Good afternoon,
I am a single seat user of Solidworks and I have been using WPDM to control my CAD data for the last few years. I am looking to migrate over to PDM Standard this year but have a question about checking in files via WPDM.
Can someone confirm for me that checking in a file as 'READ FROM FILE' means that it is simply overwriting the existing file while keeping the revision the same?
Example,
I have a part which I have checked in as revision 'A-01' - I have then gone in and made a change but rather than selecting the next revision in line I have checked the part in as 'A-01' again via the 'read from file' selection.
I used to do this when making changes which didn't physically alter a part (example, I went in and added a property field to a lot of my parts and rather than changing the revision to 'B' or 'A-02' I would check in as 'read from file' to overwrite the existing data and keep the same revision).
Can someone please confirm the above is correct (checking in as 'read from file' simply over writes the existing revision with the new file while keeping the same revision and that it is not going to effect the migration over to PDM Standard in anyway?
I now follow a system where if I make change like the above I simply check in as A-02 etc. and only go up to B when a physical change is made.
Many thanks,
HI Paul,
That’s a good question and one that the theory gets questioned a lot when a user is switching from Workgroup to PD (Standard or Professional).
PDM is a lot more restrictive when it comes to Revisions within the vault. Workgroup allowed users to overwrite a revision by simply selecting “read from file” while checking a file in as you indicated, PDM does not have a selection like. Since PDM is a database driven system it’s a little more difficulty to specify the revision (not impossible just a little more to it), you are much better off to simply let the system follow the revision schema sequence as it’s designed to.What we have done for several customer to overcome this issue, is to add a state, something like “Admin Change” and limit who can transition a file to and from that state. I realize that’s not saying too much to a non PDM user so please allow me to clarify what I mean.
Let’s say you are at a state called “Released”, you really don’t want shouldn’t allow the users to check out a file at that state or it really does not have a value to say it’s released, so I’d highly suggest you make the files at the Released state to be read only. But oops; you had a typo on the drawing and it’s not something that you want or need to bump the revision for, or you desire to add a custom property as you indicated. We make another state called “Admin Change”, when a file goes to the “Admin Change” state the user can then check out the file and make the necessary changes. When we roll the file back to “Released” we index the revision by 0, so the counter lets us know the file got a change but not a “revision worthy change”. If the file was at Rev A it’ll go back to Rev A and not index to rev B.
Hope this helps answer your question,
~Tom