Thoughts: file version control inside solidworks (subversion)

Who knows? Maybe the Solidworks Gods have heard you...... ;)

We will see what 2005 will bring us

Johnny

That really would be the best. An "XML Feature" (like the "Macro Feature") added as one of the features... One could potientially store any information they wanted. It would be customizable and there could be an interface (preferrably web based) that could be used to extract/ present information... revisions/ trees (like the one in dynabits) you name it, it could all be done!

I kind of thought about this one and dropped it when I started work on swCP3.

mvk

Right. XML is the way. Check

and use it ! It is free ! You can easily extract any information you need from your models from the generated XML, and can visualize it as you like by using XSLT.

And if the "SolidWorks Gods" have an idea on how to embed documents in their Holy Files, let's hope than enough prayers will let them create an API for this too. Pray with me : "Please SolidWorks protect us from Bill Gates' Structured Storage and solve SPR 226951 and SPR 226952". Even if you don't understand every word, it may work (just like prayers...)

Now seriously, version control through Subversion or CVS is not a good idea for SW files becuse they contain too much binary data and can't benefit from the efficient "diff" function those source code version control use.

Now if you consider that

's EcoSqueeze can delete all this heavy 3D Parasolid info you don't need in archives (Structured Storage...) and that many/most design information can be stored in an XML file, version control becomes realistic. However, CVS or Subversion handle XML as text and can't detect that is the same as . We would need an XML-specific version control system, or plug an XML-diff module in Subversion...

The trouble is, days are only 24h long and I have more ideas than money :-(

I have no pity for you!

Sadly, Philippe, I have a worse condition - more ideas than brains.

:)

SMA

Should we go to the 2005 beta forum?

Beside your example how would you deal with file interrelations? Would you do that like is done in software dev with the include? But what if Solidworks provide a diff functionality which could be plugged in into subversion? That is what would be intresting.

Johnny

. .

Well - you could read the XML data into objects with oh...I dunno..Python (my favourite language), and test equality for this case quite easily - so this is doable (in any language, but Python rocks).

References to other objects is also doable in XML. There is a cool XML Python pickle (Python's notion of object persistence - like Java's serialization) module out there:

It handles references to objects and everything. Quite cool. Something along these lines could be implemented. Just give Philippe another 12 or so hours per day and a pile of money. ;o) Heck - I'd go for that too...

FWIW - I am actually using Subversion for revision control with SW and it seems to work so far - but it is only for a small repository at a small company. It definitely would not scale at all for a *real* 3D design shop. I never thought about using ecosqueze however - this could be triggered automatically on check-in (Subversion is cool this way) and would probably save a whole pile of disk space.

Markus.

Yeah for that purpose, it's great, but what we require is an "extenstion" that will store textual information along with the model information.

An "XML Feature" would be an excellent, customizable method of documenting a design.

While we can wait for SW to get around to giving us this, how much work would it be to use a "Macro Feature" to do this?

mvk

Please ignore my previous post, I misunderstood the discussion...

mvk

yes, it would, but you have to take care about parts that have imported geometry or face/edge specific information (colors, names) which would be lost... We should ask Thilo (ecocom.com) to make his great tool a bit more intelligent.