DBWorks Administrator Training

We had four. More would be better. BUT, most important would be to set things up so you are ready to go right after the training and put into practice what you learn. IMHO it would be better to ask them to help set you up and learn the rest as you go.

Good program but you are expected to do a lot.

Hi Kenneth,

I'm interested in your reasons for choosing DBWorks over PDMWorks?

John Layne

Been using PDMW for 3 1/2 years.

Pushed PDMW to it's breaking point.

Great little application though!

We liked the "look" of Conisio but hesitant to get in bed with SW again.

However, Conisio has some funkiness (proprietary) to it.

DBWorks could be revamping it's interface.

After that nothing can beat it!

Time to move on and up (hopefully).

;)

What were you doing, or wanting to do, that pushed it too far?

I can understand that. Did you have something specific that worried you? Are you afraid that PDMW Enterprise will become another Toolbox? (Nice start that never gets the finishing touches that it needs.)

What was it that you didn't like?

I haven't seen DBWorks. What is it you dislike about its interface now?

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

I hope the formatting holds up after posting. ;)

- Easier way to maintain As-Builts (critical)

- Work Flow controls (approvals, sign offs, etc.)

- 100% ODBC compliant Relational Database (no proprietary code)

- Enhanced Administrative controls needed for more complex user rights.

- Automated pdf creation.

- Intuitive, user friendly interface for non-CAD users. In this case DBWorks offers a Web Client.

- Need the data in PDM to be "easily accessible" to MRP system (SQL based).

Very much so. I (we) became extremely disgusted with Solidworks PDMW because of numerous bugs and core functionality changes which occurred in and between PDMW 2005 & 2006. I vented my discontent here and on the old sw forum. Speaking of forums, imho, they screwed their forum up royally. These issues (PDMW) have caused my confidence in their commitment and resolve to diminish significantly.

Also, because we scheduled our demo after the SW acquisition our reseller was not up to speed (as a power user) which affected the demo. I got the impression that SW laid off a large percentage of Conisio demo jockeys. Never the less, this had an impact on our confidence in SW to provide top notch support.

- Users having a pseudo vault on their local machine and then having to synchronize with vault on server (proprietary). It's flat out funky.

Also a couple of other significant reasons follow.

- Price. Conisio was almost 2x what DBWorks was for 4 cad users + 10 non-cad users (this was significant).

- The way data is presented to user (this is extremely important to us). Conisio is basically Windows Explorer. We prefer the Feature Tree method employed by PDMW & DBWorks.

It's built on Microsoft Access. It's just a bit outdated looking. But not nearly as outdated as Synergis-Adept (a strong competitor).

And the number one reason is ..... tech support. Quick, knowledgeable and stuff gets fixed. You are the customer and they know it.

And not just ODBC compliant but it has a nifty xml based tie in to ERP if that is the way you want to go.

We do a lot with configurations and that immediately rules out PDMW.

It doesn't depend on where the files are. Very good file locking once they are in. Fast registration process. Unbelievably customizable, but it works out of the box too. Nifty web based viewer. This is an inexpensive solution for non-sw users that is becoming popular at our place. Administrative tools are very powerful. The project motif for organizing documents is pretty slick. Drag and drop. Highly configurable autonumbering

Any minuses? I think they spend most of their time on functionality not eye candy so the interface is pretty no frills (no skins, sometimes fonts can be a bit misaligned, etc. ) Every once in a while we are reminded that SW isn't letting third party vendors have access to all the tools they need in SW. This is more of an aggravation to the user.

if you look at this dilemma (choosing pdm) from a distance, it becomes very clear. why go to solidworks, whose core competency is mcad, for a relational database.

kenneth

In dbWorks 2007 they added skins. That's one off the list. They also added better configuration tools for administrators. And with .NET support scripting becomes faster.