Posts Tagged ‘Enterprise’

The mystery of Al Capone’s Enterprise Vault

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Today Geraldo Rivera and I will explore the mysterious SolidWorks Enteprise Vault owned by Al Capone. I wanted this to be a short little blog entry of how Al Capone used the Item Master inside of Enterprise, but Geraldo wants to make this a five part mini-series to air on ABC during sweeps week.

Item Centric PDM ability was introduced in Enterprise 2009 service pack two. Since that time there has been nothing but mystery around it. “What good is it?” People have been asking. Now, here in Capone’s server room we can see just how the Item Master could be used in industry!

The best way to think of what an item is is to imagine a datacard with no corresponding file. This item can [optionally] be linked to a file and thus be used to further describe properties of the file. What is nice is that an item can be checked in and out of the vault independently of the file, allowing you to update information about the file without changing its revision.

Geraldo has the cameras grouped around him, it appears he has found Capone’s item card. It looks just like a datacard. This one has several tabs across the top, one of them is marked “Vendor Information”

vendorcard

Geraldo explains: “As you can see here Al Capone was able to track his vendor information with this customizable item card right within Enterprise, now he could store pricing information in Enterprise and not have to change the revision of a part if the vendor’s price changed. Hey, is that Michelle Malkin in that picture?”

Take it easy there Geraldo, that is not a picture of Michelle. Let’s see what other tabs Capone has on his item card…

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Are you sure you are backed up?

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

I just got off of the phone with a SW Enteprise PDM administrator. I was getting ready to change some database settings and decided to make a backup of their database first. (Better safe than sorry, especially with someone else’s data!) I while making the backup I noticed there were no other backups in existence. Turns out for the past two years this company has not made a single database backup!! The IT guys assumed the Engineering department was making them, and vice versa.

This is the second company in two weeks I have found in this situation.

Backing up your data files on the archive server is NOT the same thing as backing up your database. Please put your mouse down, call your IT guys right now and confirm your company is backing up your Enterprise database.

Stop dancing on the mine field.

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Customizing Enterprise Addin Interface

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Years from now we’ll be sitting around the campfire telling our grandchildren of how EPDM 2009 was the version where they greatly improved the SolidWorks addin. The kids won’t believe us when we tell them how hard our lives were before.

That little pane in the bottom of the task pane is pretty sweet eh?
taskpane
…but did you know you can customize it? You can add additional variables to display here too! (By default we only get Description)

In SolidWorks, go to Enterprise options, the view settings tab, find the variable you wish to display

options1

then chose to “display in the preview”. This is a personal preference so any settings you do here are for you only, you don’t have to worry about upsetting Larry and is precious setup….but just for fun switch the order of his little troll dolls.

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Beta testing Enterprise PDM

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

We all know it is difficult to test new versions of SolidWorks. …but testing the newest version of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM is even more difficult -not only do you need to have a client machine with the new version, you also need a new version of the database and archive server too!

Tuesday Joy Garon wrote in her blog:

In an effort to alleviate part of the resource issue, the SolidWorks Beta team has created a “Hosted EPDM Beta Environment” that our EPDM customers can use to beta test with minimal effort.

SolidWorks supplies the database and archive servers and all the customer has to do is install the corresponding beta client. The customer has the ability to try out new functionality by creating their own vault or using a pre-populated test vault.

There will certainly be other things to test, but this is going to be a great tool to quickly and economically get your hands on the newest release. The sooner you get it tested, the sooner your users can start using the new time saving tools in Enterprise you have been paying for.

Jump over to her post to learn more and to sign up.

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

SolidWorks Enterprise Item Master Webinar

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

I have been asked to do a new webinar discussing Enterprise’s Item Master. This webinar will be for those already familiar with SolidWorks Enterprise PDM but are curious of the new Item Master functionality and how it could help store additional information not traditionally stored in a PDM system.

The webinar will show how to set up Enterprise’s Item master, the basics of the interface then show some “real world” examples.

If you would like to register, go to the Webinars page. See you on the 24th.

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

How to customize your place

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

If you do a lot of work in Microsoft Office and find it a chore to navigate into your SolidWorks Enterprise PDM vault view, I think I have a tip you’ll love. Check out Microsoft’s knowledge base article 826214.

It shows how to add a shortcut to your vault in the My Places section of your Open and SaveAs dialogs.

myplaces

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Lay your hands on PDM

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Some people can sit back and watch a demo jock show off his software and get a good feeling if the software they are looking at is right for them. I am not one of them. I need to touch, feel, and experiment on my own.

handsYesterday in Dayton several of our customers had just this opportunity. Don Hope and I had a “Hands on with SolidWorks Enterprise PDM” seminar. The concept was pretty simple. I gave a brief introduction of basic PDM usage, then stood back and let everyone play. Users experimented with concurrent engineering, searches and even got to experiment with Enterprise’s workflow basics.

I think the users enjoyed the opportunity to “kick the tires” on their own and test the features that were most important to them. Everyone seemed surprised how quickly they learned the software basics and were using Enterprise with such little instruction.

Think you would like to touch SolidWorks Enterprise PDM? Give your sales rep a call.

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Recommended Enterprise Upgrade Procedure

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Recommended steps for upgrading SolidWorks Enterprise 2009 either service packs or from a previous version. (If upgrading from an old version, ensure you have a license file before starting.)

1. It is recommended that all files are checked in.

2. If possible, do not uninstall all old SolidWorks Enterprise PDM clients until the upgrade is completed.

3. Backup the SQL-server SolidWorks Enterprise PDM database.

4. Make sure that no users are working in the SolidWorks Enterprise PDM file vault.

5. Upgrade the SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Archive Server software (this includes the web server if you are using it).

6. Upgrade the SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Database Server software.

7. On the database server, run \Upgrade\Upgrade.exe

8. Check the vault in the administration tool, if it has a red plus, RMC click and choose “UPGRADE”

8.1. If this is an upgrade from a previous version, enter your new license file in the Administration tool.

8.2. Since you have everyone out of the vault anyway, this may be a good time to upgrade your SQL to 2008?

9. Upgrade Clients

10. Optionally you may choose to upgrade your SolidWorks files to the new SolidWorks 2009 format. This can be accomplished with “\Support\File Version Upgrade\File Version Upgrade.exe”

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Back, then to the Future

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Mail Call!

Dear Engineering Data Specialist Man

I am working with a customer who is constantly changing his mind -as a result I am nearly losing mine! Several times now he has asked me to revert to a previous version of a design and make new modifications from there! I am using SolidWorks Enterprise PDM, is there an easy way to accomplish this?

Sincerely,
M. McFly

Dear Marty,
Logically you could make a copy of the older version on your desktop, check out the file then overwrite the file in your local cache with the version on your desktop. Actually there is an even easier way:

  • Check out the file
  • “Get” the older version (you will be notified you are going to write over the version in the cache, that is okay, say “yes”
  • Make the modifications you want, when you check in the file it will become the new next version!

It feels a bit weird getting an older version of a file while it is checked out but it is a lot easier to understand than a flux capacitor isn’t it?

Yours in engineering data service,
EDSM

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

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