How good is Enovia for a PDM?

[l3ob]

We are an Aerospace design office that uses Catia V5 as our design tool, and have been 'looking at'/evaluating Enovia and its benefits and/or problems for use within our company as our PDM. IBM, Dassault, and their partners have promoted it as the greatest thing since sliced bread; however, what else could one expect from the sellers of a product. I have heard, and have read on the internet, that the Enovia product was 'Crap' in its early years/development. Also, from stories on the internet, IBM threw it out there without disclosing their intent to 'Beta-Test' it by means of customer use. (of coarse at the custmer's expense in time and delays) With that said, I'm looking for some reviews from real users, preferably aerospace, to tell me if this product worth it, does it do what they say it does, does it improve efficiency, does it track a product with very complex assembly structure reliably, or is it crap that has received a lot of hype from those invested in it?

 

[solid7]

Everything is "crap" in its early days. The mark of a product's success lies in its continued marketability. Catia V5 was a steaming pile of dung in the early releases. I wouldn't give the same review today.

That being said, Enovia is extrememly expensive. If you are a small company considering a PDM, I would look more towards SmarTeam. Enovia is great if you're defining an entire product - like an airplane. (i.e. - Boeing or Airbus)

On the other hand, Enovia does have some really great features for product configuration and history. Effectivity is handled very nicely through Enovia/LCA, as well as being able to manage multiple part use.

I guess it depends on how much you want to spend, and what you expect in return. You will need some discipline to use any PDM system, and as a supplier to many small aerospace companies, this is the number one thing that I see lacking. If it were my decision for 90% of the companies that I work with, I'd start small, and work on getting "in the routine", and learning the ropes before taking the Enovia plunge. It's a really huge investment.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Catia Design|Catia Design News|Catia V5 blog

 

[catiajim]

It all depends upon what you need. The ENOVIA suit of tools has it's pros and cons, as do all other systems.

If you are a single CAD System customer and are looking for a vPDM system to help manage your 3-D Design, and the integration and exposure of this 3D is a primary driver, then you need to select the system that is produced by the supplier of your CAD System.

If you are looking for a system that has more power in Project Management then you might need to chose a different supplier. If you need integration with your ERP, you should look to your ERP supplier.

As I said, it all depends...

 

[l3ob]

We are facing a project where the customer is requiring Enovia for a rather large chunck of an aircraft. A couple of our people had experienced Enovia a few years ago at Boeing and found it troublesome and problematic, including loosing catia models. Our IBM/Dassault partner from whom we purchase our licenses assures us that Enovia is now a good PDM product. We are trying to gather some real life user feedback to get the truth of the matter from those folks that have to use it day to day. Is life better or worse with it?

 

[solid7]

Well, if your customer requires it, it doesn't much matter if life is better or worse under it.

"Better or worse" are relative terms which mean different things to different people. Are you an end-user, purchaser, manager, or configuration controller?

Enovia does its job just fine. There's nothing to be afraid of from the product itself, cost withstanding. If it were my customer requiring Enovia specifically for one project, I'd be negotiating for them to pitch in, if not pay for it. The Enovia requirement would eliminate most, if not all of your competition from bidding, anyway.

I have successfully petitioned customers to purchase the required (Catia/PLM) software for a project in the past. While I'm not saying that it would work in your case, it's something to think about. It's better to have it as a remnant than to have to buy it non-proactively.

Your questions are a bit vague overall, but I hope that helps you to some degree.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Catia Design|Catia Design News|Catia V5 blog

 

[catiajim]

Asking people if ENOVIA makes their life better or not is a VERY loaded question. We use ENOVIA VPM (the old version), and overall it has helped us improve our processes significantly. That being said, however, my engineers curse it at least once a day

Any software as large and complex as CATIA and ENOVIA has its share of bugs. Sometimes they are trivial (but annoying), and other times they can absolutely stop progress. Both of these products have come a long way in the past 5 years, and they are fairly stable platforms now, depending on the usage.

As with any software, it's all about the implementation. Any software is only as good as the processes that surround it, and it is very easy to impose a set of unworkable processes. Then who gets the blame? The software.