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SOLIDWORKS PDM: Understanding PDM Workflows

New to Solidworks PDM or considering it as a solution at your company?  Maybe y'all have used Solidworks PDM for years but workflows are still a fleck of a mystery?  I hope to provide you some workflow nuts that will accept some of the mystery out of how they are configured and their benefit potential. This is non a replacement for Solidworks PDM Administration Training or a comprehensive functional clarification.  As e'er, Inflow Consultants are available to help you in any Solidworks PDM activities that you lot notice beyond your current capability.

Definitions

Here are some simple terms that will assist you lot to understand the concepts presented.

1. Piece of work Product

A work product in this context would exist a certificate or prepare of documents that demand to be shared or controlled in the vault. Control may exist related to group or user permissions, Revision management, information or all the the above. Your solidwork associates, office and drawing files for a specific product or project might exist an instance of a piece of work product. Other examples might be unmarried documents like a sales order, piece of work order or ECO/ECR/ECN, etc.

1. State

A state is similar a chore in your workflow. At that place is typically a duration of action being performed with clear prerequisites and requirements to enter and exit that state. These volition look like rectangles in your PDM Administration tools workflow pattern.

1. Transition

A transition is an action or decision to motility your vaulted documents from one state to some other. These will look like arrows in your PDM Administration tools workflow design.

How many Workflows do you need?

First, every file checked into the vault volition require a workflow. This is non every bit difficult a task every bit it may seem. Workflows may vary from a single state or dozens of states and transitions. For instance, CAD files or other pattern documents typically need some type of revision command and permissible admission defined. Other types of files may only exist added to the vault for sharing or archive. The latter volition have very simple workflows and likely be a single land.

Next, examine everything y'all wish to put in the vault and and so separate each work product into categories for how they will exist managed. The more common categories might be; Complex Revision Direction, Unproblematic Revision Management, and No Revision Management.

Once you have decided the level of Revision Management for your documents you tin organize all documents by these categories when they besides friction match on revision scheme. Typical revision schemes may exist A-Z (alpha) or 0-99 (numeric) or a combination A1, A2, etc (alphanumeric).

What are the dissimilar types of workflows and how do I determine their construct?

Now that you lot have determined how many workflows you need to create for all your piece of work products yous can first designing each workflow. Here are a few things yous will need to define to exercise detailed configuration of your workflow.

• How many revision schemes does your piece of work production require.

You demand a "loop" mechanism for each type of revision scheme your piece of work product may transition to. For example, in a 3 loop workflow a document or set may have a prototype revision (x1, x2, etc), a Production Release Revision (A, B, C, etc) and a Small-scale Change Revision (A1, A2, A3, etc). Loops ofttimes consist of A transition that sends the work product to a land to decide on a revision change, a land where that modify is considered, and a transition that approves of the decision and a transition that sends that work product back to the prior state for corrections.

• What Approvals are required to increment each revision

If there are multiple approvals, will you lot exist performing those in sequence or in parallel and who are the owners of those approval actions? Volition you desire exceptions to featherbed any of those approvals or will your work product ever require that specific approval? Will all owners have admission to the PDM Application or will you need to designate another group to reflect that approval in Solidworks PDM?

How exercise you ensure files go assigned to the appropriate workflow?

Each workflow has something chosen workflow backdrop associated with information technology that yous define. These properties are essentially Boolean arguments that will each evaluate to truthful or false and may be combined with AND/OR Logic. When you cheque a file into the vault, PDM looks to the commencement workflow listed (this is not something you are aware of equally it is executed almost instantly), information technology evaluates the outset workflow holding for that workflow. If workflow backdrop evaluate to true then it moves on to the next property for that workflow. If all are true, then that file is assigned to that workflow. Otherwise, it moves on to the side by side workflow in the list and repeats the process. If all workflows are evaluated and none had evaluated truthful for all workflow properties, then the user gets an error that "this file does not run into the weather condition of any workflow".

Conversely, information technology is important that workflows take properties that make them mutually exclusive from each other. If two workflows have properties that all evaluate to truthful for a checked in file and then Solidworks PDM will assign information technology to the first 1 of these workflows it encounters which may or may not be the desired outcome and likely may not exist a "consistent" effect for that blazon of file.

What are some of the additional things y'all tin can do in your workflow?

• Yous can have PDM catechumen (like solidworks to pdf) or print files based on a transition command. (PDM Professional only)
• Users or groups can be sent an email notification when important decisions are made similar blessing by manufacturing or when a file has been waiting for blessing longer than an acceptable period.
• Meta data tin can be validated to ensure it is filled appropriately out by the originators.
• Information can be automatically updated for files transitioned, like a watermark value that shows on your drawing or a revision history presented on a bill of fare or in a table on your drawing

Terry Griffith

Inflow Technology

valentinwoothe.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.cati.com/blog/solidworks-pdm-understanding-pdm-workflows/

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