RawheadRex
Mechanical
I am contributing to the development of a set of standards regarding the proper use of PDMWorks at my company. They've had PDMWorks for a couple of years before I joined earlier this year but it's apparent that the tool was never properly implemented after the installation as problems with files retrieved from the vault is significant. The types of specific issues encountered are too numerous to get into. But needless to say, the time for putting standards in place is overdue.
I've peeled through a good portion of the PDMWorks related posts from the past year or so and read discussion of different aspects of the software that were very helpful. However I didn't come across any overly enlightening discussion of a few topics that I believe are relevant to application of "best practices" in PDMWorks where I work. Therefore I'm hoping that people can comment on how they manage/deal with the following:
1. Managing part models that are used in multiple assemblies. This is a major headache for us as we deal with a large number of components (both purchased & manufactured) that get used in multiple assembly models. PDMWorks doesn't really have the ability to generate a list of assemblies where a given part is used "on-the-fly" (I am aware of the "where used" tab in the document info window but this is cumbersome at best IMO) when checking out that part for revision. By definition, any assembly where the part in question get used should be part of the ECN (at least where I am anyhow) but PDMW doesn't recognize automatically that these assemblies are affected. I administered a SmarTeam installation in a former "life" and am used to this happening automatically in that world. Do I have to slog through those tabs and figures this out the hard way and check out the affected assemblies manually? How do people deal with this?
2. What is the philosophy regarding "check out" versus "open" and then "take ownership" with files? E.g. I open an assembly file with its references using PDMW and then "take ownership" of the assembly itself and just the components that are affected by an ECN. Anything inherently good or bad with this approach?
3. Staying with the example in my second question, say I have changed three out of seven components in the assembly (and therefore the assembly itself as well) but I opened one of the components that isn't included in this group perhaps to simply look at something but the file gets updated and saved somehow. Upon "check in" PDMW indicates to me that this "unchanged" (from my perspective) file is newer than the vault version (upward green arrow is displayed). Assume that I don't know for certain why that is the case but I'm quite sure nothing should have changed with this part. I know that if something did change on a this part that isn't specified in the ECN then the scope of the ECN just increased by some unknown percentage. If one uses their imagination they might see how this can propagate in a far ranging manner. Checking everything out seems like overkill in my opinion and could actually "mask" a change that wasn't accounted for in the ECN (e.g. a component not listed in the ECN that contains in-context geometry to another component that is affected). How do people handle these kinds of scenarios?
4. What types of customizations has anyone written or used with PDMWorks Advanced Server? I have the API manual and a couple of ideas that I think would assist the cause of my group if we were to purchase this module. The things is that the exposed API functionality doesn't appear to me to be very mature in terms of being able to enforce "business rules" by writing an application that runs along side PDMW and SW.
Thanks,
Chris Gervais
Sr. Mechanical Designer
Lytron Corp.
I've peeled through a good portion of the PDMWorks related posts from the past year or so and read discussion of different aspects of the software that were very helpful. However I didn't come across any overly enlightening discussion of a few topics that I believe are relevant to application of "best practices" in PDMWorks where I work. Therefore I'm hoping that people can comment on how they manage/deal with the following:
1. Managing part models that are used in multiple assemblies. This is a major headache for us as we deal with a large number of components (both purchased & manufactured) that get used in multiple assembly models. PDMWorks doesn't really have the ability to generate a list of assemblies where a given part is used "on-the-fly" (I am aware of the "where used" tab in the document info window but this is cumbersome at best IMO) when checking out that part for revision. By definition, any assembly where the part in question get used should be part of the ECN (at least where I am anyhow) but PDMW doesn't recognize automatically that these assemblies are affected. I administered a SmarTeam installation in a former "life" and am used to this happening automatically in that world. Do I have to slog through those tabs and figures this out the hard way and check out the affected assemblies manually? How do people deal with this?
2. What is the philosophy regarding "check out" versus "open" and then "take ownership" with files? E.g. I open an assembly file with its references using PDMW and then "take ownership" of the assembly itself and just the components that are affected by an ECN. Anything inherently good or bad with this approach?
3. Staying with the example in my second question, say I have changed three out of seven components in the assembly (and therefore the assembly itself as well) but I opened one of the components that isn't included in this group perhaps to simply look at something but the file gets updated and saved somehow. Upon "check in" PDMW indicates to me that this "unchanged" (from my perspective) file is newer than the vault version (upward green arrow is displayed). Assume that I don't know for certain why that is the case but I'm quite sure nothing should have changed with this part. I know that if something did change on a this part that isn't specified in the ECN then the scope of the ECN just increased by some unknown percentage. If one uses their imagination they might see how this can propagate in a far ranging manner. Checking everything out seems like overkill in my opinion and could actually "mask" a change that wasn't accounted for in the ECN (e.g. a component not listed in the ECN that contains in-context geometry to another component that is affected). How do people handle these kinds of scenarios?
4. What types of customizations has anyone written or used with PDMWorks Advanced Server? I have the API manual and a couple of ideas that I think would assist the cause of my group if we were to purchase this module. The things is that the exposed API functionality doesn't appear to me to be very mature in terms of being able to enforce "business rules" by writing an application that runs along side PDMW and SW.
Thanks,
Chris Gervais
Sr. Mechanical Designer
Lytron Corp.
