Who uses Intralink? Do you recommend it?

We are slowly switching over from CV to Pro/E (excruciatingly slow in fact)
and the sales rep sold us a bunch of add-ins for Pro/e. They failed to
mention, however, that there is a cost to run Intralink. We (I say we, but
I was in no way involved in the purchase of this software) purchased all of
this stuff so we would own the software outright (CV was leased...for 25
years!!)

They quoted something like $22k/year for Intralink. It seems that while
Intralink has additional features, Pro/e can run w/o it. After too many
layoffs we are down to only five in our engineering department, but we own
12 seats (just got the M080).

Generally, each designer is respsonsible for his project from
start-to-finish. "Sometimes" more than one engineer may be involved on a
tool and it would probably be nice to be able to check-in/check-out
geometry.

If you use Intralink what are your specifics (how many users/seats, what
type of work, how many users on one project, etc.)? If you do NOT use
Intralink what are your specifics?

Any recommendations. Not that most need an invite, but all opinions are
welcome on this matter.

Thank you.

 

Intralink is useful:
1. A common database that can be maintained like document control--check
in check out privileges. You can lock files so that they are read only.
prevents accidental changes.
2. Renaming is a cinch. you can do it on the spreadsheet like format to
individual objects and Intralink will maintain relationships. Otherwise
it is a proverbial pain in the ass, though not impossible to do for
small assembly/relationships.
3.You can save a baseline of a drawing (or any object). This is a
snapshot of all the associate objects that make up the assy drawing/assy
Useful to know what the project looked like on a certain date --say
when you sent it to a vendor and you continue to do further development.
4. The common database can be backed up regularly since it will be a
server type machine, hopefully maintained by the sys admins.

I think it is quite useful. But you do need a person to act as an
Intralink admin, which will take away some time from regular activities.
We have about 20 users and one CAD admin (full time).

 

All of the points that Chris raises are true.
However I feel the benefits far outweigh the negatives for the reasons I
stated.

 

We've been using ProE/ProI since 1999, and now are on WF 2 and ProI
3.3. We have a dozen users in a mix of ProE and ProNC, all using
Intralink since Day One.

I cannot imagine what it is like to use ProE without Intralink. The
workspace's Frame Manager and its ability to step back and forth
through a design process is in itself worth the price of admission. If
you mess up a design on Tuesday morning but don't realize it until
Thursday night you can 'unwind' the changes you made in the interim and
get back to a point where the design was 'good'.

You never have to worry about search paths or where files are.

Designers cannot design the same part twice.

You have complete version/revision control.

All your data resides in one place.

Multiple users can work on the same assemblies and keep their work in
sync. For example, our fixture designers work closely with the NC
programmers. When the programmer determines that a fixture needs a
change so a tool can reach, for example, the fixture designer can
quickly change the design, check it in to the database, and the
programmer can update his in-session models on the fly, validate the
change, and keep working. Do that with Windows Explorer!

Engineers work on copies of the original parts, and the initial data is
preserved even after check in. The adminstrator sets the purge policy.

Users can be forbidden from deleting parts. The admin can then make a
thorough investigation (a Where-Used Report) of where a part goes and
determine the impact of a file deletion before doing it.


And on and on and on......................


Regards
Peter Brown
Jarvis Products Corp

 

Quick question on purging, How many versions do you keep of an
existing part ??
Our release procedure is INWORK, COMPLETE and RELEASED, we
retain the last 3 versions of each release level and this is done using
scripts.
Apparently Intralink cannot do this automatically, would you
agree ??

 

You can afford to lose 3 days effort like that?

 

I only keep the latest version of the latest revision. It is critical
that you keep pushing your users to bump the revision level up when
making a major change to a part BEFORE THEY CHECK IN. Otherswise, you
then have to sift through the versions and try to make sense of what is
what. There is no better reminder than telling a user that, no, you
can't get that part back because you didn't up the Revision level
before you checked it in. After he gets burned a couple of times, he
will start to be a bit more conscientious.

While it is nice to keep all the multiple versions of different release
levels, in 5 years I have never been asked to retrieve anything in that
manner.

Regards

 

Dakeb,

If the user screwed the pooch three days ago, all his effort has
ALREADY been lost. He might as well 'fess up and get back to being
productive. Saying that you are losing the work by acknowledging the
error is like holding on to a stock whose price has collapsed and
hoping it will go back up.

My point is that you have the ability to do that. If anyone is half
on-the-ball he would know he screwed something up within 20 minutes of
doing it.

 

That's what I was getting at.

But we all know how the goalposts may move, so it's not uncommon to lose
time.