PLM options for SolidWorks?

[KennyG]

For those users who need full featured enterprise PLM and need to manage your SolidWorks data and associated ECO's, what do you use?

I'm not talking about SolidWorks PDM, but other enterprise systems like Enovia, Windchill, Teamcenter, Aras, etc...

How is your experience with the CAD connector integration with SolidWorks?

[jcapriotti]

Windchill. Workgroup manager is flaky but works most of the time. We often have to keep clearing or deleting the cache on it.

[dave.laban]

We've ended up with two across different bits of the company (don't ask).

Aras Innovator: sold as extremely powerful and highly configurable. I'm happy with the performance however we seem to have tied ourselves in to some support contract that makes any changes extremely expensive to make. Reading through the literature I'm convinced there's a better way but I'm not part of the company completely reliant on it. We don't currently have the SW integration tool which makes everything just way slower than it should be.

Pulse PLM: What I spend most of my days in. Less powerful, slightly old school UI but extremely robust with great support and are responsive to enhancement requests. Extremely happy with the SW integration tool. Manages to do everything we need without much fuss, there were just a couple of instances where it was easier to change our processes to match the software, rather than bully the software in to fitting our processes.

[Slasher]

Definitely looks into Upchain from Autodesk.

[Ryan-3DS]

Definitely looks into Upchain from Autodesk.

I don't think I would go that route. All the principles that joined Autodesk from Upchain left after the acquisition. I've heard from some industry people that Upchain is not the preferred solution by Autodesk. Vault is still the main PDM tool for Inventor, Fusion Manage is the newer tool that is the current solution for "PDMish" tools for Design/Make and Autodesk Docs is the preferred PDMish tool for the AEC industry. So basically, Autodesk doesn't have a real solid solution for PDM.

[jcapriotti]

@KennyG What do you use?

We actually are looking for something to handle Parts, BOMs, and simple ECO process. No CAD data, that will remain in PDM along with our primary ECO system. It doesn't have to be connected directly to PDM but we do need to transfer the part data to a DB so our PDM ECO release can validate against it. This leaves us with Windchill, SolidWorks Manage, maybe Enovia (3dx)....all seem fairly complicated and costly.

[KennyG]

@KennyG What do you use?

We actually are looking for something to handle Parts, BOMs, and simple ECO process. No CAD data, that will remain in PDM along with our primary ECO system. It doesn't have to be connected directly to PDM but we do need to transfer the part data to a DB so our PDM ECO release can validate against it. This leaves us with Windchill, SolidWorks Manage, maybe Enovia (3dx)....all seem fairly complicated and costly.

Jason, we are currently using an older system that we are in the process of replacing due to it being more or less deprecated by the vendor. I don't want to post specifics here as we are still in a selection phase, and I don't know who might be watching. I will direct message you.

[Per S]

I think 3dx on cloude is the future but in this point use solidworks dektop and not conected. Price is almout free with subscription.

[bnemec]

@KennyG What do you use?

We actually are looking for something to handle Parts, BOMs, and simple ECO process. No CAD data, that will remain in PDM along with our primary ECO system. It doesn't have to be connected directly to PDM but we do need to transfer the part data to a DB so our PDM ECO release can validate against it. This leaves us with Windchill, SolidWorks Manage, maybe Enovia (3dx)....all seem fairly complicated and costly.

I thought you were going from transitioning from PDM Pro to Windchill a year or two ago? It sounds like your CAD data is in PDM and you're transferring that data to Database?

[jcapriotti]

I thought you were going from transitioning from PDM Pro to Windchill a year or two ago? It sounds like your CAD data is in PDM and you're transferring that data to Database?

True for new products going forward. No current plan to migrate the legacy data which is massive and hooked into other downstream systems. We don't plan to replace PDM....we just need to look at moving part/bom data from an older system that runs parallel to PDM as its on a mainframe and we need to move away from it.

[sergio.monti]

We use PRO.FILE. It is a nightmare... There is not full communication between SW and PRO.FILE. We can't see the status of parts/assembly/drawings on SW Tree. It is not relieble at all. We have had lost of data sometimes. Configurations are very difficult to manage.

[matt]

This is old news, but in a previous life I used something called ProductCenter. https://essigplm.com/products/productcenter/

This has gone through multiple owners over the years. What I liked most about the company and the product was that they used their own software to manage their business, and their tech support was really stellar. The company really understood their own product and how it works in real world settings.

Without much programming, we were able to set up document management and flowchart driven ECO approval and workflow. I was very happy with the product and the company. A couple of us got trained, and then handled the implementation. We had an IT guy to do the db stuff, and I handled the product development documentation and CAD.

It was a revelation for a company coming from manual folder-based Autocad file management. I suspect it would do most of what you need. It probably doesn't compete with Teamcenter. If all you need is doc lifecycle and eco management, it might be enough.

[jcapriotti]

This is old news, but in a previous life I used something called ProductCenter. https://essigplm.com/products/productcenter/

We actually piloted and selected this as a replacement for the system I'm talking about plus Solidworks like 20+ years ago. Never could get corporate to pay for it and we kept bouncing back to small PDM products like PDMWorks (the no db original) and Activault. But could even get them approved.

Didn't know they were still around, the latest videos I can find are from 2017-19. Looks exactly how I remember it from 2002ish. The wiki version timeline stops around 2019.

I do remember liking it a bunch at the time. Just would be a concern around how future proof it is.