SmartTeam and SolidWorks

Don,

The company I work for uses SWx 2006 SP 5.0 with ST V5R16 SP 8. It works very well for us. We use configs with discreet parts in a file and also with different variations of a single part in a file and it handles both very well. Rev control is very good. I do not have any experience with any other PDM systems and SWx, so I can not offer any pros or cons by comparison. I do know this was difficult to get set up to work with our legacy 2D system, Cocreate ME-10, but that is behind me now. Others in my company are not so fortunate. It also was a challenge to integrate into our electrical package, E3. When we went "live" about 5 years ago, I believe this was the best program available that provided real-time multi-site integration, so I am sure this influenced our decision greatly. I hope this helps.

Reaper.

Thanks for you reply.

You seem to contradict most of what I've heard about some major drawbacks. I mostly hear negative feedback. I even talked to a former coworker who used it another company. They apparently got rid of it after 3 years.

Some of what I heard (Truth or Not I'm not sure)

1) Does not handle SW configurations very well at all.

2) Limitations with rev control as to what Assembly and or sub- assemblies get reved based on part changes.

3) Cannot upgrade to the latest Solidworks versions until the Smarteam packages is capable. (Major drawback if true)

anyways, these are just a few..... would like to know what other people think.

Don

I used to work for a company that uses Smarteam and SolidWorks. It took about 1-1/2 years to implement. Now to say our implementation was complicated is an understatement.

Also be prepared to shell out the cash for this system. Smarteam is a high level PDM system so make sure you are not getting more than you need. Some other ones to look at that i have had success with are DBWorks, PDMWorks Enterprise, and ProductCenter. All these are multisite, configuration friendly, you also are not required to match the version of SolidWorks to the PDM software in all of these.

Good Luck,

JP

I don't think that last bit is true about ProductCenter. We've been told that we can't use SW08 with our existing version of PC and that there is not yet a release date for the version that will support SW08.

I wasn't at all impressed with the friendliness of PC towards configurations. Unless we completely misunderstood the system (a definite possibility), it was all or nothing. You either keep track of all configurations of all parts and assemblies or you keep track of none. Since most of our configurations didn't need to be kept track of, and since tracking them all was a real pain, we ended up killing the tracking and converting the few configurations that we did want to track into separate parts.

Jerry Steiger

i am a ProductCenter administrator. i would have to say that it is not user friendly unless you want to invest 200K more to make it user firendly.

but back to your original question about configurations.

configurations are handled in various ways. i believe that SmartTeam will support them with a caviot. all configurations of an assembly are revised when ever the assembly file is revised. this means that if you are only editing one configuration of the assembly, the non- edited configurations will also be revised in the PDM tool with the assembly. it is always a good item to ask when inquiring about a PDM/ PLM tool, how it handles these configurations and in specific detail. you may have to give examples on exactally how you want to handle them to get your concept across.

ProductCenter does handle configurations as separate data entires in the PDM tool. i use them as such. if a design has multiple configurations, each must have a separate revision level. if i revise a single configuration of an assembly the assembly revision also gets revised (revision level gets incremented on the assembly and the one configuration). if i revise the assembly then all configurations get revised (revision level gets incremented on the assembly and all of the configurations). but this is my rule and others may handle this differently. it depends on how you handle configurations.

and ProductCenter has a new revision out to handle SWx 2008. it is either 8.5.1.9 or 8.6.1. hope that this helps all.

if you are looking at a high end PDM tool, you are looking at bookoo bucks (100-200K just to purchase). from what i have seen in this high end market, Windchill has been the most impressive player and handles SWx, ACAD, Inventor, Catia, NX and of course WildFire (pro-e) files. Workflows are very smooth to setup and use and you do not need to know how to program to use them. look into this if you are going down this road. iQ

sorry only 8.6.1 is 2008 compatible, just tried it. iQ

Absolutely untrue. SmarTeam will allow you to treat SW configurations as individual database records with individual profile cards with individual revisions with individual where used or you can treat all configurations in a file as a single database record. You can choose to have SmarTeam track only some configurations in a file or track all configurations.

Again, untrue. When you make a change to a part/sub-assembly and you check it in you can choose to have the new revision of part be automatically used in all of the parents (of the previous revision) or you can choose to have the parents of the previous revision continue to use the previous revision. Also, when you check out an assembly, if it has out of date components in it you can have SmarTeam automatically replace the out of date components with the most current revision or tell you when there are out of date components and allow you to replace them with the most current revision (or any revision for that matter).

True. SmarTeam has historically been about 3 months behind with SolidWorks compatibility. There have been times (like with SW 2008) where they are way more than 3 months behind. If upgrading to the latest version SW quickly after it is released is important to you SmarTeam might not be the best choice.