Legacy Drawings and PDM/Works

We have PDM/Works here and I am beginning to get to the point where we
are creating SolidWorks files of a part already in production here
that is defined by an AutoCAD drawing. Once the part is created in
SolidWorks, a drawing is created in SolidWorks and the rev number is
one up from the AutoCAD drawing. I plan to check in the AutoCAD
drawing into the vault along with the SolidWorks part and drawing - we
don't just want ot trash the ACAD drawing as it is par tof the rev
history. I plan to make add a reference between the SolidWorks
drawing and ACAD drawing. Then I plan to put the SWX drawing in a
released lifecycle and the ACAD drawing in a legacy life cylce with
permissions set so that those outside of engineering don't see two
drawings for the same part number. Only users in engineering would
see the ACAD - or maybe just vault admin would see the ACAD file. But
at the least, we would still preserve the history of the drawing and
prevent others from viewing/printing the ACAD by mistake. How does
everyone handle this. Is there a better solution for this that I am
not aware of. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Pete Yodis

 

I import the dwg file into solidworks and then check that in the vault at
the current rev level. I then check it out creating the solidworks model and
print and check it back in at the new rev level. I then archive the old dwg
file to a cd. Now I have a record of the legacy history in the solidworks
file.

I hope that made sense......

Noel

 

Noel,

I would have to import each DWG revision file into SolidWorks and
then check them in one by one. We have 6,000 + DWG files that I need
to get into PDM/Works vault using the bulk load functionality in
PDM/Works 2004. Most of the 6,000 drawings have at least one rev,
several have many. So, I would have to do your method maybe
12,000-18,000 times - unnaceptable. Would work if a user had limited
numbers of ACAD drawings and revisios.

 

You could load all the dwgs files into the vault using the bulk load, then
as you revise the dwgs you could import them......I have about 12,000 give
or take a few thousand drawings that are either hand drawings stored in a
cabinet, various versions of Autocad, Mech Desktop, Inventor, and
Solidworks. I would never try to load all of those into the vault (PDMworks
or any other file manager for that matter) at one time....way too much room
for trouble. Noble effort to try and get all of this in at one time but I
think you will find that you are going to have to "touch" each and every one
of these files in some way or another. I haven't used the bulk load tool yet
but I would be curious to know at what rev level it checks these files into
the vault initially.

Any way..........just some thoughts and ramblings

Noel

 

Yes, I think that's the approach I would take. Use the bulk load to bring
in the current versions only. Bulk load can assign every doc from the same
folder the same rev level. It can also read data from attributes, so if
the rev is in an attribute, you might be able to get it to read it
automatically. If it's in the file name, well... you might want to change
that.

If you have to manually change a lot of stuff, it might be most efficient
to hire an intern.

matt.

 

I will be using the bulk load functionality to bulk load all of our
drawings into the vault. I'm sure it may take a couple of days. Our
AutoCAD drawings have many attributes, revision being one of them.
Many thanks to the individual that set this up at my company long ago.
I will be mapping the attributes in ACAD to file properties that will
be written by PDM/Works. The file names are the part numbers, plain
and simple, nothing attached. Our current PDM system stores files in
folders - oldest to newest. I conversed with Joy Pineau, product
manager for PDM/Works, when they were developing the bulk load
functionality. I explained my situation, my concerns, and my wish
list. I was impressed by what they were able to do. I have yet to
try it yet, but from a private demo I saw on several of our own files,
I believe it may work very well for us. As long as we load the
earliest revs first, and then each rev next, the rev history is
maintained just like any other in PDM/Works at least from what I have
seen on the demo on our files. My question was really pertaining to
how we would best preserve the rev history of the DWG file, "freeze"
it at its last rev, not allow certain users to see two drawings for
one part (very very bad), and proceed forward when pertinent with a
SolidWorks model drawing of the part number. I thought lifecycles
would be a key tool in this process, but wanted to hear if any one had
any real world experience with these ideas yet, rather than just a
theoretical "well maybe you could do" approach.

 

Greetings all,

I gave up years ago on storing older revisions of drawings. My
experinece has been that it is seldom that anyone needs to go back to
an older revision.
The caveat to this is that your ECO process adequately captures the
revision history so that if someone wanted to investigate the complete
revision history of a part, they would be able to do so. So, if I were
you, I would only concern myself with the latest revision. Once you
get this stuff in the vault, PDMWorks will take of revs from that
point on.