DBWorks Administrator Training

For those who went through DBWorks "Administrator Training",
How many days would you recommend purchasing?

 

We had four. More would be better. BUT, most important would be to set
things up so you are ready to go right after the training and put into
practice what you learn. IMHO it would be better to ask them to help
set you up and learn the rest as you go.


Good program but you are expected to do a lot.

 

Been using PDMW for 3 1/2 years.

Pushed PDMW to it's breaking point.

Great little application though!



We liked the "look" of Conisio but hesitant to get in bed with SW again.

However, Conisio has some funkiness (proprietary) to it.



DBWorks could be revamping it's interface.

After that nothing can beat it!



Time to move on and up (hopefully).

 

What were you doing, or wanting to do, that pushed it too far?

I can understand that. Did you have something specific that worried you? Are
you afraid that PDMW Enterprise will become another Toolbox? (Nice start
that never gets the finishing touches that it needs.)

What was it that you didn't like?

I haven't seen DBWorks. What is it you dislike about its interface now?


Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

I hope the formatting holds up after posting.

- Easier way to maintain As-Builts (critical)
- Work Flow controls (approvals, sign offs, etc.)
- 100% ODBC compliant Relational Database (no proprietary code)
- Enhanced Administrative controls needed for more complex user rights.
- Automated pdf creation.
- Intuitive, user friendly interface for non-CAD users. In this case
DBWorks offers a Web Client.
- Need the data in PDM to be "easily accessible" to MRP system (SQL based).

Very much so. I (we) became extremely disgusted with Solidworks PDMW
because of numerous bugs and core functionality changes which occurred in
and between PDMW 2005 & 2006. I vented my discontent here and on the old sw
forum. Speaking of forums, imho, they screwed their forum up royally.
These issues (PDMW) have caused my confidence in their commitment and
resolve to diminish significantly.

Also, because we scheduled our demo after the SW acquisition our reseller
was not up to speed (as a power user) which affected the demo. I got the
impression that SW laid off a large percentage of Conisio demo jockeys.
Never the less, this had an impact on our confidence in SW to provide top
notch support.

- Users having a pseudo vault on their local machine and then having to
synchronize with vault on server (proprietary). It's flat out funky.

Also a couple of other significant reasons follow.
- Price. Conisio was almost 2x what DBWorks was for 4 cad users + 10
non-cad users (this was significant).
- The way data is presented to user (this is extremely important to us).
Conisio is basically Windows Explorer. We prefer the Feature Tree method
employed by PDMW & DBWorks.

It's built on Microsoft Access. It's just a bit outdated looking. But not
nearly as outdated as Synergis-Adept (a strong competitor).

 

And the number one reason is ..... tech support. Quick, knowledgeable
and stuff gets fixed. You are the customer and they know it.

And not just ODBC compliant but it has a nifty xml based tie in to ERP
if that is the way you want to go.

We do a lot with configurations and that immediately rules out PDMW.

It doesn't depend on where the files are.
Very good file locking once they are in.
Fast registration process.
Unbelievably customizable, but it works out of the box too.
Nifty web based viewer. This is an inexpensive solution for non-sw
users that is becoming popular at our place.
Administrative tools are very powerful.
The project motif for organizing documents is pretty slick.
Drag and drop.
Highly configurable autonumbering



Any minuses?
I think they spend most of their time on functionality not eye candy
so the interface is pretty no frills (no skins, sometimes fonts can be
a bit misaligned, etc. )
Every once in a while we are reminded that SW isn't letting third
party vendors have access to all the tools they need in SW. This is
more of an aggravation to the user.

 

if you look at this dilemma (choosing pdm) from a distance, it becomes very
clear. why go to solidworks, whose core competency is mcad, for a
relational database.

kenneth

 

In dbWorks 2007 they added skins. That's one off the list. They also
added better configuration tools for administrators. And with .NET
support scripting becomes faster.