PDMWE with Virtual parts

Discussion created by Heather Nelson on Oct 29, 2008
Latest reply on Aug 25, 2010 by Jeremiah Feist

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Has anyone here had an issue using virtual parts with PDMWE? Currently, we're running PDMWE 2008 3.0 and multiple users are seeing their Solidworks session lock up if they click on a virtual part in their assembly. The assembly file works fine for a few check in/out iterations but then the next time the file is opened and you hover or click on a virtual part the session will lock and Solidworks will chug away at stealing all memory available. The only option is to kill the session. One way my VAR has found around it is to turn off the PDMWE add-in before working on an assembly and Solidworks wasn't able to replicate the problem. Their only suggestion was to upgrade to 4.0.

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Ben Kalinowski Oct 31, 2008 12:29 PM
Heather,

IF its any consolation, upgrading from 3.0 to 4.0 was pretty painless. We aren't using virtual parts much so I can't vouch for the fix.
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- Shawn Kelly @ Ben Kalinowski on Oct 31, 2008 8:41 PM
  My understanding is some issues with virtual components are known in SW and have been fixed in SP5.
  
  check out Solution Id: S-026503 in the knowledge base.
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Marco Jung Nov 3, 2008 4:34 AM
Dear Heather,
yes, we are having your problem, too. We have an assmebly with virtual parts. Check in and out the assembly then modify the assembly. check in and out and now when you are clicking on a virtual part, SolidWorks freezes.
We have installed SW SP5.0 and PDMWE SP4.0 and the problem isn't away.
I have a workaround:
Check out the assembly and go PDMWE --> offline. Now you can work with your assembly. When you are finish, go PDMWE --> online and check in your assembly.
Sorry, for my bad english and I hope you understand it.

Best regards

M. Jung
Buss SMS Canzler GmbH
Germany
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- Bill Stadler @ Marco Jung on Aug 11, 2010 6:05 PM
  Is this still an issue in SW2010 and PDMWE 2010???
  
  Thanks
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  - Michael LaFleche @ Bill Stadler on Aug 23, 2010 2:40 PM
    I recently talked about this on the CAPUniversity blog, which has a posting to a video: http://blog.capinc.com/2010/08/virtual-components-in-the-land-of-pdm/
    
    Here is the summary:
    
    In the land of SolidWorks Assemblies exists a funny creature called the “Virtual Component”. Virtual components are typically used in top-down design when you need to create a new part in the context of an existing assembly. During the conceptual design process, when you frequently experiment with and make changes to the assembly structure and components, using virtual components has several advantages over the bottom-up design method as explained by the SolidWorks help system online:
    You can rename these virtual components in the FeatureManager design tree, avoiding the need to open, save as a copy, and use the Replace Componentscommand.
    You can make one instance of a virtual component independent of other instances in a single step.
    The folder where you store the assembly is not cluttered with unused part and assembly files resulting from iterations of component designs.
    Workgroup PDM will certainly let you add an assembly with a Virtual Part, but it has no means for really tracking it beyond the where used report. There is a setting to turn this on in the User Options, but selecting this option has significant performance impact. and since a virtual part is usually only used relative to one design, this setting may have a low return on investment.
    Enterprise PDM actually handles these quite nicely and if a virtual component is being used, it is shown in the check in dialog box in reports as well as the BOM tab, which is really where you want it displayed.
    
    This is relatively new stuff for PDM to track and I think you need EPDM 2009 or higher for this to work...
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    - Raymond Pearson @ Michael LaFleche on Aug 25, 2010 4:45 PM
      Michael,
      
      I don't mean to hyjack the topic, but in this mothodology, are the virtual parts replaced with real parts once the design is finalized? I find it difficult to see the benifit of having parts that only exist in the parent assembly, cannot be reused elsewhere, and provide a method to get around best practices.
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      - Jeremiah Feist @ Raymond Pearson on Aug 25, 2010 5:00 PM
        usually the virtual parts would get saved to an external file once they (or the assembly) is finalized. though there can be exceptions for things that don't get part numbers or whose geometry are intrinsically not re-usable. for us that covers part makings, epoxies, and wires that get bent to custom shapes for that assembly.
        
        Jeremy
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