Anyone out there know of a way to get the advantages of PDM/PLM without sacrificing configurations? I consider them one of the greatest benefits of SolidWorks.
I guess it may depend on the PDM/PLM you are using, but we still heavily use configurations and we've been using SW Workgroup PDM for almost three years now.
In a usual PLM, it is very difficult to employ tabulated drawings. The rule at my company is to not use them. However, configurations do not necessarily need to equate to a tabulation table. You can still use them, but the part numbers represented by each configuration will be unique and can either have its own drawing. Of course, you can assign a different item number for the drawing and for the part itself, so that the drawing number is called out in the references or BOM of the part, but not attached directly to the part. This is kinda a pre-Information Age method of handling this scenario that may actually work well in the cased of tabulated drawings within a modern PDM.
