PDMWorks Dealing with configurations

[crimsonlake]

Hello all,
My company is in the process of implementing PDMWorks. We have had SW ofice for two years and just upgraded to SW 2004 Office Pro to be able to utilize PDMWorks. We also purchased the advanced server.
My question is this. How can we handle revision control of configurations in PDMWorks. Out of the box it looks as if this is not possible. Our sales rep has been trying to track down an answer also.
It seams as if the default config is the only one that PDMWorks manages.
We need to be able to bump revisions of configurations independant of one another.

PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!

Chris

 

[J-C]

PDM/Works doesn't track revisions of configurations, only the file.

It does store properties for each config though. It's possible you could store some sort of separate revision property on each config that way. At least as far as properties go.

Jason Capriotti
ThyssenKrupp Elevator

 

[Standing]

What I would suggest is to create your configuration as always. Then put your configuration into its own assembly model. Now make a drawing of that assembly. Your drawing will show the revision you put in the assembly. The model that has the configuration can be anything at all, because it does not show on the drawing.
This is the way we do it for single piece where parts that get a bill of material on the drawing have the description in the BOM is different than the description in the title block.


Bradley

 

[RawheadRex]

Hi Chris,

The bottom line is that PDMWorks was never built to work with managing of SW configurations in the first place. That's not especially good news seeing that you guy went out and specifically bought SW Office Pro and Advanced Server in order to implement PDM. I don't know if this came up during your evaluation prior to purchase but if anyone told you otherwise then they were flat out lying to you.

The good news is that Bradley's suggestion (one that I had never before heard or considered) is pretty damn good work around. That ought to work fairly smoothly for anyone needed to manage configurations in PDM Works even though it adds a layer to the management of file references (which you're going to want to pay close attention to when dealing with these types of parts).

For what it's worth SmarTeam is a PDM system that I have experience with as well. It manages configurations quite well. There is a considerable amount of additional overhead attached with it however.

Not especially good news but hopefully it helps in an informational sense.



Chris Gervais
Sr. Mechanical Designer
Lytron Corp.

 

[Standing]

Thank you Chris Gervais for the nice compliment.


Bradley

 

[tvrman]

crimsonlake

Our company implemented PDMWorks a couple of years ago (we were one of the first companies in southern California to do). As the department cad administrator I had many such questions that needed to be answered prior to and after the implementation. We had originally implemented “Smart Team” followed by “Quicksilver DDM”. We had limited success with both applications for several varying reasons. RawheadRex and Gildashard were both right in their assessment that PDMWorks does not fully track configurations, although they have made a number of improvements to the software that allow configurations revisions to be tracked in the Solidworks configuration specific properties of the Solidworks model files. PDMWorks are (I am told) in the process of adding some more functionality to the software that will better deal with configuration properties.

In our companies case we wanted to present our component models in a much more real world approach, so we adopted the use of the “Base Part” technique to deal with variants of our model files, for example: we manufacture a lot of die cast components that are machined at different levels of complexity depending on the application usage, these components have different part numbers and may or may not need to revised independently. The old system that we used was (as you had mentioned earlier) adding different configurations to document all of the different versions of the casting, “As Cast”, “As Machined” etc, leaving us in the same situation as your company. By using the “Base Part” method (now known in Solidworks as “Insert Part”), we have the ability to model and revise our machined components independently whilst still maintaining that associative link to casting model. This represents much more of a real world approach to the modeling of such parts, since the features that belong to the casting are in the casting model and only the features that belong to the particular machined version of the component reside in that particular model file. In short the above scenario allows PDMWorks to deal with our old configurations as separate model files, and from a design point of view we get the added benefit that some of our older and excruciatingly slow mutli-configuration model files are now very simple to edit and we don’t spend our days sitting around waiting for model rebuilds.

There are many different solutions to the configuration issue within PDMWorks. We had numerous issues to overcome in our PDMWorks implementation and so far we have found all of the answers that we needed.


John Cole
Sr Mechanical Engineer
Impco Technologies, Inc.

 

[crimsonlake]

Thank you all for your responses.
The idea of using a base model may work for us.
I have also thought that as far as released drawings we can control the revision at the drawing level when we check in the drawing.
Our multisheet drawings that have different manufacturing processes (i.e. flame cut and machining)would have to have the revision bumped as a set of drawings as opposed by individual part. We can accept this.
At the part level however, we still have the rev level tracking issue. That's where the base part scenario may come in.
Does anyone see a problem with doing this?


Thanks,
Chris

 

[tvrman]

crimsonlake

We also have blueprints that reference multiple model files. For example we have "As Cast" and "As Machined" sheets on our blueprints, what we do is very simple, the model file controls the revision of the drawing. This is done by creating a Solidworks property link between the revision symbol in the drawings sheet and the revision value in the models property areas. This is solidworks functionality and not PDMWorks functionality, but it works just fine for our company.

In the case of multi configuration models and how to control the revision level in PDMWorks then lets look at Bradley’s approach (which I am not trying to knock, because it is a good suggestion that may work for some scenario’s), but I feel that you have to understand the full effects of such an approach to really know if it will work for your company.

As I see Bradley’s assy approach to multi configs it would be something as follows:

Multi-Config Part file (PDMWorks Revision level A):

The above model file contains the following configurations:

Configuration No.1 (Revision Level B). Referenced by Assy No.1 (Revision Level B).

Configuration No.2 (Revision Level C). Referenced by Assy No.2 (Revision Level C).

Configuration No.3 (Revision Level D). Referenced by Assy No.3 (Revision Level D).

Based on the above scenario there becomes a requirement to change a dimension in Configuration No.2 of the above model file. This change requires the revision of the “Configuration Specific” model property to be bumped to Revision Level D., and also the Assy No.2 needs to have its revision level bumped to Revision Level D.

The key issue with revision levels in PDMWorks is not how we present the revision level in the database, but how do we store the revision history (This is the real issue).

Looking at the above assy file scenario the problem becomes that in order to track the configuration specific revision of the above model file you are going to need to check-in the model with the changes to the Configuration No.2. But more importantly it will be necessary to bump the rev level of the model file in PDMWorks in order to create the required history (in this case to Revision Level B) along with an Assy No.2 file check-In and revision bump to rev D.

In short what relevance does the part files revision level have to the actual configurations rev level and how much work is this technique going to create if all of your PDMWorks files are using the same design approach. Furthermore using a separate assy file to track config rev levels of a part model is counter-productive and just defeats the use of configuration in the first place (configurations were designed to eliminate the multiple document approach).

You need to find a process that works best for your companies design approach, but most importantly it needs to be simple and the data needs to be available in a manner that all of your companies employees can easily understand. If you are to be the Vault administrator you are probably going to be the most conversant with PDMWorks in your organization, others may not find things as simple to follow. The vault has to be usable by the least capable Engineer/designer in you company, not just the best. KEEP IT SIMPLE.


John Cole
Sr Mechanical Engineer
Impco Technologies, Inc.