The PDM Question

[Panzer1970]

My company is in currently examining our current engineering practices and looking for ways to improve upon them. Currently, our methods are very poor, we are lacking clearly defined SOP's and not really practicing the ones we do have. One of the ways we hope to improve upon this is to implement a PDM package. Autodesk has afew options available which include Vault (very watered down PDM) and Product Stream. Additionally, there are several third party options available, amoung them we are considering Conisio and Cyco Team Works.

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with any of these packages and what their thoughts were?

Thanks

 

[DesignerMike]

I'm using the Vault, but since I'm a one man show my requirements are pretty limited.

It works well for checking files out to the laptop, and then check them back in and work on normal workstation without all the resolving files issues etc.(plus all the files are on the server which gets backed up)...and revision control etc.

I do not use that many of the features of the Vault yet so I can't say if all your PDM requirements would be satisfied.

How many people are in your group?

It's not the simplest thing to set up, and you want to have a good file structure defined ahead of time.
I have not heard a lot of good things about product stream (mostly the cost).

I think if you develop an in-house "Vault Guru" it will be able to do most things you would like to see. Plus it is still very young on the development scale so we can hope to see some major improvements...actually probably just enough to get you to pay your subscription again

 

[Panzer1970]

DesignerMike (Mechanical)
"How many people are in your group?"

Currently we have 12 people in our CAD group they include Inventor users, Autoucad users and ORcad (electrical) users.

Other information
3.0 GHz Pentium
1.5 Gb RAM
nVidia XGL 980 128 Mb Graphics Cards
OS: Windows XP
Inventor R10
Email: Lotus Notes

We currently have a very poor method of tracking revision and used on history, which are two of the item we wish to improve upon.

 

[DesignerMike]

If you are mostly concerned about revisions and "where used" information, Vault works very well for that.

It will also keep other designers from changing parts that you are using in an assembly (if you have it checked out).

Some people have commented about having too many people using one vault when it comes to performance, but 12 should be ok I would think.

Do a lot of reading about the set up and your "project" sceme so you know what to expect.
There are a couple good papers written out there about different project types, and avoiding library parts etc. It's pretty easy to lock some parts down from being modified etc, but since I'm the only one using it I gave myself full control (so I can break whatever I want and I can only blame myself)

I think the there is a bunch of other information here:

http://www.mcadforums.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=36&sid=c9e4267b644c6f958c13e32b57819ca4