Hi All, We are considering purchasing PDM Works, and I would like to talk to some users about there experiences good and Bad. Any Takers? -- Keven R Roche Sr. Designer Pivotal Power Inc 150 Bluewater Road Bedford, NS B4B 1G9 Canada V 902 835-7268 (ext. 270) F 902 835-6026 www.pivotalpower.com
I really hated PDMworks when we first got it, but now I find it is invaluable! The BEST advice I can give you, is:- 1, Have your VAR, set it up for you, NO if's or but's! 2, Use a sensible document numbering system, no revisions in the part number. IE:- 1000******, for sheet metal Parts, 2000******, for engineering parts, etc (I put a P, A or D at the end, for part, assembly or Drawing document). 3, Have LOTS of Prototype numbers, if doing design work and using auto revision update. (You can bump the revision up, to what ever you want, but you can never bump revisions down) 4, Do the PDMworks course, as well as, all of the people using PDMworks. 5, Play with TEST documents, before using important ones. 6, PANIC! when things go wrong!, If something does go wrong, do NOT, do/change anything until you have spoken to an expert. 7, Set your Vault, Toolbox (with enabled copy parts) and Document Templates, on a server or better still, on a 1Gb network, XP Pro machine, with serial raid drives and a usb Omega backup drive,( Do a full system backup and set to backup every 2 hours with unlimited file revision backup). I learnt the hard way, when my brand new hard drives went tits up, over the xmas holidays. Call me paranoid if you wish, but now I live in peace, sigh! Now where is that beer?
Wow, I'm impressed. Mr. Newbie answered like a real pro! Great advice! I think he was on my ignore list for a while because of some wildly inaccurate PDMW posts, but this certainly changes my opinion! Sorry if you had to learn the hard way, but thanks for sharing what you've learned! matt
Pete, Thanks for that well earned battle advice, I'll tip a cold one in your name, and file it away for future reference. I should have been a more specific in my posting. Background: All our SW files reside on a NT Based Server through a gigabit Ethernet. We have our own PDM system in place. However we experience serious slow drawing loads. AND it has been suggested that by using PDM Works we could "check" our files to our local hard drives and remove the overhead of the server and improve speed. How has your experience been with that? Have you seen a noticeable improvement? Thanks Keven
Kevin, I don't think there is a noticeable improvement in large assembly or drawing loads. If you have PDMWorks place its "copy" locally, then you will see improvements in saves, since you don't have to send all that data down the network pipeline everytime. PDMWorks is pretty cool and definetly can save some time and headache if you have multiple users, or a really bad one. Its biggest drawback to me is lack of file compression for revised files. With lots and lots of job data, and multiple revisions, you start racking up MB's quickly. Some think hard drive or server space is pretty cheap, but MIS folks don't, when they are strapped for cash. Mr. Pickles
If you purchase the software make sure to get a commitment to support the transition to it. I have seen places dive into it with little expert help and then get themselves into real trouble. Before you start, what is the problem you are trying to solve? You don't have to state it here, but I ask that for your own benefit. Do you have a real good handle on what it is you have to manage and how you have to manage it? Do you know what your revision scheme is? Do you know what kind of data you have to manage? If you are using models with large numbers of configurations, will PDMWorks effectively deal with that? Do you have models with external references? Will PDMWorks deal well with that? Even your part numbering scheme may be part of your decision. Do you have to interface with other software? Besides looking here, have a look at the PDMWorks forum on the SW website. That is where you will find a lot of the issues and answers type stuff since it is the only forum where someone from SW actually gets involved on a regular basis. It is a Joy to be there. I will retiterate, when you decide to implement, make sure to get a commitment to support the transition. You may have to pay for this, but it will be worth every penny.
Keven, Yes, having PDMworks load the documents to you "local machine", really does speed things up. In our case, a typical 300 part assembly, loads in seconds as opposed to minutes, when we used to load from our server. Upgrade the "local machine" to a serial ATA drive, there is a BIG speed increase when loading. I have just upgraded to the latest version of MacAfee antivirus and this also gave a speed increase. I don't have time to nip off for a quick coffee break now, whilst waiting for an assembly to load up. :-(
Gush!,(turning a slight shade of red!), lol I must admit, I got most of this information from your web site, the rest from personal experience and my Var. As you know, I also like to promote good information, when this is supplied, as on your site. But I have one question, that I can not find the answer too. How can I batch print all of the drawing documents, from a project folder, or even, check out all of the drawing documents from a project folder, in one go? At the moment I can only do one at a time, which is very slow, also it is easy to miss one. :-(
.... ....well... I can neither confirm nor deny that what you ask for will or will not be available in a few months... but in the mean time, you could get copies (use Open, with the "open now" switch turned off) of all the drawings, and yeah, for now you'd have to do it one by one. Then you could use the batch utility to print them. I don't know if the batch will allow you to open the drawings view only so you don't need the associated models or not, but it would be worth checking out. matt
