Solidworks PDM

[Evil Flo]

I have been asked to study the possibility to use the Solidworks PDM system to manage our ProE files (Wildfire 4.0).

Did anybody try it out and can share this experience?

I am aware of a the many other PDM systems and I have read the other threads on that subject, I would like an opinion on that particular Solidworks PDM product.

Merci!

 

[djor]

Hello Evil


We are in process of moving off of PDMLink and onto Solidworks EPDM. Many reasons, but mainly we have more Solidworks than Pro/E right now.We just want access to Pro/E stuff as legacy/maint and will turn to Solidworks for all work eventually.


The EPDM data manager is not a full PLM like Windchill, it is PDM.


The Pro/E interface is frankly not very good right now but Solidworks is working very hard to bring it up to snuff. No support for mfg files right now but they are working on that too as it is important to us.


You should know that the EPDM interface is Pro/Toolkit based. It needs Pro/E running or starts and runs Pro/E in the background to perform basic operation. (pro/e licenses are needed) Also, toolkit based data managers have limitations. Toolkit cannot do the same type of interegations of model relationships, etc that the PDMLink can. It uses a Pro/E session to determine relationships and then you do not get 'type' of relationship, like Mergefor instance. Family objects are not treated as separate objects, they are displayed as tabs on the generic, you cannot search by instance name as there is no pysical file. If you have large assemblies, you could have trouble with a toolkit based data manager as the assembly would need to be brought into a session each time database operations take place, like check-in for instance, the in-session relationships are what the database records.


That said; if you are a part, drw, assy only house and have few large assys, the EPDM will, in the next couple releases, be a viable option.