SolidWorks World 2008

January 17, 2008

I will be in San Diego for my fourth SolidWorks World. If you see me there, then by all means say hello.

For those of you that have had positive feedback on the blog over the past few months, I appreciate it. It is for you that I write the blog. I hope someone finds it useful.

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Posted by Jeff Cope | Filed Under General, SolidWorks 

Comments

3 Responses to “SolidWorks World 2008”

  1. Daniel Rohats on January 18th, 2008 4:23 pm

    I’ll see you there Copius Maximus!

  2. BGn on July 14th, 2008 8:35 am

    Hi,
    I was just browsin thru the internet For an specific answer… ! after goin thru the blog, I hope my question will be answered.

    How to assign Seperate Document state and revision for each configuration in SolidWorks Part or Assembly File in PDM Works Enterprise ?

    Customer has Many SolidWorks Parts and Assembly files which have many configurations, The configurations will be used based on the requirement.
    There have been a cases that an Configuration go obsolete for various reasons, But other configurations would be active.
    We have explored and learnt that this is current limitation with PDM Works Enterprise.
    I request you to kindly let us know that can we achive this by writing an API, SolidWorks has a great functionality like Configurations, But customer is not able to use this by implementing the PDM Works Enterprise..
    We would really appreciate your help in this regard.

    Many thanks,

    Feel free to write back to me should you have any questions,

    S.M.Raghavendra Bhagavan
    Technical Manager

    BEACON
    #705,9th Main, 47th Cross,
    Jayanagar 5th Block,
    Bangalore-560041

    Ph: +91 80 42457300
    Ph: +91 80 42457303 (D)
    Fax:+91 80 42457373
    Mbl: +91 99809 44110

  3. Jeff Cope on July 14th, 2008 9:51 am

    “How to assign Seperate Document state and revision for each configuration in SolidWorks Part or Assembly File in PDM Works Enterprise ?”

    It is true that you cannot currently do this out of the box with PDMWORKS Enterprise. You could do it with customization though. I think it is good that PDMWORKS Enterprise doesn’t currently offer this functionality because the SolidWorks API support for configurations isn’t sophisticated enough at this point in time to handle it.

    SolidWorks API doesn’t provide any easy or even absolutely reliable way to control changes to a specific configuration or even to determine which configuration the change was made to. This means that if you have one configuration that is released and another that is not, a user can checkout the unreleased configuration, change the released configuration and checkin the modified file. This is very bad.

    That being said, if I were to set out to do what you wish to do, I would do it like this:

    1) Set up your own custom Workflow functionality that you implement (i.e. not the PDMWE workflow functionality). You will have to provide any permissions capbabilities and routing capabilities that you desire here.
    2) Use a SolidWorks Configuration Specific Property (e.g. WorkflowStatus) to store the workflow status in the configuration.
    3) Set up your Addin to update the configuration specific property through the file’s data card in PDMWE. This should happen whenever the workflow status changes for the document.
    4) Make sure you have a support contract with your customer as they will have numerous usability issues with any solution you implement regarding this.
    5) Cross your fingers and pray, preferably at the same time.

    Good luck,
    Jeff

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