With the growing list of customers that have invested in SolidWorks Enterprise PDM, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a list of common services and added functionality that customers have been requesting from us.  The purpose is to let our EPDM customer base know that you are not on your own and there is lots you can do with the system to get a bigger impact on your business.  This list is by no means all inclusive and if there is anything you would like help with related to EPDM, please do not hesitate to ask us.

1) Upgrading vault to 2012

Our most common services for our clients is assisting with upgrades to the latest release.  Enterprise PDM 2012 offers a number of enhancements including the new integrated search functionality, but most importantly offers support for SolidWorks 2012.  With so many people relying on the vault, it becomes risky business taking it offline for an upgrade but our professional implementation team know exactly how to do this without missing a beat.

2) File version upgrade to 2012

Just because the EPDM vault is upgraded, does not mean that all the files are converted to the latest version.  There are incredibly useful utilities that we have been involved with that can help with this file conversion.

3) Web portal options and mobile phone connection

Many customers have not heard the exciting news yet that there is a new web portal in town.  This new web portal is programmed in ASP.NET so it is device independent and can be accessed while you are on the road.  Work with us to figure out which web portal is best suited for your needs and have a look at the video below to catch a glimpse of the new one.

4) Monitor license usage

It can be challenging as an EPDM administrator to figure out how many licenses are required to handle the teams usage requirements.  Luckily, we have a great new tool that we can setup for you that keeps track of historical license usage so at any point in time you can see what the peaks in usage have been and plan for licenses accordingly.

5) Expanding to other departments

Although most customers start using Enterprise PDM in the engineering department, it has become quite evident that this is not the only department that requires control and automation to the documentation that they handle.  Departments that have direct interaction with engineering are prime candidates like purchasing and manufacturing, but there are many benefits to consider for other departments like sales, HR or legal.  Please talk to us about where you can go next with EPDM in your company and learn about some new upgrade paths for bulk licenses.

6) Document automation service

My personal favourite capability of EPDM is the template functionality combined with a workflow that is unique to the template type.  This opens up a variety of possibilities with how you work at your company.  Because these are used so often in combination, Javelin has decided to offer them as a bundle to clients to add on new standards and processes at their company.  If you still have a paper process at your company or are using standard excel or word forms outside of the vault, let’s see how we can take you to the next level of document automation.

7) Predone templates available on our webstore

EPDM templates and worklows can be easily saved and shared for transfer into other vaults.  There are a number of templates that we have created that we have decided to post in our webstore for a very reasonable price.  Some of these include: SR&ED Time tracking, ECR’s and Quoting tool.  Look out for them soon or e-mail me if you would like to have direct access to them.  Below is a screen shot of the reporting capabilities of the SR&ED time tracking solution.

Administration training course

Just because you have an EPDM administrator on site, does not mean you shouldn’t continue to educate other staff on the capabilities and have them utilize the system elsewhere at the company.  In the past we have always done administration training onsite at our customers but we are at a point where we will start running some more regular public courses to bring the cost down.  Ask us about when the next administration course will be scheduled.

9) EPDM partner products

There are a variety of solutions that fit on top of EPDM to extend the functionality.  We have partnered with many of these third party developers around the world to bring the best product offering to the Canadian market.  Tracking transmittals to contractors or customers, Configuration management, Microsoft Office extended functionality are some of the capabilities.   It is important to be aware of the existing offerings because with over 70,000 users of EPDM out there, there is likely someone else that has already done what you want to do.

10) Enterprise assistant

Having an assistant would be nice, but having an assistant that works all night without pay would be even nicer.  Enterprise Assistant is a Javelin developed application that is designed to monitor and execute predetermined tasks on the files in your vault.  If you still feel like you are doing repetitive work, let’s see if Enterprise Assistant is an employee that you would want to hire.

11) Dashboard

Dashboards are becoming more and more popular.  This is why we have explored a number of ways to make them accessible to our client base.  There are two main options for providing a dashboard overview of the files in the vault.   Pie charts that can be used to navigate to search results are a piece of functionality that is integrated into the new web portal offering.  The other method is Office2PDM which is a product that Javelin distributes from Razorleaf.  Ask us about license pricing and options.

12) Integration with ERP

There are a variety of ways we have been helping clients integrate with ERP.  It can be as simple as using the XML export options from EPDM or as complex as writing a custom application that monitors both EPDM and your ERP to help bridge the infromation you need at the right time.  Regardless of the solution, it is important to have a strategy in place to make sure that the most affordable methods are used that reap the greatest benefit for your company.  We would be happy to spend some time with you recommending options on how to get this done.

Please contact me if you would like any information on the offerings above or really, anything else you would like to do with EPDM:

Eric van Essen

eric.vanessen@javelin-tech.com

Don’t rush the decision, but don’t postpone it forever. Making a decision without gathering and analyzing all the information can lead to a wrong and deceiving purchase. Postponing it may mean missing savings, delays in your R&D process and being behind your competition.

You will be overwhelmed by the huge amount of information available, sales people from several vendors trying to influence your decision, lack of awareness of new applications within your company, and a confusing threshold in price and machine capabilities.

In the next few posts I will review in detail each and every item to be considered through the purchase decision. Stay tuned for the next chapters:

1. It is about you.
2. What is the best technology for me?
3. Is my budget in line with my needs?
4. How to present the project to the management.
5. Benchmarking: don’t buy before you try.
6. Hidden needs: you may not know everything you can do.
7. ROI: Losing money and have not realized it?
8. I have a 3D printer in house, what is next?

If you are currently outsourcing the prototyping process, and are considering the purchase of an in-house solution, this white paper is for you:

For detailed coverage of the day three general session visit the SolidWorks Blog

• SolidWorks User Group Network Presentations
• SolidWorks Customer Presentations
• SolidWorks Beta Contest Results

View the presentation below, or watch it directly on YouTube

To learn more about the presentations delivered on day two of SolidWorks World 2012 read the comprehensive post on the SolidWorks blog.

• CEO Bertrand Sicot introduced by a Nao robot from Aldebaran designed in SolidWorks
• Bertrand talks about the SolidWorks user base, innovation, and certified SolidWorks users
• Dassault Systèmes CEO Bernard Charles delivers a presentation
• A presentation by Dr. Maia Hoeberechts from NEPTUNE Canada. NEPTUNE is the world’s first underwater observatory network.

View the presentation below, or watch it directly on YouTube

To learn more about the presentations delivered on day one of SolidWorks World 2012 read the comprehensive post on the SolidWorks blog.

Because of these changes, the manual update procedure from previous versions has been modified for network-based toolboxes.  If you are using a standalone toolbox (ie you are using the default C:\SolidWorks Data folder), upgrading your SolidWorks program to 2012 will automatically upgrade the toolbox.

However for those with a shared toolbox on a server, here is our preferred method for upgrading the toolbox to the 2012 version.

1. Copy the 2011 or older version of SolidWorks Data to a designated folder on a clients desktop that has SW2012 installed.  Ensure that this folder has read/write access.
2. Launch SolidWorks 2012 and go to Tools > Options > System Options tab > Hole Wizard/Toolbox
3. Under “Hole Wizard and Toolbox folder:”, browse to and select the toolbox folder on the desktop.  An error will say that this is not the “expected version”.  Click OK.
4. Again browse and select the same folder and notice the path has now been updated.
5. Close and open the Options again to verify the path is retained.
6. Run a repair of SolidWorks as illustrated here: http://www.javelin-tech.com/blog/2011/07/repairing-sw/ (in step 7, you only need to have SolidWorks 2012 SPX.X selected).
7. The toolbox folder on the desktop will now be updated and can be copied back to the shared location.  Within this folder, there is a file called ToolboxVersion.dat that can be opened with Notepad to verify the version.

Alternate Approach:

If you prefer to use the UpdateBrowserData.exe utility as in previous versions (see http://www.javelin-tech.com/blog/2011/12/tb-dbase-wrong-version/), please be aware that there is an additional step after running this process as the part files also need to be updated.

1. Make a copy of your previous toolbox folder for backup purposes
2. Update the legacy Microsoft Database file as per the instructions on this blog post.
3. Point the SW2012 Hole Wizard/Toolbox options to your previous toolbox folder as per steps 2-3.  You should not see the “unexpected version” error.
4. Verify the path is updated to the previous toolbox folder
5. Browse to your SolidWorks 2012 installation folder (typically C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks)
6. Right-click on “sldtoolboxupdater.exe” and choose to “Run as administrator”
7. Click the Process button to begin the update (if there is a standard missing that you wish installed, click the “SolidWorks/Toolbox installation media location” and choose your installation source fileset)

It is of course a proof of concept at this point, but I am looking forward to the day that electrical design can be done in a virtual environment and gestures can be used to easily piece together a new design and document how it should be wired up.  Have a look at this video below to see some of the interaction take place.   Please share your comments or ideas with us to give some of our future students at Javelin some ideas to take the idea further.

In this situation:

1. Create a new vault view.
2. Log into this vault view as the EPDM “admin”
3. Do a search to determine which files are checked out by the user, that the local vault view is being re-created for.
4. Find the files in the vault and perform an undo check-out each file.
5. Once all files have been released, you can proceed to step 5 of “Safely Deleting and Recreating a Local Vault View”.

Note: These steps are bases on the assumption that the local files exist in some other location, such as a backup. If the local vault view is deleted and the files are not backed-up all local files will be lost.

• #1 Be happy. Being in a good mood increases productivity. Studies outlined on Voxeu.org conclude that happiness and productivity are directly correlated. In an experiment conducted by Daniel Sgroi, we can see that participants who were shown a 10 minute long comedy clip answered more questions correctly (10%) than the participants who were not shown a clip. The takeaway: maybe that ‘Funny Cats YouTube Clip‘  is not such a time waster after all. Doing little things to improve your mood can go a long way.

• #2 Eat right. Eating nutritious and high energy foods can replace caffeine and provide consistent, longer lasting energy. Start your day off right. Lay off the caffeine as it only gives you temporary energy and if it’s loaded with sugar, it is likely to make you hyper and ultimately crash. Instead, have a well balanced breakfast and bring these high energy foods to snack on. Good snacks to bring are: oatmeal, almonds, yogurt, popcorn and fruit.  Getting your fibre, protein and vitamins is a great way to boost your energy and maintain long term health.

• # 3 Get up. Leaving your desk can better your mood and increase energy. Eating lunch at your desk can be messy and hinder productivity.  You may think you accomplish a lot while eating spaghetti at your desk, but numerous studies show that you have more to gain by walking or talking during lunch. Human beings are naturally social creatures (hence the 5 social media tabs you currently have open), eating lunch while having a light hearted conversation can relieve stress. Exercise boosts your mood and as we’ve seen in the previous point, a better mood = increased productivity.

     The Myth: Multitasking Exists

The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.

(John Medina, Brain Rules)

• Basically, humans are not made to multi-task. If we try and do so, the quality of our output will greatly suffer.  Trying to do things at once to save time will ultimately cost you more time. Instead, prioritize! According to Tucker Cummings, we should ‘bite the bullet’ and handle the big stuff first. It may be tempting to get the little ‘5 minute tasks’ out of the way but after all the little things are accomplished we rarely have the energy and drive to tackle a big project. Just get it over with!

• Please comment below and share some productivity wisdom! 

When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit.

(Buddha)

Why can’t I delete/move a file or folder? What program is stopping me from deleting or moving a file ot folder?

The Process Explorer from Microsoft, amongst other things, will list the processes that are currently accessing
the file or folder.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Once you launch Process Explorer click on Find.

Enter file or folder name you are trying to move/delete and click on Search. The applications that are accessing the file will be listed in
the Search Window.