File Structure and File Management without PDM

[tralala]

HI Everyone,

For the last couple of years I've been working with CoCreate OSD with a PDM Server. Now I changed my job and I have to work with Catia without a PDM server. The biggest problem ist that I dont have anyone who I could ask about a file management system since I'm the ony one doing "serious" 3D construction. All the other guys use Catia from time to time and don't really care about order!

With CoCreate it was easy. for each machine you have one file, and it doesn't matter if the machine had 10 or 10.000 parts and sub groups. The problem with Catia is that every part or product needs their own file. I can't just save 10.000 files (Parts and Prodsucts) in just one directory and hope to be able to work with them without killing myself.

Is there a file structure that you'd could recomend me?

In another forum I was suggested to work with a parent directory for the "machine" and sub directories for every "group". in every subdirectory there would be ONLY one product with all their parts. If this product is made of other products, the other would be saved again in subdirectories... It'd look like the Catia-tree.

The Directory structuture would be:
Machine
|-Product1 (product consisting of just parts)
| |-Part1
| |-Part2
| |-Part3
|-Product2 (product consisting of just products)
| |-Product3
| | |-Part4
| | |-Part5
| | |-Part6
| |-Product4
| |-Part7
| |-Part8
| |-Part9
|-Product5 (product consisting of parts and products)
|-Product3
| |-Part4
| |-Part5
| |-Part6
|-Part10
|-Part11
|-Part12

Does it make sense to have a directory structure like this?
Is there another structure that you*d recommend?
What about the Naming of the files... What system do you use?

I'know that they're a los of questions, but I could really use some help here!

Thanks,
TRala

 

[ferdo]

http://www.plmlab.fr/index.php?page=rialto

or better

http://www.plmlab.fr/uploads/RIALTO/rialto_3_21_user_guide.pdf

Regards
Fernando

 

[pascal92]

HI,

> Does it make sense to have a directory structure like this?

Of course, yes. But you have to pay attention that you can't use all the windows file system commands (as copy, move etc) to manage your CATIA files. In fact, within such a structure, it's quite difficult to manage the links between the files. You have to use exclusively the "File / Save Management" and "File / Send to" CATIA commands.

> Is there another structure that you*d recommend?

A "flat" structure (without sub-directories) is a much more robust way to manage CATIA files. It depends of the number of files you have to manage for your model and if you work alone or in a team.

> What about the Naming of the files... What system do you use?

I assume that there are as many answers as companies. But you can begin by a simple rule : no space, no special characters, only A-Z and 0-9 and "_". Even if CATIA supports all the characters for its files' names, using special caracters led often to problems !

You're right : managing CATIA files is sometime a difficult task because there is no "out of the box" vault system delivered within CATIA.

As Ferdo wrote, you can take a look at RIALTO which allows managing locally CATIA files with excel.

Regards


Pascal Morenton
Ecole Centrale Paris

 

[Azrael]

Pascal, if you have the PLM Express version of Catia instead of the standard one you actually get Smarteam bundled and that integration works great, if you are not using any PDM funtionalites like release, workflow etc, you don't need to start the Smarteam client, everything is accesable through catia and can be set so open and save are defaulted to smarteam

 

[ferdo]

Its a little bit difficult to handle CATIA files without a PDM system but not impossible. I suppose there are few users and a big quantity of files....

First I would create a read only area (ROA) with not so many folders but also take care not to have so many files in a folder, especially those kind of files which should be inserted in others - time for search the parts will be big.

Separate folders for products, parts, drawings or standard parts according to your project development should be OK, it will be also easy to use some automation tools...

Each user should save their work in a special folder where a checker can open and see if the work is OK or not. Then only checkers should be able to save files in the ROA (read only area, read-write access in different folders should be very clear defined by somebody who knows the project). The users should use only parts from that ROA and not from other folders, keep always in mind the UUID recommendations and also what jstrawn recommend in COE forum about ghost links :
1. Never copy/paste anything from one drawing to another - use Catalogs instead
2. Never lock a view - it WILL retain links to older, possibly obsolete models
3. Always open the drawings in the background when you swap parts in the assemblies
4. Never use Windows (or Unix) File Move operations to move a design from one folder to another. Always use CATIA File Send To
5. Never use Windows (or Unix) File Copy and Rename operations to create new parts similar to old ones. You can use this for new versions, but NEVER for new parts or drawings. Instead use Copy Paste Special/Break Link within the assembly, or File New From/File Save As and check the Save As New Document box. This will ensure that you receive a new UUID.

A "watch dog" folder software is also good because you can track changes done to the files and a database should be kept with all of these changes (its good also to see which is the status of different type of files).

If you would like also to have a "light" DMU, you have to develop also your own tools to have everything updated...

That being said, I believe you will now try to use a professional PDM solution, it will be much easier and of course you will not loose time to do all these steps.


Regards
Fernando