How to manage revisions?

Hi, At the moment i'm working at a company with solidworks without pdm sofware. Can anybody tell me what's the best way to manage revisions?

My thougts:

  1. On partlevel i could use configurations and name the configuration by example A or B (the revision) On assemblylevel i would need to use a Save-as to maintain the original assambly.

  1. Use Save-as operation on both parts and assemblies. I would have to begin with a Save-as operation in the assambly. Then i can use save-as operations in the revised assemly.

Can anybody tell wich way is preferred? Or tell me a better way to manage revisions?

Thanks,

Bas

Reply to
Bas Slijkhuis
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Hi, At the moment I'm working at a company with solidworks without pdm software. Can anybody tell me what's the best way to manage revisions?

My thoughts:

  1. On part level I could use configurations and name the configuration by example A or B (the revision) On assembly level I would need to use a Save-as to maintain the original assembly.

  1. Use Save-as operation on both parts and assemblies. I would have to begin with a Save-as operation in the assembly. Then I can use save-as operations in the revised assembly.

Can anybody tell which way is preferred? Or tell me a better way to manage revisions?

Grtz,

Bas

Reply to
Bas Slijkhuis

Although your idea using configurations is innovative and will probably be easier than renaming files, you'll still end up with more complexity than you're going to want. If you use Drawings for your parts and assemblies then why not just archive those files as PDF and/or DWG and be done with them? If you really do need to maintain model history (and I'd have to ask "why?") then your plan is about as good as one can get without PDM.

Mark 'Sporky' Staplet>

Reply to
Sporkman

Being in a similar boat - I have been toying with the idea of using Subversion

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(CVS - with nicer support for binary files) to archive CAD models, but I imagine the archives would become HUGE. It would be pretty sweet - provided disk space wasn't an issue. We use CVS at work for software development (as do most software companies) and I think it would be pretty slick to be able to checkin/checkout a CAD model based on a user-defined label, date, or revision. However - I guess that's exactly what PDM software does... The only advantage would be cost as I see it. Another disadvantage would be showing users how to use it - although it would probably be easier than a big PDM package.

Maybe I'll install it and give it a go. Even a local archive would help me manage revisions without losing model history. There is something about being able to go back to the minute *before* your Feature Tree lit up with big red cherries, *after* you have hit the Save button and/or the undo is greyed out. ;o)

Hey, Phillippe! How far along is your CADml project? Ideally - I would have no Solidworks files on my hard drive at all. If they were all saved in XML format, and I had a CADml reader Addin, I could archive the XML files in CVS with ease! Hell I could even open them up in SW98, with no feature loss at all. I'm sure it would be a little slower - automatically creating a model from XML every time I opened a part - but hell - I used to wait for 20 minutes for AutoCAD to start up while I got my coffee every morning... ;o)

-- Markus.

Reply to
Markus Wankus

In leiu of us getting a PDM system we have created E-Drawings of all drawings and related assemblies at time of issuance. This works great so far as once a drawing is issued it should not be subject to editing anyway.

Reply to
Phil Evans

I concur.

I started out this way when I got to my current job. Either with RevA configs, or by renaming the drawing and part to Part-RevA, and putting both in the archive directory.

Quickly found out that this is a real PITA. You have to make sure the renamed drawing points to the RevA part file, and it takes up a lot more drive space.

And you don't even want to think about the problems you're going to have as you need to archive assemblies.

Just save the old revs as PDF and be done with it.

-nick e.

note that PDF is better than DWG because the PDF file can't be changed. Well, at least not nearly as easily.

Reply to
Nick E.

PDM is basically the same as software configuration managment, which is what you're talking about with Subversion and CVS, I think. I didn't read a whole lot on Subversion, but it appears to be freeware, which of course is a great BIG advantage over most PDM software, but the sorts of PDM discussed in this newsgroup is specifically tailored to CAD, and most of it to SolidWorks in specific. As such it's going to have quite a few operational advantages over Subversion I strongly suspect.

I don't know beans about XML, but this portion of your message is defintely interesting. I'd like to know why you think you could open XML files in SW98+ with no feature loss. It would be nice to think that you're correct, but I'm skeptical. If that were the case, and if XML files are fairly compact, it seems like someone would have already done this. Perhaps another reasonable way to do such is to convert to IGES, STEP, ACIS or Parasolid and then ZIP the archives with a rev letter attached.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton

Reply to
Sporkman

Yes - Subversion is your typical Concurrent Revision Control system - but for software developers, really - and mostly designed for text files (source code) at that. I did actually install it and play with changing a file - it only took a couple hours to figure it out. Here is a screenshot:

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It actually tries to do a binary difference between file revisions and only stores the "changes" to a given file. It seemed sluggish checking in the revision, but I have never really used a CAD PDM system with large files so I don't know how it works anyway. I'm assuming it just stores entire copies of the files, so it would be faster, but waste a lot of disk space.

Anyway - it is something I think I will play with for a bit and see how it goes.

Well, Phillippe would be the expert here - but if you can describe a complete part in terms of a series of features in XML, and can read those features back in, re-creating them as you go - I don't see why you

*couldn't" do this. The only hitch would be for features/operations that are new or fundamentally changed in a newer version of the software. For example, if telling SW2004 to create an extrude from A to B produces a different solid in SW98 - then you are going to have a problem. I imagine this would be an issue for surfacing techniques, but you would *think* for basic parts, this would be doable.

As a test - you could write a macro the draws a solid, and does a bunch of operations (holes, fillets, chamfers) on it using the Solidworks API (using only backwards-compatible API commands BTW), and run the macro on both SW2004, and SW98. Creating a model from data in an XML file would be the same thing. If it worked it would be a pretty cool import/export tool for *most* parts. I assume this was some of the motivation creating it in the first place.

XML files are not compact in terms of data efficiency, but they do describe the data quite well. I'm not sure if they would come out smaller of larger than the native SW file. Probably there will be a crossing point - they will be smaller for simple parts, and larger for larger parts and parts with complex features.

Markus.

Reply to
Markus Wankus

The configurations route is not viable at all, in my opinion. If you either have to or accidentally delete something, it is lost to all revisions. Also, what do you do if you want to use a configuration for another reason?

I personally also think that the "save as" method is too cumbersome to seriously implement. There are too many cases where you will run into trouble, including incontext and other external references, parts used in multiple assemblies, and other situations.

If you are doing revisioning manually with SolidWorks files, you should look at a PDM system. It automates all of the cumbersome things.

PDM systems can be cheap, like DBWorks, PDMWorks or Activault. This bit of money up front will pay for itself with the first major rework that you avoid.

If you absolutely have to do this without a PDM system, I would just archive old part and assembly files by changing their names (adding the rev to the file name) and moving them to another folder. The current rev would not have a rev in the filename. This is still unreliable for parts and assemblies.

The reason I say this is that we went through the same decision process at my company and after reworking a couple prototypes built from wrong-rev prints, we put a mid-level PDM in place and haven't seen rev level problems since.

-g-

Bas Slijkhuis wrote:

Reply to
gopher

Do you mind saying what PDM system you went with? Fell free to email me offline. I'd be interested in checking it out.

Markus

Reply to
Markus Wankus

We went with SofTech's ProductCenter. Got a good price on it before the company was bought. It's a good product with workflow. Easy enough to use.

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We have another division that uses PDMWorks, and from what I've seen of that, it's pretty easy for bare-bones revision management.

-g-

Reply to
gopher

Thanks! ;o)

Mark.

Reply to
Markus Wankus

I have seen some PDM-less companies use search directories to archive revisions. Each revision is placed in a subfolder with the revision level. Search directories are set up to look in folders for newest revs first.

For instance, your project is in a folder "c:\project". Parts are stored in subfolders "c:\project\revA", "c:\project\revB", etc. Search folders are set up to begin searching from highest revision first. Part file names stay the same, so rolling back revisions is as simple as removing the newer revisions from their subfolders OR preloading the older revisions.

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION FOLLOWS: I am about to release an addin that takes someof the pain out of this operation. The addin stores search folder schemes, and generates search folder lists including subfolders. It even lets you choose between forward and reverse alphabetical sorting of search folders. But wait, there's more! There's also a function that monitors your folders and updates search paths if subfolders are changed. Project-specific schemes can be saved for later use, so switching between search folder schemes is easier than making julienne fries.

Interested?

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the toothiest API in pike country!

regards, Roland Schwarz

Reply to
TheTick

TheTick wrote: ...

Well, if that works for you then I can't argue with you, but I wouldn't trust the bunch of clumsy users that I work with to that system. The problem is that you have multiple copies of the same filename, and SolidWorks is as likely to find one as another. If you look in Help Index, and type in "Search", and pick the "file locations for external references", there are probably 10 places SW looks before it looks in the last place the file was saved.

You'd have to set up the work directory in Tools, Options, File Locations, Referenced Files, which is simple for only one folder, but you might have several folders.

Anyway, sounds scary to me, but more power to you if you can get it to work.

-g-

Reply to
gopher

Reply to
Sporkman

Sporkman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@bigfootDOT.com:

Speaking of pikes, did anyone catch this around new years?

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Reply to
matt

That's my "technical difficulties" bullet. A little fish humor, "belly up".

Reply to
TheTick

Actually, we have PDM where I work. I am trying to design products to ease the pain of those who are PDM-less, all priced for less than a good lunch (with mid-day martinis).

I have seen the folder scheme utilized in a couple places, and not just on SW, but with Pro/E and UG as well. Some places don't have a PDM, and that's a fact. Anything that makes it easier for users to follow "manual" archiving protocols should help.

As far as where SW looks for external references, this is an good scheme, since the first place SW looks is in the search folders in the order they are listed. Even with some PDM systems (Meridian in particular), having search folders can reduce load times.

Reply to
TheTick

I am having problems with your addin version, not a valid archive according to Winzip 9.0

Reply to
Phil Evans

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