A discussion came up in regards to how we manage our design library here at work and I would like to know what other users/companies out there are doing. We currently have SW 2010 w/ PDM workgroup and our design library is managed on a shared network drive. One of the things being brought up by other users is why we dont use the Toolbox addin. It sounds like (from reading through discussions) alot of companies dont use it and utilize there own libraries and the question was what are the limitation of toolbox and why do companies choose not to use it? Also, the question came up about the possibility of managing the design library with in the vault itself. Part of the reasoning behind this idea is that when checking out a large assembly from PDM the files are writen to our PDM working folder on our individual c: drives so we are working locally with the exception of our hardware that is still being accessed over the network. The thought was if we had our hardware in the vault and it was checked out and then resided locally we would eliminate possible perfomace degradation caused from working over a network. Is any one out there doing anything like this? Now, with the design library, we do realize that you can not check in non-revisioned managed parts into the vault and if we did put them in revision stat they would rev up everytime we added a config which wouldnt be good. So we thought if we left them as a working copy and if one person had ownership(a library manager) then they would always be read only when users checked out assemblies with hardware in it. The company is new to SW and they jumped right into it and also right into using vault with out any clear procedures and work flows set. We are now trying to address this and make things more profecient so we are having weekly meetings during lunch as an open forum to throw out ideas such as above and then researching those ideas. We do have support and we are working with our VAR on things, this post is just more about seeing what other users are doing our there.
Thanks everyone!
-Jesse
Hi Jesse,
Well, first off you're doing the right thing by having weekly meetings and discussing procedure and ideas. It's not uncommon for companies to install a PDM system and just start using it, and as you know that doesn't work very well. Couple of key factors and suggestions, although much of it depends on how your business operates:
1. Filename convention, nothing beats a part number! PDMW will not allow 2 files with the same filename in the same vault, you can have the same part number with different extensions though. (ie. 1234.sldprt and 1234.sldasm are different filenames)
2. I would not recommend checking in Toolbox files into the vault, but keeping the toolbox safe is a good question to ask your VAR
3. Perhaps you could put your engineering group and the server that the Toolbox is located in the same network loop, and that way keep the traffic of the rest of the company out of your network loop. There are many ways to accomplish that, and depending on the size of your network it may not make a difference.
4. Design library could work the way you were thinking for Toolbox, although I'm not sure of the flexibility. Just the fact that you are using the design library is a great thing! It's amazing how little some companies use these tools.
5. I know it's alot of work, but try setting up a test vault on your own computer so you try some of the concepts. That way you can see what's actually happening before you make it a process.
6. Also, make sure you're using multiple project folders, you'll get a performance hit if you have giant Project folder with no sub-project folders.
There is alot more, but that's a few thoughts that came to mind.