When SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2013′s new “Delayed State Notification” function first came out, I imagined it being used to watch for bottle necks in the file’s life-cycle. In sort, a way to keep documents from sitting on someone’s “desk” for too long and being forgotten.
I recently was working with a company whose ISO procedures required them to review certain documents on a yearly basis.
Cake.
Now management is alerted automatically by EPDM when a file needs reviewed.
Out of the box SolidWorks Enterprise PDM gives you the ability to populate your drop lists based on SQL query results. I use this functionality all the time to give my users a list of qualified suppliers from a purchasing database, lists of users in a specified group, choices of product type, etc.
The limitation is that these queries are all based off of constant values. These queries are run by the EPDM server on a predefined interval, and the results are stored in the EPDM database. This method is fast, but it eliminates the ability to populate the lists based on properties of the file itself.
Granted with EPDM’s “Controlled by variable” option,
you can change the query based on one other variable, but if you want to use more than one variable or the file’s physical properties, PigeonHole makes the process very easy.
This video gives a quick demonstration showing how.
If you are using Active Directory for your SolidWorks Enterprise PDM authentication, and you have A LOT of user accounts within EPDM, expanding the “Users” node within the administration tool can take longer than a story from Great Aunt Eleanor about the advantages of dual ranked RDIMMs over single ranked UDIMMs.
The wait is caused by EPDM checking each user’s status against Active Directory.
Instead of expanding the users node; right mouse button click on “Users” and select OPEN to trigger a users dialog. This is much quicker, since it by-passes the bulk-authentication step.
As a side note, if you have less than 25 users, and it is taking more than five seconds to authenticate those users, you may have some network health issues that may need addressing.
Last week I showed you that you could use PigeonHole for smarter drop lists in your EPDM data cards. PigeonHole also has the ability to put EPDM serial numbers into your cards.
With PigeonHole, if you want to use different serial numbers, enclose the name of the serial number between two pound symbols (#Serial Number#) as a choice in your drop lists. The user will see this choice, in this format, when picking from the list, but the choice will be converted into the proper serial number once he accepts the dialog box settings.
It is easy, check it out:
Much easier than creating many different data cards or writing your own EPDM add-in.
Today I was doing some consulting work for a SolidWorks Enterprise PDM customer of another VAR. Look at this screen shot of the number of lists they were using for their data cards. Each of their customers have their own list of cities, countries, contacts…it’s very nice because their data cards are very accurate -great for searching!
Lots of lists!…this is just what I was able to fit on the screen, they have at least twice this many. Takes effort to maintain, and their card logic is rather gruesome.
Rather hard to set up, but this example at least it can be done because EPDM’s droplists can be populated dependent on the value of one other variable. There are some scenarios that cannot solved with EPDM lists on a single card. As an example, imagine you made gates and the width of the gate is dependent on two (or more) variables. [Perhaps your model "GXT" gate comes in two widths in the aluminum version and three widths in the wood version; but the "JSS" model comes in four widths per aluminum and wood, and there is a steel version too!]
I run into these issues often, and the solution is always to find another solution, have weaker data cards, deal with incomplete searches and reports, or I write an add-in to accomplish what they are looking for.
After years of creating a company specific add-ins that I had to write over and over, I decided to create an add-in that could be used by anyone.
The goals:
Here is a video of the final product.
As you can see from this video, it is easy to setup and does quite a bit more than the original goals. (It is hard to stop, once you get going!) I’ll talk about the additional features in future blog entries, or you can go through all the videos tagged: “PigeonHole” in the 3DVision YouTube channel.
I thought the idea of putting an image of the workflow on a SolidWorks Enterprise PDM data card was rather clever. Yesterday, I received an email from a customer in Dayton who has taken the concept one step further:
They put data card controls on top of the image. As files go through transitions, the transition puts the values into the controls. Users can now quickly see the history of the file in a nice graphical form.
You don’t have control over the order of objects on a data card, but it appears a bitmap is always on the bottom, -which in this case is exactly what you want.
Recently I saw a SolidWorks Enterprise PDM data card similar to this one created by one of our customers in Indiana:
At the bottom of their data cards, they include a [static] picture of the file’s workflow. I thought it was a rather clever idea.
A little more than a year ago, with DriveWorks 7, DriveWorks introduced Specification Flow. Many people rejoiced, many were confused. I had several people ask why they would need specification flow when they already had workflow through their PDM.
At first glance, many Enterprise PDM users assume the two functionalities overlap…their interfaces look rather similar and they both have similar sounding names, but actually they [can] have completely different functions because they fit in different areas of your company’s order timeline.
DriveWorks’ specification flow is oftentimes the flow of a potential order…before any files are even generated.
The specifications of the order can be stored within DriveWorks, you can make changes, generate approval drawings, even have people approve the acceptance of an order without any files having to be generated.
Once you and the customer agree it is time to start, DriveWorks can create the files (CAD, BOMs, acceptance letters, spare parts lists, ERP information, etc.) place them into the PDM system where they can then have their own workflow independent of the DriveWorks system.
Let’s mix things up a bit. Typically you come here to see what I know, now I want to see what you know.
How well do you understand the behavior of these popular EPDM search options?
Question 1: Checking the option below will give you:
A. Every version of every file since being in the specified state (i.e. some files may be listed more than once)
B. All files that have ever been in the specified state, but only the version that was in that state is listed
C. All files that have ever been in the specified state, but only the latest version of the file is listed, even if that version is not in the specified state
Question 2: If you have the option in question one checked AND the option below unchecked, you will get:
A. Nothing
B. All files that have ever been in the specified state, but only the version that was in that state is listed
C. Only files currently in the specified state
Question 3: If you have the option in question one AND two checked, you will get:
A. Nothing
B. All files that have ever been in the specified state, but only the version that was in that state is listed
C. Only files currently in the specified state
—-
Since EPDM’s searches are preformed by SQL, they are quick and powerful. If you can dream the conditions of a search you likely can search on it – you just have to pick the proper options!
Answers: 1:B, 2:C, 3:B
A few days ago I demonstrated how to easily compare documents with SolidWorks DrawCompare. Since that date, my Inbox has exploded! Thousands of you want to know if they can use this method with their files inside of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM.
Comparing two separate files within EPDM is easy. Just follow the steps from “Compare images and drawings“.
Comparing two different versions of the same file is a bit harder because EPDM gives you either:
or:
Not much help.
To use EPDM’s “advanced” compare feature, the comparing program either needs to accept arguments on the command line or use its API. DrawCompare has neither.
You need to have a copy of the two version of the file in a location where you can manually load them into DrawCompare. Here is how to make a copy of those versions and place them on your desktop.
For the user/group you want to update, go to their settings, file compare and “add” a compare program. Next choose which extensions you want to compare. I use “dwg,dxf,jpg,bmp,tif,slddrw”.
For the path to the compare program, you cannot simply enter the DOS command COPY because EPDM is expecting a program, not a DOS command. However the program “cmd.exe” will allow you to send the COPY command to it as an argument.
Remember your old DOS command line days?
You could enter this following line into the “path of the compare program” and you would be finished…
c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /C COPY "%1%" "c:\users\tim\desktop" && COPY "%2%" "c:\users\tim\desktop"
…as long as your are logged into the computer as “tim” and your cmd.exe program is located in the “windows\system32″ directory. You could certainly go through each user’s settings and ensure you are using the proper file paths, or you could take advantage of environment variables.
You can define your computer’s environment variables through the control panel. However the ones we’ll need (the location of our desktop and the location of the cmd.exe program) are likely already defined. To confirm, go to a DOS prompt and enter the word “SET” and hit enter. You should get a result resembling this image:
Notice the environment variable “ComSpec” is showing where my cmd.exe file is located, and “USERPROFILE” is showing the location of my user profile – and my desktop is a sub directory off of that.
Substituting these environment variables (surrounded by %’s) into the line above, I get:
%ComSpec% /C COPY "%1%" "%USERPROFILE%\desktop" && COPY "%2%" "%USERPROFILE%\desktop"
I can enter this same line of text for everyone in my company, and their chosen files should be copied to their desktop.
Want to see it in action?
Viava the command line!
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