Pro/Intralink capabilities?

[MichailS]

Hi

I finally managed to convince a company here that we really need a PDM system, so I have received green light in choosing and implementing one.

It is clear that we will work with Pro/E so I assume that PTC solutions will fit us best.

Now, when I look for information of the available solutions, all I find are PDFs with a bunch of ridiculous bombastic blathering buzzwords that require a great deal of deciphering in order to discern what the crap they actually do.

So now I wonder if someone here can point me to some resource where I can get information about the capabilities WITHOUT the stupid marketspeak? A cost estimate would be nice too.

I could of course talk to our local vendors, but I predict they will insist on meetings where there will be shakings of hands and wide grins and lies and attempts at cameraderie and toasting and lies and swearing of blood brethren and promises of future mutually beneficial business and more lies. I would prefer to get the information from more neutral sources.

I take it these are layers in a gradually more complex chain? :

Pro/Intralink - just CAD
Windchill PDMLink - CAD and other documents, web-based
Windchill ProjectLink - God knows what the heck this does.

Help? Thanks!

 

[ankarl]

It all depends on what you want the system to do and how you want to work with it.


IntraLink is a document and model managment system, NOT a PDM.


It is great at handling documents and models with version control and all the complex pro/e relationships between files. It can also handle other non-pro/e documents such as MS-Office and even Autocad 2d.
It also has limited workflow capabilities but if you aim for an enterprise workflow with MRP integration (handling items and BOM's) I would recomend a true PDM system.

 

[MichailS]

Hello and thank you for sharing knowledge!

I think we are mostly only interested in version/relationship controls, since the project leader is explicitly not interested in having to learn entire new suites (he's actually retired and only engaged as an expert), so I doubt he will want to lay out time schedules and such in a PDM system.

I was uncertain if Pro/I could handle non-Pro/E documents, which it must be able to. We will be stuffing office docs and FEA analysies in and out.

Further, the project leader will be mobile and want to access the information remotely, without having to have Pro/E installed. It seems as if PDMLink allows this, but does Pro/I?

We are going to be a halfdozen people stationed in various cities collaborating, so the project is not very large in that aspect. But we are doing somewhat high-end and mission-critical stuff and we can't afford snafus, much precisely because we are just a handful. Big demands, small staff.

 

[bcooper]

Before you get involved with ProIntralink, Check and see what the future holdes for the 3.4 version. We have been using Pro Intralink for several years up to version 3.3 when we migrated to 8.0 with the intention of eventually going to Winchill's PDM package. When we migrated we lost a lot of the capabilities we had with the 3.3 version such as handeling non- PTC files, we can import and export, but can not manipulate or change the files.


We did like the 3.3 version of intralink for simple document storage and management.


I could be wrong but I think there is a plan to end support for the 3.X versions of Intralink.

 

[MichailS]

Really? That was very interesting! Thanks a lot!

I am having brochures for Pro/Intralink 9.0 here, and from a superficial glance (read: what little facts I can discern from the ridiculous marketing babble) it looks like PDMLink is what offers non-Pro/E capabilities while it is only hastily mentioned for Intralink.

This could mean that the functionality has been moved up a step. I would not be surprised if it has been changed as an added incentive to get people to upgrade to PDMLink, which I expect to cost way more.

 

[seanlittle]

Hello

ProIntralink 8.0 and beyond is web based so you do not need to have proe installed, but you may want some of the viewer capabilities(product view lite, [free]). It is essentially the same software as windchill, but trimmed down to do basic proe file management.