SolidWorks:HEARD!

Even though tablets have been around for over ten years, I have never had an interest in using a device that brought "touch" (which I use here lightly) to a desktop operating system, that came at an additional cost.   The devices were under powered since the target market was note-takers and the whole stylus concept was slow. So Apple steps into the game a decade later and introduces their idea of what a tablet should be. If you have paid any attention to the reviews, the field is split and it seems that reviewers either love it or hate it.  Regardless of your stance on it, one thing is pretty clear, the device is fast, has great battery life, and has a HUGE library of applications to fill in some of the device's shortcomings. 

As an engineer and a power user of technology, I was skeptical if a device like the iPad would work for me. Having had smart phones for almost 10 years, connectivity has become a part of my daily life but there is only so much one can do on a 3" screen!  With most smart phones, the library of applications is extensive enough to bring functionality to the device but some features like remote desktop, could help in a pinch but extensive use is really not productive.

Here are some reasons the iPad can be the device to have for engineers and technical professionals alike:

The Device:

As are most Apple products, the device is well made.  It is, in a sense, a big iPod Touch, which is really not a bad thing when you see what developers are doing with their applications to utilize the real estate.  The device is wicked fast and despite the fact it doesn't support "multi-tasking" yet (coming in fall 2010) it can open and close apps extremely fast, resuming the last closed state. It also supports A2DP Bluetooth connectivity with works for audio out and can be used to pair a bluetooth keyboard for any major data entry.

The battery life is just astounding.  10 hours of battery life when the device is being used but when you put the device in standby, it will last up to a month!  I have charged it to 100%, unplugged it and put it in my bag, pulling it out a noon and finding it still reading 100%. 

One aspect that I don't hear people talk about is the instant on.  This device goes from a basic "off" mode to working in a second.  Even Chrome OS doesn't do that and this even faster than any standby or sleep mode wake time on a netbook. 

So what is missing? Well, it could use an SD slot and maybe the ability to access an external storage device via a USB port.  Apple does sell a Camera Connection Kit, which has been determined to be able to connect some USB devices like keyboards and microphone headsets, among other things.  For mass storage, the Camera Connection Kit allows the iPad to pull data off of it but not write to it.

The Browser:

Because the iPad comes with mobile Safari, the ability to use cloud applications and web-based services is very accessible.  Most, not all, sites work pretty well to get to the content you need.  Remember the device doesn't support flash so check with the sites you visit the most and see if that would be an issue. I can get into the SolidWorks Customer Portal & Knowledge Base, and the almost every engineering forum I use.

I am a Google Apps user so nearly everything I do can be accessed and used within the Googlesphere.  Gmail has a specific build for the iPad and everything else (Calendar, Talk, Buzz, Reader, etc) runs as it does with the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The device also supports VPN so if you have internal intranet sites at work or other corporate hosted sites, bearing they do not require Internet Explorer and ActiveX, you can get as well.  If they do require IE, I will talk about how to combat that as well below. 

It is also worth mentioning that natively the device has a great Mail app and can be configured to use Microsoft's own ActiveSync, supporting PUSH Mail, Calendar and Contacts as well.

The Apps:

The rest was left to the applications to bridge the gap.  Let's face it, it is not about operating systems, it has always been about applicaitons and the iPad is no different.  Once I found a few key apps, my decision to buy was solidified.  Below are 6 applications that were key to my decision to get the iPad and the solutions they deliver for me and my workflow:

Dropbox - (free) This data sync service brings file sharing and transfer to every computer you use in your eco system.  Locally installed clients sync selected files/folders to all systems connected, giving access from your desktop, laptop, phone and iPad. I have found that this replaces the need for the USB storage since any file can be synced or a link can be sent from any device to share. (2GB Free)

Evernote - (free) This note and data sync service is where I live.  Everything I do; research, writing code/scripts, storing PDF files and other documents, all get put into Evernote.  I can take notes on the website, on the desktop app, phone or iPad and all of it syncs. There is a free 40MB/month service and the Premium is about $45/year.  I have the Premium account for the full search and expanded space to 500MB/month.

GoodReader - ($0.99) This documents reader connects to many online services like Dropbox, Google Docs, Box.net, FTP and more to download and upload files from across the iPad. Attachments from Mail can be opened and managed from within this application.  GoodReader essentially acts as a device wide file manager and viewing solution for the iPad.

Office2HD - ($7.99) For those of you who use Google Docs, there are many solutions to download and access your documents offline on the iPad.  However, creating new or editing Google Docs online is not possible...yet via the web.  This application brings a word processor and spreadsheet creation capability (cheaper than Apple's own Pages & Numbers) and has the ability to edit existing Google Docs directly.  **It currently does not work with documents created with the newly announced document editor yet**

IM+ - ($9.99) Many companies are using instant messaging to keep communication up among employees and this app has it all!  It supports SKYPE, AOL, MSN, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Jabber, ICQ and MySpace.  You can have multiple accounts on each type and it supports PUSH so messages can pop up as you are working without the application running.

WinAdmin - ($8.99) This is a great remote desktop client and the last piece of the puzzle for me.  Coupled with a VPN connection, access to any remote desktop enabled system can be used.  It supports legacy systems and the most current Windows 7 and Server 2008 systems as well.  This gives a very usable remote touch access to run any application, like CAD, for those times when you need to make an edit or access those corporate PLM/ERP/MRP systems internally.

Conclusion:

Having a snappy, instant on, application rich, big touch device is becoming something I am preferring to use for a majority of my day to day work.  I have not yet traveled with it but for those that do, the TSA has determined that the device does NOT have to be removed for security. For me, not having to worry about the person in front on me moving their seat and breaking off my 17" notebook screen is appealing!

I purchased the 16GB WiFi version since I already own a Verizon MiFi, which gives me connectivity anywhere but if you don't, it might be worth the extra $130 to get the WiFi + 3G version.  The access via the 3G is provided by AT&T (I know, I know) but it is contract free so you can pay $15/mo (250MB) or $30/mo (unlimited, no really unlimited not the 5GB hidden ceiling) and pay as you go.

As I said in my last post about touch, I believe that 2010 is going to be the year of the tablet and engineering software companies should start developing supplementary design tools for these devices.  Portals to PLM/PDM, CAD viewers and markup tools, design planning like SolidWorks LABS Treehouse, and even web-based tools optimized for touch. Mobile is booming and is the single largest hardware and software market so why not give engineers ways to get things done no matter where they are! ~Lou

SolidWorks World Conference is never without excitement and new announcements. The General Sessions are always used as the platform to announce exciting future offerings and spark conversation among attendees. This year, SolidWorks ramped up the excitement by kicking off day one with the cloud-based, platform-agnostic SolidWorks version (unsure of the official name or release date), day two with James Cameron and day 3 with the sneak peak of SolidWorks 2011. A final announcement of a new SolidWorks PLM tool called SolidWorks PDS which stands for Product Data Sharing was also debuted with a promise delivery around the time of the 2011 product line.

SolidWorks PDS aims to address a group of users that fall into the category "Version-management challenged", which in my approximation would be about 70% or more of the user base. SolidWorks currently has two products in the PDM space, Workgroup and Enterprise PDM, that give small to large groups a good spread of document and process centric control of engineering project data. I have talked about the importance of data management with parametric CAD before but there are still a very large number of users whose companies do not have a system in place that addresses the issues of references and associativity within the CAD data.

SolidWorks PDS is built on the Enovia V6 cloud framework and brings the benefits of centralized storage, workspace control, sharing access levels, as well as 3 main platforms (SolidWorks TaskPane, web-client, and mobile platforms). PDS utilizes the essential aspects of PDM, simplifing deployment by not requiring any IT infrastructure setup and focuses on automatic version control and data sharing. Files are worked on locally and uploaded/shared to the cloud, enabling users to comment and share files as easy as sharing photos on FaceBook. Users would then have the power to create their own engineering communities, share data quickly and ensure that versions are maintained and backed up off site.

I see this as a tool for those users without a PDM system in place, however SolidWorks PDS might act as the collaboration mechanism for SolidWorks PDM packages in the future. This might be the first step for SolidWorks enterinig back to the 3D TeamWorks days of hosted services (SaaS) and I believe the time is right. ~Lou

When it comes to beta testing, it takes a certain user to willingly dig into a known buggy software product in order to determine the new features that will warrant an upgrade. Beta testing software that runs on a single sysytem can have it own challenges but this is only magnified when the software in question is distributed among various clients and server machines.

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM can be a solution that falls in the latter category, making testing for larger installs difficult, since it typically requires you to upgrade not only the clients but also the archives, databases and replicated servers as well. Seems like a lot of hard work to create a test environment or take a chance on moving a production system to bata-based backbone.

This past week, SolidWorks is offering an easier way to those who want to take part in the SolidWorks 2010 Beta program, to test the coming release of Enterprise PDM without all the headache. To do this, SolidWorks is hosting the archive and database servers on their infastructure in order to provide a hosted vault, requiring only the end user to install a beta client on their local system. This eliminates the hassle of locating an additional system, installing all the server-side components and simply allows customers to test out what 2010 EPDM will bring to the table.

In order to take advantage of this offering you must email "epdmbeta@solidworks.com" with the subject line "EPDM BETA SIGN UP". The retuned email will contain instructions to get started with your hosted testing environment. Currently, there are two options for beta testing via the "SolidWorks EPDM cloud":

1) Connect to an existing vault using the server name (IP address) and Username provided in your invitation email and connecting the the "Betatest" vault that has been created.

2) Create your own vault on the hosted server, allowing an import of your current vault settings and essentially replicating your production setup. This option requires a bit of host file configuration but overall the process is standard operating procedure (SOP) for most who have setup any multi-site server configuration.

For many, this will lower the barrior of entry to beta testing Enterprise PDM 2010 and hopefully allow the evalution procedure to upgrade to be started much earlier than it would otherwise. ~Lou

You may have heard the term "XML" thown around with everything from blog feeds to 3D models but the underlying technology is pretty simple and extremely powerful.  "eXtensible Markup Language" (XML) is an extensible language, meaning that anyone who uses it can customize the structure in order to apply it to their application, for sharing structured data outside of the application in question.  Much of our blogging communty refers to their "feed" which is a continually built file that contains all the contents of their blog site in an XML file that is referred to RSS.  Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a standard for communicating a blog or podcast's data utilizing the XML standard.  Here is a simple examle:

<xml>

<quiz>

<question>

What is SolidWorks Heard?

</question>

<answer>

A podcast covering SolidWorks related tips and tech news.

</answer>

</quiz>

</xml>

The structure displayed above is completely customizable and can have many sub items in order to show the hirachy of a more complex data sequence.  A good example would be if you wanted to show configuration specific file properties within a single part file.

In SolidWorks Enterprise PDM, XML is used as the universal language to communicate to ERP/MRP systems.  By using this standard format, the issues with having to code custom conduits in order to talk to each end (PDM <->ERP/MRP) are avoided and that data simply can be parsed by each system independantly.  This approach also reduces the amount of systems that data needs to be entered into, allowing PDM to do the product management, ERP/MRP system managing the other critical systems while sharing this common data thread through XML.

XML can either be imported in or exported out of EPDM by setting up rules in the Administration tool based on certain criteria the user determines.  Once these rules are defined, an action in the workflow performs the operation of pushing or pulling, typically metadata, for use within the system.

There are, however, a few stipulations to utilizing this data for import. One, the XML file must contain a variable for each file that can be recognized and matched within the database.  The variable "Filename", for example, would need to be written by an action that grabs the actual file's name and writes it to that file's "Filename" variable. Once this is set, the XML now has something within it's contents that can be paired to the database. And two, every item, or "Filename" of the XML  must exist in the database before the import action is performed.  This means that you cannot pre-import data into the database before the files have been checked into the database.  Since the import action needs to match the data up first, it has to exist in order to be accepted by the system.

Once these two criteria are met, the data is written to a temporary table till the action in the workflow is performed, then writing the data to the file data card. One fail safe test is the XML file should dissapear if the system accpets the file, so if the file sticks around longer than your polling interval, something went wrong.  If something does go wrong, don't look in the EPDM logs for the import issues, these issues exist in the Event Viewer in Windows and will give you good feedback on what when south!

Overall, utilizing XML is a great step towards streamlining all data-based systems to communicate without running into the all too familiar file format war or custom conduit woes!~Lou

Product data management, better known as PDM, has grown in popularity across many CAD platforms over the past 5 years but still adoption seems to be the same, slow. This slow adoption among companies utilizing 3D parametric CAD usually results in short term and long term problems from a variety of aspects such as document control, change orders and other common activities like search.  These issues are not unique to one CAD platform but are the common thread to these data management issues.
Every company has a process, even if that process is walking down the hall to ask someone for a bank of part numbers that are then written on a piece of paper. These processes, in some cases, are manual but they span across many departments and disciplines so it is difficult to prevent details from falling through the cracks. Focusing on the processes that surround product development, CAD is a major player in this arena. A decade ago, the CAD file was like any other file, a flat, single document like a PDF, however today, much of the parametric CAD power comes from associativity.  This technology, yet powerful, brings a file management challenge that is typically unknown to new users and can catch experienced users off guard.

Associativity & Revisions: The common way of making a copy entailed performing a File, Save-as, assigning a new file name then changing that copy to meet the requirements of the new variation. Today, this "web" of connected documents can take the intuitive "Save-As" approach to creating a copy and destroy the original by reappointing all of it's references to a new file name.  This "Save-as" procedure was also the typical approach to creating revisions, however with revisions impacting multiple files at once, the challenge is again much greater than it was in the flat file days. PDM is aware of this relationship hierarchy and manages it correctly by automatically displaying the dependency with tools like "Where Used" and "Contains" giving the users more visibility to the impact of revisions and change control.

Access Control: Whenever the word "Access" is referred to most point their finger to the IT department to create a folder structure on the network, giving users a variety of access.  This "Venue" approach to access control is primitive and a bit cumbersome since access to the files are usually changing based on their "Status" not their "Venue".  Having an assembly, for example, that has a drawing, parts and part drawings would be cumbersome to move to another folder to modify the access to these files, plus certain users would have to have access to both folders to perfom the move.  This becomes much more difficult to manage. PDM can give credentials to users based on the document's status. This allows control to be applied to where the documents are in the company's design cycle and not by the physical folder it resides.  This "work-flow" is a representation of the design cycle and every step could have different access which is a streamlined approach to a process centric control.

Concurrent Engineering: Another common frustration that occurs when working on complex designs is when teams of engineers are working on large CAD projects.  When someone is working on a top-level assembly, it can be challenging to allow others to work on any files that are associated to that assembly without utililzing some tools to control write-access. When working in PDM, a user can specify what files are going to be edited while only referencing the other associated documents, which could be edited by other users in the engineering team. Tools are also available to notify the users that the files they are referencing are "out-of-date" and allow real-time update to be performed to those associated files, keeping everyone in the team abreast of the changes.

Search: Finding files within Windows Explorer is limited to "contains" searches for details like name, date created, date modified etc.  Many enginering documents have metadata in the Windows file properties which can contain many variables that detail the file's contents.  PDM places this metadata in reach of the search functionality, lending to built search critera that could potientially find a file made of aluminum, manufactured on a certain date, that contains a partial serial number.  This type of "surgical" search criteria can take the mystery out of finding files and make it trivial again.

PDM has become an essential part of using CAD due to the complexity of the models that are created. As technolgoy grows the CAD capability, more complexity is to come to managing the data in the future. Utilizing PDM as part of the CAD tool allows it to continue to control that complexity from the data management side, allowing the user to, again, focus on the design not the tool. Whether it is one user or hundreds of users, PDM can simplify the user experience by carrying the load of data management, since change is always part of the process. ~Lou