I do everything I can to distract you guys from that topic. The result will be so much better if that energy goes toward building and sharing information. I’ve been using SW since 96, and I have to say, it’s always the same ol’ thing. I spent a lot of time tilting at that windmill and it never got me anywhere. I assume the outcome will be even worse for you guys, since you don’t seem to see what’s coming next.
We have a couple product lines that we call “Standard products”…but we rarely sell standard products of those product lines. We have one line where we have brochures showing sizes and types of our “Standard Products”…but ~85% of those products that we sell are not “Standard”.
We have a machine line that has “Standard machines”…and we’ve NEVER sold a standard machine. The only “Standard” machines that we’ve built are essentially display items and show pieces.
It’s even worse on the re-sale side where everything follows the manufacturers naming conventions and file storage systems.
Eek, at least I was able to force some sort of naming convention inside the company for both our files and files from providers.
I agree for the most part. The System should be set up by company structure and what works best. Unfortunately in our case the company is a “Medium” sized company that still operates with a lot of “Small company” carry overs from when it started 60 years ago so “Standard” is just something that doesn’t seem to apply here 
Yeap, boss said “I build the company with pen and paper” because it took too long to do it on computer.
I guess my time is up.
There’s a reason places like MSC and Mcmaster Carr use their part number instead of the manufacturers part number…we don’t do that. It’s absolutely brutal sometimes and there is zero homogeneity of part numbers or in some cases even types of files.
Oops, I forgot the purple text… 
They see it, but don’t want to accept it (to be honest I don’t either, but I’ve resigned myself to it). It’s called “Denial”.
One old boss want to “hide” all purchase parts with our own part number.
We have hydraulic, pneumatic, McMaster Carr and many other.
And he complain 12345-00-00-00 is too long.
Those are stored locally so less of a big deal on performance, especially with SSDs. For network drives, too many files in one folder can have a big impact on things like waiting for the file open dialogue. Showing custom columns will make it worse.
PDM is especially affected by too many files in one folder. Once you get a few thousand, operations start to slow down. We noticed things like transitioning files, the dialogue would take 30 seconds to show in a folder with over 10,000 files.
You mean The Platform? That derailed, crippled, train has been pulling into the station, backwards, for nearly a decade. We’ve been hearing a lot of whistle and bell but the only thing we’re seeing is the blowing of steam, no usable product.
Or do you mean what’s next is SW Desktop is going to leave the station one last time with no functioning replacement? Just like the forum.
Back to folder structure. Everyone knows you use smart part numbers as your file names and you put those in folders sorted by every 1000 part numbers.
Have they said why they pulled the release?
yeah, it’s mentioned in the other place. Sounds like opening a file with missing ref will try to fix it by creating cyclic reference?
Never trust cad to FIFY a file ref.
That depends on a lot of things. It used to be that a Windows server wasn’t a given. It also used to be that “PDM” didn’t mean “The File Management Product Formerly Known As Conisio”. There are other products, and “PDM” is still a general term, not necessarily a proper name for a specific product.
That used to be a problem we only had to deal with when using low end PDM where the files weren’t stored directly in the database. Does what you call “PDM” not use a real database?
Why would anyone store files in a database? Or do you mean store the metadata(including name and location in archive server) in database and files in an archive server of some kind.
matt Yeah, I still prefer that they call it Conisio. SolidWorks PDM is kinda meh. Now you have “Manage” thrown in the mix which confuses it further. Why wasn’t it PDM Premium…or Conisio Premium?
No, the CAD data is in a database for some PDM products. Actually, that’s also what Onshape does - that’s why Onshape doesn’t need PDM - because it IS PDM. Onshape stores its CAD data in a database.
As to why… there are a lot of reasons for that. Data sharing, multiple editors, searches, I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I have no idea about. If you’re really interested, dig around the Onshape site.
Oh, Dude, you’ve got me very confused. I need a bit of re-education, I can see. It drives me crazy when people take generic terms and turn them into a proper name for a specific tool. It gets so confusing to talk about stuff. I’m off to the SW PDM site to try to sort out this tangle. Take too many years off, and they change all the products.
They might not have gone with the Conisio name because that product left an odd taste in the mouth for a lot of people who used it or tried it.
matt “Manage” is a new product that sits on top of PDM and interacts with it to make it a PLM. Not sure how good it is, wish I could get my hands on it, I’m starting to like this stuff as much as CAD.