SmartTeam and SolidWorks

We are going to have a SmartTeam presentation here today and I was
wondering if could get some feedback from the people who are using
it. I know in the past when I've looked at it it seemed that there
were a lot of frustrating limitations with it that made it horrble to
use. Have they made headway with this package? Does it keep track of
configurations?

Good, bad , ugly, I'd like to hear about what you think.

Thanks,
Don

 

Don,

The company I work for uses SWx 2006 SP 5.0 with ST V5R16 SP 8. It
works very well for us. We use configs with discreet parts in a file
and also with different variations of a single part in a file and it
handles both very well. Rev control is very good. I do not have any
experience with any other PDM systems and SWx, so I can not offer any
pros or cons by comparison. I do know this was difficult to get set up
to work with our legacy 2D system, Cocreate ME-10, but that is behind
me now. Others in my company are not so fortunate. It also was a
challenge to integrate into our electrical package, E3. When we went
"live" about 5 years ago, I believe this was the best program
available that provided real-time multi-site integration, so I am sure
this influenced our decision greatly. I hope this helps.

Reaper.

 

Thanks for you reply.

You seem to contradict most of what I've heard about some major
drawbacks.
I mostly hear negative feedback. I even talked to a former coworker
who used it another
company. They apparently got rid of it after 3 years.

Some of what I heard (Truth or Not I'm not sure)

1) Does not handle SW configurations very well at all.

2) Limitations with rev control as to what Assembly and or sub-
assemblies get reved based on part changes.

3) Cannot upgrade to the latest Solidworks versions until the Smarteam
packages is capable. (Major drawback if true)

anyways, these are just a few..... would like to know what other
people think.

Don

 

I used to work for a company that uses Smarteam and SolidWorks. It
took about 1-1/2 years to implement. Now to say our implementation
was complicated is an understatement.

Also be prepared to shell out the cash for this system. Smarteam is a
high level PDM system so make sure you are not getting more than you
need. Some other ones to look at that i have had success with are
DBWorks, PDMWorks Enterprise, and ProductCenter. All these are
multisite, configuration friendly, you also are not required to match
the version of SolidWorks to the PDM software in all of these.

Good Luck,

JP

 

I don't think that last bit is true about ProductCenter. We've been told
that we can't use SW08 with our existing version of PC and that there is not
yet a release date for the version that will support SW08.

I wasn't at all impressed with the friendliness of PC towards
configurations. Unless we completely misunderstood the system (a definite
possibility), it was all or nothing. You either keep track of all
configurations of all parts and assemblies or you keep track of none. Since
most of our configurations didn't need to be kept track of, and since
tracking them all was a real pain, we ended up killing the tracking and
converting the few configurations that we did want to track into separate
parts.

Jerry Steiger

 

i am a ProductCenter administrator. i would have to say that it is
not user friendly unless you want to invest 200K more to make it user
firendly.

but back to your original question about configurations.

configurations are handled in various ways. i believe that SmartTeam
will support them with a caviot. all configurations of an assembly
are revised when ever the assembly file is revised. this means that
if you are only editing one configuration of the assembly, the non-
edited configurations will also be revised in the PDM tool with the
assembly. it is always a good item to ask when inquiring about a PDM/
PLM tool, how it handles these configurations and in specific detail.
you may have to give examples on exactally how you want to handle them
to get your concept across.

ProductCenter does handle configurations as separate data entires in
the PDM tool. i use them as such. if a design has multiple
configurations, each must have a separate revision level. if i revise
a single configuration of an assembly the assembly revision also gets
revised (revision level gets incremented on the assembly and the one
configuration). if i revise the assembly then all configurations get
revised (revision level gets incremented on the assembly and all of
the configurations). but this is my rule and others may handle this
differently. it depends on how you handle configurations.

and ProductCenter has a new revision out to handle SWx 2008. it is
either 8.5.1.9 or 8.6.1. hope that this helps all.

if you are looking at a high end PDM tool, you are looking at bookoo
bucks (100-200K just to purchase). from what i have seen in this high
end market, Windchill has been the most impressive player and handles
SWx, ACAD, Inventor, Catia, NX and of course WildFire (pro-e) files.
Workflows are very smooth to setup and use and you do not need to know
how to program to use them. look into this if you are going down this
road. iQ

 

www.activault.com

 

sorry only 8.6.1 is 2008 compatible, just tried it. iQ

 

Absolutely untrue. SmarTeam will allow you to treat SW configurations
as individual database records with individual profile cards with
individual revisions with individual where used or you can treat all
configurations in a file as a single database record. You can choose
to have SmarTeam track only some configurations in a file or track all
configurations.

Again, untrue. When you make a change to a part/sub-assembly and you
check it in you can choose to have the new revision of part be
automatically used in all of the parents (of the previous revision) or
you can choose to have the parents of the previous revision continue
to use the previous revision. Also, when you check out an assembly,
if it has out of date components in it you can have SmarTeam
automatically replace the out of date components with the most current
revision or tell you when there are out of date components and allow
you to replace them with the most current revision (or any revision
for that matter).

True. SmarTeam has historically been about 3 months behind with
SolidWorks compatibility. There have been times (like with SW 2008)
where they are way more than 3 months behind. If upgrading to the
latest version SW quickly after it is released is important to you
SmarTeam might not be the best choice.