I just wanted to ask a few question about data management to see what everyone else is doing in their company, because the way my company does this seems counterproductive.
Current Job
In my current job we have a home brewed data management system. The way that we are configured to function is to keep our working directory on our local workstation and check out all necessary models we need to work (without locking anything). This is a real pain when you are dealing with the major subsystem of a large piece of machinery because you end up having to check out the entire machine to work in a master model. The other part that is annoying is that the system keeps track of everything in your working directory but won't update things on the fly. This means that if you rename a part you have to wait for everyone in the company to manually update their working directory so the rename will actually take place. This also means that every morning we waste the better part of 30 minutes manually updating modified parts, updated attribute parts, and renamed parts (these are separate functions rather than a single "update working directory" function).
The final part that is irritating is that Pro/E is manually configured on each workstation and, like I said before, the working directory is set to the local workstation. This means that updating configurations is a major pain and a workstation crash means that you could possibly lose work or completely hang up the system (due to the renaming issue mentioned earlier).
Previous Job
In my previous job we also had a home brewed data management system but it functioned significantly better. It was configured so that when Pro/E was launched, it would automatically map the corporate configuration and map the user to their own working directory on the file server. After the mapping was done, the user would check out only the parts they intended to update and lock them in the system. Any other parts that were needed for the subsystem or assembly were pulled from a read only share that contained all of the CAD data. This way of functioning prevented problems with users updating the same parts, or accidentally updating a part they didn't intend to update. The configuration also allowed users to jump to a different workstation (in the case where their own workstation had problems) where they could pick up right where they left off.
I worked in this environment for 5 years and don't recall ever having any major problems. On the other hand, the setup at my current job has at least one major problem a week that requires support from the CAD admin to fix.
So what is your company using?
Current Job
In my current job we have a home brewed data management system. The way that we are configured to function is to keep our working directory on our local workstation and check out all necessary models we need to work (without locking anything). This is a real pain when you are dealing with the major subsystem of a large piece of machinery because you end up having to check out the entire machine to work in a master model. The other part that is annoying is that the system keeps track of everything in your working directory but won't update things on the fly. This means that if you rename a part you have to wait for everyone in the company to manually update their working directory so the rename will actually take place. This also means that every morning we waste the better part of 30 minutes manually updating modified parts, updated attribute parts, and renamed parts (these are separate functions rather than a single "update working directory" function).
The final part that is irritating is that Pro/E is manually configured on each workstation and, like I said before, the working directory is set to the local workstation. This means that updating configurations is a major pain and a workstation crash means that you could possibly lose work or completely hang up the system (due to the renaming issue mentioned earlier).
Previous Job
In my previous job we also had a home brewed data management system but it functioned significantly better. It was configured so that when Pro/E was launched, it would automatically map the corporate configuration and map the user to their own working directory on the file server. After the mapping was done, the user would check out only the parts they intended to update and lock them in the system. Any other parts that were needed for the subsystem or assembly were pulled from a read only share that contained all of the CAD data. This way of functioning prevented problems with users updating the same parts, or accidentally updating a part they didn't intend to update. The configuration also allowed users to jump to a different workstation (in the case where their own workstation had problems) where they could pick up right where they left off.
I worked in this environment for 5 years and don't recall ever having any major problems. On the other hand, the setup at my current job has at least one major problem a week that requires support from the CAD admin to fix.
So what is your company using?
