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I think I can safely assume that if you are reading this that you are looking for a better way to manage your SOLIDWORKS design files, supporting documents and product development process. Well, SOLIDWORKS offers three different data management solutions: SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard, SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional and SOLIDWORKS Manage, but how do you know which one is the best fit for your company?

In this blog, we will review the differences, clear up some questions you may have, and help you determine which is the right data management solution for you. First, let’s start by looking at the purpose and capabilities of product data management (PDM) tools and then, how each of these SOLIDWORKS products meet the need.

SOLIDWORKS clients often overlook the importance of having the correct hardware to support their new 3D CAD purchase. A common question we get asked is what should be considered before buying or upgrading equipment, so we thought it would be helpful to compile all the published system requirements along with our Engineering Team's recommendations in one place. Here is the information for this year's version of SOLIDWORKS as compared to last year.

Have you ever needed to change or even forgotten the password of the SQL Server System Administrator (SA) account? Maybe the password has been lost or the person in charge of keeping it left the company? In this article I will walk you through three most common ways to change the password and get you back into your SQL SA account.

The first method is to use the current SA password to log into the SQL Server Management Studio and change it. The second method is to use another administrator account to log into the SQL Server Management Studio to reset the password. The third method is to use a command prompt to restart the SQL service in a Single User Mode, reset the password, then restart the SQL service back in Multi-User mode.

So many improvements in SOLIDWORKS 2021, so little time! With the vast amount of upgrades and additions they make each year, it can be overwhelming trying to sift through them all, and often, useful tools and changes are missed. To ensure you are getting the most of your software, we are providing eight on-demand webinars full of demonstrations, updates, explanations and explorations of SOLIDWORKS. 

As electrical designers chip away at an electrical task, it is common for them to work together and share appropriate information while keeping design standards and workflows in place. Knowing the status of a project, previewing schematics and having access to BOM's is not only beneficial to the electrical design team but beneficial to all teams in an organization. Fortunately, there is a way to integrate electrical projects with SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional using the SOLIDWORKS Electrical PDM connector tool.

When working across multiple projects and teams, keeping up with the latest file version or revision can be a hassle. With SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard and SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, you can maintain versions and revisions through your PDM vault and track the updates made to your projects. This article goes over the differences between revisions and versions and how to access them.

DELMIAWORKS is a Manufacturing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that is designed specifically for the factory setting to streamline the process and gain visibility and control from end-to-end. Some of the top industries including Aerospace, Assembly, Automotive, Food and Beverage and even Packaging are utilizing it to have a single platform to integrate inventory management, procurement, planning, sales, CRM, shipping, production, financing and even business intelligence. Let's take a deeper dive into each industry to see how they take advantage of DELMIAWORKS.

When upgrading SOLIDWORKS and PDM applications to a new version, your existing files remain at the version in which they were created. If they remain this way, it will create delays when opening and reading these files since they will be undergoing conversions when opening. This can be seen as slow system performance, but luckily this doesn't have to remain an issue. In this article, we look at three ways in which you can upgrade your files to their latest version in SOLIDWORKS.

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?