What’s All The Discussion About…PDM?

Last week I discussed whether or not our company needed to implement some sort of a PDM tool in a blog post titled “PDM…Do We Need It?” Since I did this post I have noticed a lot of discussion on other blogs and a lot of comments on my own blog about PDM software and implementation. This is a tool that I never heard too much about other than on Devon Sowell’s blog PDM Solutions. I knew it existed but it never seemed to receive too much discussion in the SolidWorks community. This is a very intriguing tool and seems to have caught the attention of a lot of users out there.

One comment on my blog that instantly caught my attention was from Pete Yodis. His comment was as follows:

“I’d be asking SolidWorks some questions about their plans for WorkGroup. There is nothing listed for being new in 2009 and not much mention of the product on their new website. It begs the question, what’s the future hold for the product? As someone who setup, maintains, and administers my company’s WorkGroup vault that now contains 12,300 unique file names and 33,000 unique document revisions it is something that I would like to know. What’s the plan SolidWorks, and why no information? Some speculate that it will eventually be Enterprise Lite, but I’d rather know the plans and not speculate. I’d like to know what’s happening with the product that houses the 10s of thousands of files we have in there.”

This comment made me a little curious as to what was going on and I wanted to figure out what the future holds for PDMWorks WorkGroup before I invested my time and efforts into something that would not be available in a year. I emailed an employee at SolidWorks that I know and I quickly received a phone call from him letting me know what he knew about the situation. This is what I was told. This year as Pete mentioned there were not very many enhancements made to PDMWorks WorkGroup, this is not because they are going to discontinue it but because they are focusing on PDMWorks Enterprise which is their flagship software for PDM management. I understand this completely, as a company why would you invest time and money into a free tool that you package with your software when you can be spending the same time and money on making your add on flagship product even better. It makes perfect sense to me now. Not saying that I like it, but I understand. As a company that only has 3-4 designers it is not worth it for us right now to use a product like PDMWorks Enterprise but instead we can use what is available to us with a product like WorkGroup. I was also told that PDMWorks WorkGroup will still be supported like it always has been but you just won’t see the enhancements that you have in the past. As for Pete, I hopes this answers your questions and can ease your anxiety over all of your models in WorkGroup.

What does all of this mean for myself at the company that I work at? Well, add it to the list of CAD Administration things that I need to implement. The list is growing rapidly so I will need to see when I get to it. I guess prioritizing my list is not too far off in the distance and I see this implementation being towards the top of the list.

Earlier I mentioned that I have seen a lot about PDM lately in the SolidWorks community. Check out these links to see what others are saying about it.

Devon Sowell - 2009 WorkGroup PDM In 11 Steps (a must see for anyone looking to implement this in the near future)

Lenny Kikstra - Evaluating PDM Software

Lenny Kikstra - PDM In Plain English

Also, check out the comments from my post “PDM…Do We Need It?”