SolidWorks has included a few nice tools to assist in export existing data from one PDMWorks Workgroup vault and importing into another.  These tools are located in the install directory for PDMWorks Workgroup <c:\Program Files\PDMWorks Workgroup\Vault\>.

pdmwexport.exe - When launched, this tool will prompt for login and then display all the projects in the vault for export.  You simply check the projects you want to export and click “Go”.  This will create a file called “export.pdmw” in the PDMW vault folder (server side) under the “PDMRC” folder.  This file contains all the information about the project structure, user accounts, credentials, revision scheme, lifecycle and file properties.

pdmwimport.exe -This tool would then be launched on the destination system where the target PDMWorks Workgroup vault resides.  It will also prompt to log into the target vault and then point to the source vault folder.

Once this is selected you will receive a import summary of what was found on the source.  This summary is where you will also be warned if there are any potential issues or mismatched revision schemes/lifecycles between the two vaults.

Along the left side you can select your projects, which users to bring over, as well as property mappings from the source vault.  You do have options to only bring over only the latest revision and some overwriting options as well. These utilities are very useful when first implementing PDMWorks Workgroup since you want to first create a demo vault to test inside and once your revisions and lifecycle work correctly, you could then export out the projects you want to contiune to use in your production vault. ~Lou

I have talked about this tool before in the podcast but I thought I would take the opportunity to show the interface of this little data utility in order to bring a level of clairity to the table. This tool is located in the installation directory under Toolbox/data utilities. Once inside of the data utilities folder you can launch the sldsetdocprop.exe by double clicking on it. This will popup the Set Document Property dialog box.

This tool was made to alter the toolbox flag that is recognized by both SolidWorks and PDMWorks Workgroup. Many times users want to take files from the toolbox and modify them and check them into the PDMWorks vault. If your vault settings are set to exclude the check in of these documents, even if you moved your modified Toolbox part to another location, PDMWorks will not allow check in of this document because of this internal flag.

In order to remove this flag, selection of the Property state from “Yes” to “No” will now allow this file to be seen as any old SolidWorks file. On the flip side, you can take your standard SolidWorks files and change them so they are considered to be a Toolbox part when in an assembly or inside of PDMWorks. The tool also allows a nice bulk update interface by adding files and/or directories as well as a filter for file types. Once you have added all the files to modify in the update window, click on the “Update Status” button and the flag has been changed! ~Lou

There is a trick we use in support to open files when they are sent to us in a ZIP format. You may have noticed that the Zip file format is not listed in the Files of Type area in the open dialog but SolidWorks will open them. How? Read the rest of this entry »