Agile & SolidWorks

Hello All-

Is anyone using Agile to manage SolidWorks Files?

Any comments about this?

Best Regards,
Devon T. Sowell
3-D Design Solutions, Carlsbad, CA
760 809-9046
fax 760 434-0917
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com/
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/devonsowell/

 

I think we looked at it and went with dbWorks instead.

 

With Agile, prepare to flush a lot of $$$ down the toilet (open your wallet
and hand it over to the consultants). Expect to get nothing but a lot of
buzzwords with Agile: leveraging integrated supply paradigms, rightsizing
engineered platforms, multi-faceted solution partnering, etc. What the hell
does it all mean? I don't know...could never get a direct answer from the
"solutions provider".

 

Devon,

I've been using Agile for 8 years. I worked at their first big client,
Electroglas (no longer exists). And I've been using it at my current
company for a long time. I am a very efficient and fairly
knowledgeable Agile user.

In my opinion, it is not an enterprise wide solution. I see it barely
be able to handle change control of PDF's and Word Docs, let along SW
documents. I've not seen it be able to handle inventory control and
part requesition. Sure, they will try to sell you modules that does
this and does that, but ultimately, it is a big expense of money and
time with limited value in return.

I would look seriously at true enterprise wide applications that can
handle doc control, revision/change control, part requestition and
inventory control in one package solution. If you are already must use
Agile, start the drum beat to get replace it. The longer you have it,
the less useful it is, but the harder it is to eliminate .

Ok, enough of the that, here's how you deal with the realities. Agile
cannot handle take SolidWorks files properly. Agile is not able to
maintain links between parts, other parts, assemblies, and drawings.
Plus, if you try to put files that are too big (like over a couple of
meg's) into Agile, Agile will crash consistently when accessing those
file, becoming a very unstable platform. We have this issue with Word
Documents. Imagine what it would do with SW files.

Use PDMWorks to handle your SW files. Tell those who want you to put
SW files into Agile that Agile cannot handle them properly. SW files
are all interlinked, and this will be lost in Agile, making many of the
files useless or even corrupt, because of the blind way Agile stores
them. I've had to stave off efforts to put SW files in Agile a couple
of times. Of course, Agile's suggested work around? Print to PDF and
store those instead. So that's what we do. Maybe you can use
eDrawings instead of PDF. Either way, we manage our SW files very
effectively with PDMWorks.