Please tell SOLIDWORKS to unlock the Large Assembly Management options in PDM

Alin, as in the other string.  I have Smarteam and they at least have the functionality to open light weight from the vault.

Steve C

In my earlier self here at Wayne, we used Unigraphics and I remember way back then that it sure opened assemblies fast.  I think it had something to do with what part of the component file was used in the graphic view of the assembly.

Steve C

Alin,

Where did your screen shots come from?

Ben R

How do you get those dialog boxes?

I fully support this idea.  Maybe it could be as simple as having the dialog box Alin posted pop up when you double click a file from EPDM's explorer view AND search tool?  (might be nice to be able to turn it off in the Display->Options menu for those that don't deal with large assemblies, but default it to on!)

My comments here represent more than just my voice, we have about 20-25 people who are in our EPDM vault full time and maybe another 30 people who less frequently have to browse/search and access our vaulted data.  Many times I have witnessed meeting rooms full of people waiting while a large assembly loads.  All they want to do is spin it around and talk about a few points of interest.  Should the computer operator have gone through the Solidworks open dialog?  Probably, but in that meeting situation other things may be on their mind, or they are jumping from excel sheets to pdf's, then solidworks and Explorer is EPDM's tool.  A pop up dialog reminding you about LDR or speedpak is exactly what is needed to save that time.

This is a fantastic idea, and I think our employees would benefit from this greatly. We have nearly 100 CAD users, many of whom are only using EPDM to view assemblies in read-only mode, and often our assemblies can get very large (where LDR mode is necessary for quick access). The workflow of accessing these files through SolidWorks is inconvenient, as I rarely use the open dialog to browse the vault (instead, I keep a Windows Explorer window open most of the day).

Alin - I agree that this would be an extremely useful feature.  Countless amounts of time are continuing to be wasted, watching and waiting for the spinning wheel to stop.  The general need is to simply find out the overall context of problems in our top level assemblies that typically take less than a minute to find resolution once the file is actually open.  This would be a major improvement for me and our engineering department of 40 users. 

I completely agree and this was something I meant to bring up.  On behalf of the 80+ users of ePDM within Teknion, this functionality would save a tremendous amount of time.  Do the math on 80+ users 5 days a week.  In the course of a full year, that's a pretty significant ROI if this can be built in.

Are there any limitations as to which versions of ePDM (or PDM Pro) that this will run on?  ie. 2014/2015?

Hi Alin, please excuse my ignorance, but how do I go about voting for an SPR?

Thanks & regards
Patrick

If it wouldn't be difficult to allow the option of opening the file in large assembly mode, that would be a nice addition.  I find large assembly mode has a better balance of usability vs performance then large design review, which is essentially e-drawings.  Great add-in though!

I put in an EH years ago  for all options in the SW open dialog to be available in the EPDM open.  This should be a no brainer... :-(