiences with it. Consultants love SmarTeam because it is a virtual license to rape and pillage.

Someone selling Conisio might chime in. "New" kid on the block, has caught the imagination of non-solidworks users, worth looking at, but not really a PDM system for purists or control freaks.

I would recommend that you take a look at Product Center. Good product, good SolidWorks integration, good customizability, and great tech support. Even if the product sucked, which it doesn't, it would be worth signing on just for the tech support. Competitive sales people will try to make you question the financial viability of its parent company, but the product is a good one and has been around for a good while.

PDMWorks is a nice simple SolidWorks file management tool which has a decent interface and good functionality for its price. It's probably not suited to what you are wanting to do, although it might do parts of it adequately. It does have an available web-based client interface, but it's not based on a real database. It does have an API, so you could write custom apps for it, but it's not incredibly extensive. If it works for you, you could save a ton of money. It might be worth checking out.

Reply to
matt

Please explain...why is it not really a PDM system and what control is lacking in Conisio?

Reply to
ngpost1

Matt,

Can Product Center deal with configuration parts?

Reply to
TOP

We all know that Matt really likes PDMworks as its his "bread and butter"...

What I would tell you to do is look at several PDM's created just for Solidworks, and look to what you want in a pdm today and what you want in a pdm 6 months from now or one year from now..

So by all means take a look at PDMworks and DBWorks and etc.... just remember that Matts PDMWorks does not have a database...

Reply to
george

As I remember, Product Center can handle configs as separate documents, if that's what you mean.

Matt

Reply to
matt

I didn't say it wasn't a PDM system. I said it wasn't for purists and control freaks.

Any PDM system that claims it requires as little as 5 minutes of training is being more than a little misleading or is overestimating the average user

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My last look at it was a couple of years ago, but I remember being disturbed by how the vault was structured, it seemed very loose. It definitely struck me as a system centered around making things easy for users, not around data management. Not that that's bad, it's just that I don't think PDM purists and control freaks would be happy with it.

Also, the interface is significantly different from other products. As I remember, it worked mostly through the Open dialog and Windows Explorer. Again, not necessarily bad, but definitely different, and certainly something that might make a purist admin who spends a lot of time trying to get people out of the habit of using Windows Explorer cringe.

To the original question, I view Conisio as an "alternative" option, not really "best of breed".

Matt

Reply to
matt

We have a multitude of parts as design table parts which of course means configurations. Each has to be treated separately and the whole has to be kept track of also.

How is it to interface to our item master software? It has it's own API.

Heck, what is the URL for the Product Center web site?

Reply to
TOP

IMO DBworks is the best solution for the buck. If you have someone with VB/VBA experience you can get it to do just about anything. Other wise, define what you want your PDM to do and DBworks can be setup to suit your needs. It's worth paying a knowledgable person to set it up. They claim it works "out of the box" but by the time you figure everything out you've made basic mistakes that are more work to fix in the long run. The interface is nice and completely configurable. Probably the nicest thing is it generally works in the background and does not screw with your files. You can do a search in this newsgroup for a little info or go to mechworks.com and read about it.. Good luck. Mike

Reply to
Mike

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Reply to
matt

ProductCenter administrator here. here is my $.02 worth.

this is one of the more complex programs that are available. now that i have it stable i spend very little time supporting it, maybe an hour a week. yes it is expensive, but for those that have it, will go no other place for this need. let me explain the benefits.

automatic PDF generation on approved files, this is very nice. workflow, very powerful filetypes, easily setup to accept any format. database is Oracle, for those that use Oracle MRP. can be setup with full security to allow access from inside and outside

the company. take a dedicated source to start and organize system. once setup done, minimal support. full BOM support out of SWx to PDM via XML. incredible support, most within minutes of posting. fully customizable. intregral viewing capability via AutoVue vault encription and compression.

this is the full package, no limitations, just your imagination.

now off my box. i have spent alot of time with ProductCenter folks along with other PDM

admins to make this one heck of a package. i admit that when i started

using it 5 years ago i had my doughts. now that we have refined this PDM package to fully support SWx it has become very user friendly. i admit it is expensive, many dollars out of the pocket to start and to maintain. worth it, YES every penny of it.

of note: during my implementation i was involved with a CAB group for this porpose. the other members in the CAB came from Smartteam and DBWorks to ProductCenter. they stated that ProductCenter was way beyond the abilities of where they came from. but this was a few years

ago, things change constantly.

hope that this helps, iQ

c> IMO DBworks is the best solution for the buck. If you have someone with

Reply to
iQ

and to answer the confugurations questions, ProductCenter fully controls these, with revision control and separate part tree structures. iQ

change is not just something in my pocket, it is a daily, sometines hourly, occurance.

iQ wrote:

Reply to
iQ

So ProductCenter changes the names of all your files as it saves them?

Reply to
george

The one thing I like about DBWorks (and no I don't have it) is that I can download the manual and see what I am getting into. What I have is PDMWorks for now.

Reply to
TOP

Yeah - it can deal with them handsomly and as I recall lock them as released. They do it with a thing called stubs (at last look). Their integrator has the ability to look at "derived" parts, where used, parts defined in context of other parts and so on. Their SW integrator is pretty good and will allow you to control things to a very fine level if you choose too.

I would like to second Product Center support as stellar - they have professionals that understand the product and know worlds more than the users. Often not the case - in some cases I know more than "them" after 3 months - and I'm often slower than your average beast.

Product Center is a great enterprise wide solution, but may be a little overkill for departmental (single workgroup) control. Bang for the buck may not be there at some levels - I recall (floating) seats going for 5K-8K, etc and you need a server license, etc. - the backside needs a little support. If I had to control docs with a PDM tool this would be my tool of choice. It has all that one needs to control docs and workflow. It's a damned fine product.

Later,

SMA

(former Product Center admin & user - 2+ years)

Reply to
Sean-Michael Adams

No - it puts them into an encrypted vault that even your admins cannot hose - good in my mind - keeps ALL human monkeying from happening.

When you extract a file it comes out with the same name that you check-in under.

If you are good at oracle/sql, you can manipulate the "metadata" database portion of the vault (possibly destroying the name or altering it), but this is not a common occurance. We id have some small issues with check (un-saved variables) in that required sql and a work around

- but this might have been fixed. Generally, error occurence was low once people learned how to use the PDM system and error recovery was always within reach.

I second all of IQ's sentiments. Expensive but worth it all. Engineering time wasted is even more expensive, so is missing and AFU documentation.

Later,

SMA

Reply to
Sean-Michael Adams

It can. It's an all or nothing choice, so it tracks every configuration of every part. After setting it up to run that way originally, we decided, since we had only a couple of parts that needed control of the configurations, that we would turn it off. (We decided to split those few parts up into multiple parts rather than multiple configurations.) New parts and assemblies don't track configurations. Unfortunately, all of the parts and assemblies which originally tracked configurations still track them, so we are stuck in a weird in-between mode.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Reply to
Jerry Steiger

Yes, you can control the release of configurations independently.

We haven't been that thrilled with it, but it's mainly a user interface and training problem. We got some early training when we weren't actually able to use it, so we developed some bad habits when we started using it. Some of that is being ironed out now, but I still find the user interface not very intuitive. It seems like the UI was developed by people from a non-Windows world, so they forget to use all of the normal Windows ways.

They do have some very knowledgeable people and they are usually trying hard to help.

That would be my impression. We bought it to integrate with our MRP system. If you don't need that kind of integration, if you want PDM, not PLM, then it probably won't be a good choice.

It's very easy to get above $100K. The fellow in charge of choosing our system came up with a $250K plan. That got scotched and we ended up with the stripper version that was, as I recall, just under $100K. Now we are adding back in functionality a piece at a time. No doubt we will end up spending well over the original plan.

I'm not at all impressed by the workflow. We just implemented the ECO capability and it has been a real nightmare. We are going to have to do massive customization to get a good system. A lot of that can probably be blamed on poor implementation on our part (the guys in manufacturing who were running the show wouldn't listen to the non-degreed but very knowledgeable woman in R&D), but it seems like a fair amount of the blame can be laid on ProductCenter.

You're probably right, but I have a very sour taste in my mouth!

I think we needed to hire you about a year or two years ago when we started down the PLM road, Sean. The nice guy that manufacturing put in charge of choosing and implementing the system knows nothing about CAD or design and it shows.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Reply to
Jerry Steiger

Its these kind of "little" details that can have huge implications. What are the implications of going all configuration as parts? I would like to have flexibility to have configs as parts, derived configs for things like FEA or exploded views or fast drawings without fasterners. If PC went this route how is this kind of thing dealt with?

Reply to
TOP

HI Jerry -

Yeah - the on ramp was steep indeed and the initial ickyness did eventually fade.

People were involved, so things went bad (TM).

On a few occasions, I destroyed an assembly - my recourse - no problem

- Return Unmodified and pull a new copy down. That sort of "security from myself" was a huge benefit. Concurrent change on a single document became impossible - this was a total godsend and people could collaborate on a complex assembly in realtime without asking the other guy for permission or 'BIFF, could you load that model read-only again for me, again please, one more time again please) . These were the up sides - many more benefits were there.

I do agree with you - the on-ramp is nightmarish, but once you are up to speed, it runs well. It took us 3-6 months to be adequate and 1 year or better to be "good". I hope the ICK falls off fast for you - the tool is very capable, but it also need a good implementer who understands it capablilities and flaws. I took a stand early on to do no customisation as this invariably made things work less well and made future maintenence harder. Personally, I would suggest that a company run at least a couple quarters under the plain vanilla paradigm, get an understanding and then customize if needed.

The hardest thing I had to convince people of was this - You will be required to work differently - it will no function as you wish - if you are willing to work another way, you will be rewarded 5x what you put in. It was a real no-pain no-gain scenario. The good news was that you did not max-out the PDM system after 3 weeks, sitting there asking "Is that all there is?".

Best Wishes -

Sean

Reply to
Sean-Michael Adams

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