DDM Licensing

[Rbrgr83]

I've got a controversial question.


I'm getting ready to start rolling with Desgin Data Manager here shortly for my department. We're currently use ProE standalone. Ive been through extensive work with DDM and i'm fairly confident that we should have a reletively smooth transition.


My problem is that for the purposes of setup and testing, we purchased 2 licenses of DDM. Our department has 7 ProE users and 1 additional manager who will potentialy use DDM (office). Do I really need to purchase 8 licenses for DDM, or can I get buy with less due to the floating nature of DDM? I only ask because the guy who made the decision for us to use DDM (who is of course no longer with the company) swore up and down that the 2 licenses is all we would need.


Was he blowing smoke?

 

[walkerone]

Hi Rbrgr83,


I would suggest that you need one license for each concurrent user - so if all your Pro/E guys are working at once, you need 7 off DDM Pro licenses. The issue is that to save to DDM you need the license running - and as our Pro/E guys save frequently, they each have a license. The license cost and maintenance should be a fraction of what you are paying for the Pro/E seats anyway....


For the cost of the license, you are probably best getting a DDM Office license for the manager as well - you can use this to test out the other functionality of DDM whilst your CAD jockies are all working away.


BTW we have 4 DDM Pro licenses (for 4 Pro/E seats), and 12 DDM Office - I am in the process of rolling out DDM across the engineering department to handle all documents created - from four different CAD systems, as well as Microsoft Office, pdf, etc. We will then be using DDM to control our ECN & QPN processes as well.


Good luck!

 

[Big D]

Rbrgr83,

I agree with walkerone. We match the number of DDM licences to Pro/E licences. We currently have 5 Pro/E, 5 DDM and a couple of office licences for non-CAD users. However, we actually have 6 regular Pro/E users and one occasional, so we're running about 83% availability. So the guy who is in late has to make the coffee and do the filing!

Davy

 

[etron]

I would be interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on the DDM system. I have been looking at getting this for our group of (4). Have you had any serious issues with the program? How much time do you spend maintaining things? How user friendly is it and most of all does it serve most or all of your purposes? Thanks in advance.


Ron

 

[walkerone]

Hi Ron,


There are some other threads with discussions on the DDM system which are worth the read - I've contributed to a few.


We've been using it for over 18 months now with 4 seats of Pro/Engineer, and for us it suits our needs - that's the key question really for you to consider with the various CAD management systems available.


CSI do allow you to download a trial version of the software to try out - so you'll be able to see for yourself if you think it is user friendly.


Cheers.

 

[Big D]

Hi Ron,

Take a look at my DDM posts under my alter-ego, Davy (dead e-mail address).

Serious issues? No and very good support team.
Maintenance? Minimal. We're a small company (11 people, 6 engineers), so cannot sustain a full time admin guy for anything!
User friendly? Dead easy to use. Not much tailoring can be done, which in my opinion is a good thing. Sort of looks after itself.
Does it serve it's purpose. Definitely.

Download it and try it. I've pretty limited IT skills and managed to migrate the DDM server from an old XP box (set up by CSI orginally) to a windows server without any problems. I'm sure you'll be able to set up a trial quite easily.

Davy