SOLIDWORKS is updated every year to provide users with the best experience and tools. Revision table support was introduced in SOLIDWORKS PDM with the release of SOLIDWORKS 2018. In this blog article, we look at how to use integrated revision tables and how to take advantage of this feature as you manage data across your company.

Typically, the downfall when working with a group is a lack of communication between the different members or even various departments. Throughout this series, we have provided you with ideas and tools that could help you improve your team’s communication. Whether through cloud-based solutions or data management software, there’s a wide variety of solutions to ensure that your team is communicating well throughout the product lifecycle. In this article of our series, we are going to explore different chat tools,  their capabilities and how they can help your teams stay connected.

Many companies have employees that work remotely either permanently or for a specific period. If you work with SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional at your office, you are connected to the local server, which hosts your files and lets you share information with your company. But did you know you can use PDM to stay connected to your data from anywhere and at different levels of usage, from project work, review/approve to view/print/search? You might have some questions such as: “What are my options?”, "How do I stay current with versions and revisions?” or “What happens when I go back into the office?” In this article, we’ll review the available options and will look at the pros and cons of each method.

Today, with the right setup, working away from the office can be very effective. In a previous article, we showed you how to set up your SOLIDWORKS license if you need to access it remotely. Now that you know how to access SOLIDWORKS, how about we give you some tips on how to manage data and file information remotely?

Having a data management system is crucial for any serious engineering or design firm that needs an organized and smart vault of their work and workflows. SOLIDWORKS PDM is a great tool for this because of how straightforward and flexible it is at maintaining the history of files, including all versions and revisions inside the vault. Depending on your workflow, your Version Control process can be fitted to your exact needs, nothing more and nothing less. In this article, I discuss my recommended top three SOLIDWORKS PDM tools that work in conjunction with version control to make managing these precious files as easy as possible.

“So… should I show the customer ‘MasterAssembly-new-latest-USETHIS-keep’ or ‘MasterAssembly-final-DONOTDELETE-approved-updated’?” Thanks to data management tools like SOLIDWORKS PDM, these phrases in the office are a thing of the past. With SOLIDWORKS PDM, maintaining a file’s history and accessing the latest revision is second nature. Unfortunately, you’d need to be tethered to the PDM Vault to account for the latest updates, even with remote access. You know what would be even better for universal version control, especially when needing to show the latest file version on the fly? Taking the file confidence of PDM and wrapping it into an intuitive social platform, like 3DEXPERIENCE ENOVIA accessible anywhere you’re connected to the Internet.

Part numbers are used to identify and catalog different items. Intelligent part numbers are used to capture and display further descriptive characteristics of each unique item. Intelligent part numbers were developed at a time when storage databases were very expensive and not very prevalent. To recognize and understand the definition of a given part number, the number itself was defined using a descriptive meaning in each character or set of characters that make up the part number. Here is an example of an intelligent part number and its meaning.

As a user of SOLIDWORKS PDM, the majority of the functionalities available to you are controlled by permissions set by the system administrator. The Cache Options and User Settings are two PDM controls, that if given the permission, users can self-manage the ways that checked-out, checked-in and reference files are handled on their local computer.

Have you ever wondered, “how do I change the information displayed about the files in the SOLIDWORKS PDM Vault view?” Maybe you’d like to see the information that’s available on the data card, but it’s not shown in the file view or a different set of information on the Bill of Materials than what’s shown. SOLIDWORKS PDM displays the information that you see about the files in the vault using COLUMNS.

SOLIDWORKS Product Data Management (PDM) solutions are ideal to help you keep your project data organized and the latest version available for multiple teams during development. SOLIDWORKS Composer is used to create digital materials, documentation and technical publications all with the intent of giving customers and company stakeholders a better understanding of your product information earlier in the design process, lowering costs and speeding time-to-market. In this blog article, we look at how SOLIDWORKS PDM and SOLIDWORKS Composer work together to create more accurate output while saving more time when compared to a traditional product development workflow.

Replication is a feature in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional that allows you to have a single vault that is used across many geographically separated locations. This increases the software’s performance and provides the user with a better experience. In this blog article, we’ll be focusing on three best practices that will help you replicate your vault in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional: building schemas, maintaining schemas and monitoring activity.

Migrating CAD data can be a daunting task. There are so many things that could be lost, forgotten or looked over. With all of the variables surrounding the transition, it can be overwhelming to define the top items to tackle with data self-migration. Lets uncover some of the top tips and pain points that will occur in the transition.