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Does anyone use or have any input on Design data manager? We are looking for a third party program to handle our data instead of "any" of the ptc products?
Hi,
I undertook a fairly extensive evaluation of DDM last year and would have to say. I was impressed. It is straight forward to install, easily configured to your needs yet has decent work flows built in if you just need a basic data management tool.
I liked the 'feel' of the product and, to me at least, it was simple and logical in it's approach. Unlike most data managers, it even looks great, which might not mean much, but I find a good looking product helps to sell itself to the user community, and most data managers look dreary and drab!! In terms of data management, ease of use and an attractive interface go a long way to encouraging users to use the tools as opposed to dreary complex ones that discourage users and cause them to manage the files 'elsewhere' in the system!
I used to work for PTC and I still love all their products as they are designed to work together and do so very well (don't always think so much of PTC themselves though!!), but DDM is an excellent alternative, handling most relationships between Pro/E objects very well. The single most frustrating 'missing' functionality was that it didn't understand the deep-down relationships between objects created using the pro/E Top Down Design Methodologies (Publish/Copy geoms, etc), but that was a minor problem compared with the many positives that the software provides. It handles other data types very well also and allows the establishment of relationships between disparate objects, a Pro/E part and a word.doc for example.
I have worked to a lesser extent with other data managers such as SmarTeam, and frankly that product is way too complicated and not at all logical in it's approach from my perspective.
The people behind DDM are very helpful, friendly and make it seem at least that nothing is too much trouble.
I would recommend downloading the fully functional trial (I think you get the first license free in order to give you a really fair trial), getting it installed (it only takes an hour or so) and giving it a thoroughly good go, I think you'll like it. Follow the various tutorials on the website, they are very instructive and give a good insight in to the day to day working of the tool.
See my many posts on DDM. Definitely download the trial and see how it works with your data.
I think it is a great product. We have used it for 4 years. It has it's limitations, but it is the law of diminishing returns. You get so much bang for your buck with DDM, the incremental improvement (+
We recently purchased DDM after months of testing and evaluation of other data management products. We have been a long standing user of PTC products. There are some enhancements coming to DDM in the very near future that will help to put it in equal comparison to Intralink. We also looked at Windchill and determined it was too much for our needs from an installation, support, cost, and ongoing administration. DDM offers us additional benefits that we couldn't get with Intralink. Plus it handles a lot of CAD and other file types. Their pricing structure with floating licenses (not named user) is great. I would seriously recommend taking a strong look at DDM.
I have been looking at DDM for a while now so cannot offer first hand experience. I can, however, support the helpfullness of the people at DDM (even if sales are a little pushy
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I have plenty of experience with Intralink 3.x and about a year with PDM link. I can say, I was very comfortable with Intralink but PDMlink is just too big so would not recommend it for basic CAD data management.
DDM looks very good as long as you do not need "full" access to all of the object features. As it works through the toolkit, it does not have access to part relationships so things like part rename needs to be done with related parts "in session".
Give it a look. You can try before you buy which is good.
I found there were some big drawbacks to DDM. the show stopper for us is the copy functionality in it. Intralink 3.X handles all of the dependencies, etc, while DDM you need to do this outside and use the ProE functionality if you want to use the mass name change, reuse etc.Most of this for us is large assembly and when doing this is a total pain.
I think it has it's nitch but still lacks in areas and excels in others like the table use.
I found there were some big drawbacks to DDM. the show stopper for us is the copy functionality in it. Intralink 3.X handles all of the dependencies, etc, while DDM you need to do this outside and use the ProE functionality if you want to use the mass name change, reuse etc.Most of this for us is large assembly and when doing this is a total pain.
I think it has it's nitch but still lacks in areas and excels in others like the table use.
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