As a resolution for this new year, I decided to better structure my design office.
Rather than thinking in my corner, I told myself that the easiest way was to look at how other BEs work. So I prepared a short questionnaire (5 min max) about the use of SolidWorks, Excel and macros:
The objective is only to draw up an inventory of current practices. If you have a moment to respond, it would help me a lot, and I will gladly share a summary of the trends for everyone to enjoy!
Thank you in advance for your feedback, and good luck to all on your projects!
Very nice initiative, I see a lot of companies whose empirical construction does a lot of damage, redundant exchange, lack of centralization of information, etc... But the idea of being proactive during the weak moments is great. Joining PDM changes the life of a design office.
When the organizational work is well done, the workflow is well established and consistent with the work produced, PDM is a very good and practical tool for collaborative work. In addition, it validates an ISO organization, the workflow and allows traceability and a history that is reassuring. It secures the internal links to the assembly, and allows you to manipulate (copy & modify) those same assemblies safely.
I was skeptical at first, and when I used it, especially on large assemblies. My approach has changed and I completely validate this tool. As long as it is well integrated and managed by competent and reliable people.
This tool when it exists demonstrates the good organization of the design office, I myself am shocked to see important companies still working in the stone age without PLM or ERP tools, etc... You need resources, skills and training, but I have seen this kind of tool and a solid organization, make it possible to reduce delays by 4
Not to mention for the user from the designer to the technical or project engineer, the saving of time and bugs and visibility. For the designer, it is collaborative work, the management of parts and assemblies in terms of ownership, data sheets, cartridge, a guarantee of quality and reliability once again.
You really have to adhere to the concept, and give the management to reliable people because the tool remains a safe, personally this kind of tool should not be connected to the outside world (for obvious reasons), it's a safe if you lose the key it's fucked up
Could you explain why you went back and the problems on the 3D experience? I asked the question what was the interest between PDM and 3D experience, and which one should I choose?
Hello I don't want to answer for @icome, but what is certain is that PDM has proven itself. Of course, on the other hand, it requires a competent administrator. For 3D EX I don't know what skills are needed to administer it.
I agree with what you are saying. 3D experience outsources (at least I think) the trunk, as part of a special defense project in France or with restricted distribution, it doesn't give a damn! even if it is Dassault that manages
The principle of 3D Experience is indeed an equivalent of EPDM but managed by Dassault on their own servers (or those of Solidworks: a nuance that can be important nowadays with the extraterritoriality of American laws. As a reminder, Solidworks is an American company owned by a French company (Dassault), if the NSA ever asks Solidworks for something, you can be sure that they will say yes).
Personally, the main obstacle I saw was the obligation to have a functional (and fast) internet connection to be able to work (no internet, no access to Dassault/Solidworks servers so impossible to really work).
@froussel Is this already the case with licenses in some cases? With us they are token servers, but it seems to me that you need a connection already to validate a license via an email, in short security to avoid hacking the license. It seems to me that for CATIA, it's been a while, when I installed CATIA on a PC it created a server " on my PC " kind of link to the outside but once again I'm noob on the subject. After without internet as long as you extracted the documents, it's like for PDM when your server crashes For the NSA stories, I think once again that as soon as you are in protection mode nothing should transpire on the web
Yes, as long as you run a license server that is outsourced (and even if it is in-house). In any case, you need at least emails to be able to activate the licenses and reactivate them every year if the server does not have direct access to the internet (this is the case with us). For the rest, cloud operation is " unfortunately " the future of many software. The problem is indeed the impossibility of working in case of a crash of the platform (which happened a few times on 3Dexeperience and SW Cloud last year from memory). I don't think you can access your files since you have to connect to the platform (unless there is an offline operation like for EPDM). But it's still the same if a server crashes. The only difference is that if you are completely cut off from the internet (cyberattack for example) but still a link to the servers you are not blocked (and for EPDM we activate the internal messaging of the tool and roll).
Thank you all, I already have more than 15 answers!
For the moment, I mainly have feedback from design offices. I would very much like to be able to compare it with practices from boilermaking and machining.
If there are people from these trades among us, your participation would be really appreciated!
@Cyril_f When I worked on PDM, I was up to date on all my parts and extracted on all the necessary parts. If a spit occurred, I could still work. At worst I made a sub-record of the play in read-only, and reintegrated it into PDM. After all, collaborative work in a network depends on optimal operation, as well as skilfully tested updates so as not to end up with blocked stations (from experience).
Hello Yes, but that's when users understand how the tool works. The notion of local cache and server version, some still haven't understood how it works offline
, or it's bad will 
