ignoring PDMWorks Built-In properties

Discussion created by Guest on Oct 24, 2006

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We name our files by the Part Number but we also populate the Number field with the part number and then hide the file name from the PDMWorks view as was suggested elsewhere just so we don't see the file extensions. To avoid having to fill in the part number in PDMWorks you can create a property in each template called "Number" and give it the following text $PRP:"SW-File Name" and the number field will auto populate without the file extension.
Beware as PDMWorks overwrites this with the actual part number on check-in so it won't auto update if you rename a file.

Mark.

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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
Guys thanks very much for the responses.
It represents a good slice of the many applications for these properties as well as their intrepretation and intended use.
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
This quite an interesting topic, with no correct or incorrect solutions.

We have abandoned the idea of an intelligent part number (or file name) in favor of an intelligent description property.

We name the CAD files with the next available 8 digit catalog number.

We do have families, so we allow a 3 digit dash number for our MRP system's item master description. (aka configurations).

The file name does not indicate if it is a part or assy or drawing. The file extension does that. The file name only labels a document. It does not indicate that it is an item, either purchased or fab'd, or an assembly, or a family, or anything else.

All of this information is populated in the SW file properties, where it belongs.
The vault tracks it for us. It is easily edited by any administrator. It is easily searched and re-used. That has been a titanic benefit for us.

We have invested a great deal of time and energy to design a highly disciplined approach for generation of the description of each of our wide variety of products. This is immensly important. Our MRP system makes it difficult to rename an item number, but we can revise descriptions easily.

Moreover, for each product, we produce a drawing for manufacturing, and a different drawing for our customer. They are 2 individual sheets in the same SW drawing file. We have a property for our disciplined (codified) description, which appears on our manufacturing drawing sheet, and another propoerty for the human description that appears on the customer outline sheet.

We set our vault view to display both descriptions.

We output each drawing sheet to a .pdf, and append the pdf document name with "_PD" for Product Definition, and "_CO" for Customer Outline. These are attached to the source drawing in the Vault, and they are the only documents available to the extended enterprise.

This has worked well for us, but it did require extensive interdisciplinary planning prior to implementation of PDMWorks. We also had to tweak all of our existing SW files prior to initial check in. But it is worth the exra effort.

I hope these ideas are helpfull. I wish someone had offered these ideas to me way back when...Good Luck !
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
on 2006 24 15:06 RB wrote:
> We always populate the number field with the part number. If you have parts with configurations then this is needed.

Not necessarily. It depends on how your part numbering system is set up. Ours is setup so that we can have one part number, but multiple configurations.

Base part number: 1234567.XXX
Each unique configuration for that part number: .123

As Barry mentioned, we typically use the Number field for the last ECN that the part was released at.
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
We also encountered the "Number" property as a property with little, or no use to us.
We use the configuration as the part number, and the file name as the drawing number. This way a drawing and part file share the same name with a different extension. BUT on the BOM, we list both, the part number (configuration) and the Drawing Number (Part File Name). This way everyone knows where to look for all info, and best of all, it's automatic (with the exception of naming the configuration).
Nowhere do we find a use for the Number property.
I'm with you on this one.
Patrick Moody
Senior Designer/CAD Administrator
Winchester Electronics
Dell Precision M70 1.86 Pentium M, 2GB RAM, Quadro FX Go1400
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
We are still "implementing" PDMWorks after 2 years of turning it loose on the Mech R&D department with no real agreed upon rules. We now have finished an operating procedure to address SOME of details of what future records should look like, (i.e. what metatdata do we want associated with each item in the vault). For "released" items, we have chose to use significant file names that contains the partnumber. For unreleased or development models, there are no naming rules.
Recently, the resources on our implmentation team has decided that they don't see much use for the built-in NUMBER property and would like to mandate that it be removed or renamed. I indicated that built-in properties are not accessible for change and that one would have to consciously ignore and not fill that data in. The argument centers around the fact that we chose to put the partnumber is in the filename. I thought that this descision is a very short sided one given our inexperience across the board. Does any one else agree with the shortsidedness, or can anyone provide an example where this actaully makes sense?
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
Hi Sean,
I've always used the part number as the filename as well. I asked SW about the use of the number property and was told that some companies use this field to record associated ECO numbers but for the most part, this field goes unused.
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
SW says it goes mostly UNUSED! How can the first property built-in to the database program, go unused. I'd like to hear what the developers intended. It seems obvious that even though the P/N might be contained within the file name, ( it's a conscious choice to name files by P/N) one would like to have the part number available as metatdata and not have to extract it from the Document property.??? BTW, we have made a custom property for the ECO number.
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
for us, document name = part number.

one advantage of using number property is the vault display (labels).
if a user wishes to not see file extensions (.sldprt, .sldasm, etc...) he/she can turn off document name label and turn on number label.
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
Rob, I'm not completey understanding your comm. I understand using SolidWorks document configurations for different parts as ONE file that contains multiple part numbers. In PDMWorks, you can only have ONE entry for NUMBER per document, not per configuration. You can put commas. spaces, or semicolons and type additional part numbers into the NUMBER field, but I don't see how you could assign different NUMBER values based on which configurations you select. Am I mistaken?
I just don't see the logic of NOT populating it with a part number; in all my experience in engineering the part number is the key piece of information that should be readily available for an egineering database record. Who else ignores this built-in property and extracts the Part Number info from the filename?
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Guest Oct 24, 2006 3:47 PM
We always populate the number field with the part number. If you have parts with configurations then this is needed. If we relied upon the file name then we would only get the configuration that is the same number as the file name. If we did not make configurations of parts (creating different parts with different numbers) then we wouldn't fill in the number property.

We do also occasionally name an assembly file by the product and not the part number, but most of the time though we use the part number for the file name also.

Rob
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