EPDM Revision and a Revision Variable

Jason,

I'm not exactly sure if you completely understand EPDM Revisions. Please forgive me if I tread familiar water.

In EPDM, a Revision is a version that is flagged as a Revision. This helps a user understand that this is a version to pay particular attention to. If a user does not have permission to see working versions then he will only see the versions flagged as a Revision. Also, a version marked as a Revision will never be placed in cold storage. Revision schemes are set up by the administrator and are triggered to increment, usually to the next one, in a workflow transition. Additionally, users can be given permission to increment a Revision manually. You can have a variable in EPDM that is set to the current or next Revision by adding this action in the transition. This is what we do. We also map the EPDM variable to the SolidWorks property so they will be the same. Hope this helps.

In EPDM you have versions as well as revisions.

Every time you check a file in (regardless of the file type)
a new version is created. You don’t have control over this the system automatically
takes care of this.

Revisions on the other hand are incremented in the workflow.
As administrator you can decide when a file gets a revision and what format the
revision should have (i.e.  01, 02 or A,
B etc.) The revision is changed by setting a variable in the transition to “next
revision” as well as the “Inc Revision” command (They both have to be in the
action of the transition)

Both the version as well as the revision can be mapped to the
data card.

The way to map your current revisions to the EPDM revisions
is to assign an attribute in your Revision variable in EPDM and make sure that
the “Attribute Name” is exactly the same as the name of the custom property in
SolidWorks. If this is set up properly the existing revision will be written to
the EPDM database and it should continue to the next revision. The problem you might
face is that not all the revisions in your existing SolidWorks files have the
same format.

I hope this helps

To respond to the last part of your question.  Yes, doing it yourself is a bit messy, but seems to work okay.   You can also buy some Add-ins (search razorleaf, hawkware)  that are supposed to make this easier.   This often comes up with legacy files.

Jason Hogue wrote:

 

Is there anyway to map the SW Revision to the Local Revision

For example:

• I have a file I want to push through my workflow
• The file already has the SW Revision Variable set to B but the Local revision is blank
• When pushed into a state called concept, I want both the Local Revision and the SW revision to be B

 

I have found a way to do this using a mass of transitions and states to define each possible rev and using multiple Inc. Revision commands, but this seems messy. 

This link to another post shows an image of my revision changing workflow - should give you some idea. I used Conditional Automatic Transitions, one per revision letter.

Re: Grade my workflow

I allow check-out at each state in this - so when something gets stuck (inappropriate revision value) it is pretty easy to fix. It will take us some time (years?) to really recover from migration - so we use this workflow a lot.

Jason,

I had the same problem months ago. I was able to solve your problem by creating two work flows that link together. The first work flow check the SW files at check in and set the correct Local Revision and then moves it to my regular Work Flow. The Local Revision is the Revision that EPDM uses for the Set Variable %nextrevision% action. For example, If the Local Revision is A and the SW revision is C, when you increment revision and set variable. EPDM will Set the variable to Revision B on the SW files! If you are migrating old files you have to create a Work Flow to automatically set the correct Local Revision and then you can pass the SW files through your regular work flow. This can be done through Work Flow Links and automatic transitions. For example, I have a revA file that I want to revised to revB. I will set revA on the SW file and check it in. My first work flow will automatically read the revA from the SW file and set the Local Revision to revA and move it to my regular work flow. Once I approve the SW files in the regular Work Flow, EPDM will increment the Local Revsion and SW file to revB. Local Revision and SW revision should always be the same!