Hi all
I had prepared my answer this weekend, but I was missing some information that I checked this morning.
In our company we use Workgroup PDM. But I already have a few questions:
1) So the first question I'll have JH is how many people make up your design office with "limited number of SW licenses"?
Because this is where the difference will be made when choosing between WorkGroup and Enterprise! Especially in terms of cost!
2) What are the types of licenses? Standard, Pro, or premium? Because if you only have standards, you will have to update all the workstations to the professional version, which implies an additional cost!
3) Does your company only work on one site?
4) How do you currently manage SolidWorks files? Simply by a Windows tree?
5) How does the SolidWorks file coding work?
6) Is there validation in place in the process of creating the parts?
7) How do you transfer the plans to other departments?
Concerning WorkGroup, I also think that the product will be renewed for a long time, but without any improvements... I don't think SolidWorks will let us down and force us to switch to Enterprise if the current solution is functional, and they can keep it alive with little (or very little) investment.
About our use, we got used to WorkGroup and its constraints. We have a performance issue, but it's probably version-related (SW 2011), and we'll be moving to SolidWorks 2014 soon, I can tell you if the problem persists.
Regarding your other questions:
For your information, our trunk is 116 GB and contains nearly 27,000 SolidWorks files.
Product performance for file search (- more powerful than the old windows desktop search on XP)
For the file search, I think it's much longer than with a SQL database, but if you do a search on a filename (which contains our code), it's not that long (between 10 and 20 seconds I'd say). On the other hand, on custom properties of the file, it takes much longer (it's normal somewhere, but Enterprise will have a clear advantage on this point)!
Ease of use, speed of execution of tasks, management of revisions on large asses, management of external references
The use is simple once you get the basics, but I think the problem is similar on Enterprise. No problem for the revision management on large assemblies (if I understood the question correctly), and with us no external reference except for the library which is not in the safe, but it works well like that.
Pb disk size, need an outer disk
For the size, the PDM is getting bigger, but fortunately! In 4 years, I would say that it has taken 50 GB, which is not a lot. At home, it is installed on the server (9 people in the BE and 90 people in total in the box), so I don't really understand the question of the external drive.
Pbs /single-station installation
The server installation is simple, it is the project management, revision and archiving procedures that require support (it is better to pay for a few days of support than to start on a bad basis, for which you will pay the consequences for the whole life of the PDM...). There is no client installation per se, as it is included in SolidWorks Pro.
Pb of interfaces with ERP, .....
The interface with the ERP is non-existent in itself! I got around the problem with some macros (PDF location & BOM creation), which come to deposit csv files where the ERP comes to scrutinize if a file has been deposited, and implements it in the ERP database. It's a bit laborious to set up, but that's how it works. These are things that will require much less investment to make on Enterprise.
So in conclusion, you have the choice between 2 products, a "low cost" that does the job with its constraints, and the high-end, which will do everything much better (and probably also things you don't need).
And I will add that we have been looking for quite a long time for a migration to Enterprise, but the additional cost added to the migration (from WorkGroup to Enterprise) which is going to be complicated, makes us think.