Back in 2016, SOLIWORKS announced the retirement of SOLIWORKS Workgroup PDM. For many customers, the result of this announcement was that they were locked into at latest SOLIWORKS 2017 until the decision to migrate to one of the newer SOLIWORKS PDM products was made. If you're watching this presentation, it's likely your business has now decided to migrate and you were just starting an implementation of either SOLIWORKS PDM Standard or SOLIWORKS PDM Professional. As this is likely to be a major and possibly daunting change for you, I've created this presentation to introduce SOLIWORKS PDM whilst referring back to Workgroup PDM as a means of comparison. Of course, user training will be provided as part of your implementation package, but the hope is that by providing this overview early, you'll be able to see some of the many benefits of this change and be a little less concerned about what will hopefully be a positive step forward. We will start with a high-level review of some familiar Workgroup PDM terms and see how they translate to SOLIWORKS PDM, if indeed they do. Some of this we will look at in detail. Other things such as differences and use cases for revisions and versions will slot into other sections as applicable. For example, the subject of workflow. We'll cover the user interface and differences in interface behaviors covering both navigation and inside SOLIWORKS experience. Then at the end of the presentation, I'll introduce a few case studies to show you how you may complete some common tasks using SOLIWORKS PDM. As with all of our customers who have implemented and happily used Workgroup PDM for many years, you're probably wondering why it was discontinued. Although Workgroup was a capable and well-regarded tool for managing your SOLIWORKS data, unfortunately, we saw very little in the way of improvements in capabilities within the last few years of its life. Workgroup was essentially text-based and with no database platform behind it, it was simply not optimized for modern operating systems and business requirements. The restrictions of the underlying technology and its limited capabilities when it came to automation meant it wasn't really able to scale with growing businesses and their changing business needs. Although possible to extend Workgroup PDM, this required a license of the advanced server product to make the API available. And even then you needed a pretty niche set of programming skills to be able to work with triggers. The technology platform itself was also not scalable enough to be able to keep adding new functionality. And SOLIWORKS themselves expressed it would have required a complete rewrite to allow it to keep pace with SOLIWORKS. And why do that when they already had Enterprise PDM, now known as PDM Professional, and could choose instead to dial that back to suit the smaller, less complex business needs of the customers who would have implemented Workgroup PDM previously, whilst future-proofing them for growth later. So PDM Standard was released late in 2016 alongside the last release of Workgroup PDM. Whilst it was great for new users, the mismatch in technologies, terminologies and behaviours tied to Workgroup PDM allowing users to easily circumvent or subvert expected behaviours within Workgroup PDM, this has meant that not only are we presented with a major headache migrating each and every customer from Workgroup PDM to SOLIWORKS PDM, but you as the end user faced with a big change to your SOLIWORKS experience. Hopefully this presentation can help uncover the shared and unique features of each and show you how you can get the most from this move to SOLIWORKS PDM. Similar to Workgroup PDM, SOLIWORKS PDM offers a secure, centralised location on your server where files and information about those files can be stored and accessed based on the specified security model. A key differentiation however is how it achieves this. SOLIWORKS PDM has two core components, the archive, which is the file store, and the database, which resides within a Microsoft SQL Server database engine. So, similar to Workgroup PDM, users connect to the vault using a PDM client software installation, which, for SOLIWORKS PDM, includes an add-in inside SOLIWORKS but also behaves as an overlay to Windows Explorer. This means SOLIWORKS PDM can be accessed from almost any desktop application on your PC. There are actually two SOLIWORKS PDM products. PDM Standard, which is targeted at businesses with less complex requirements or small design teams simply looking to get their SOLIWORKS CAD data under control. PDM Standard licenses are included with SOLIWORKS Professional and Premium. We also offer PDM Professional. This supports a much wider set of capabilities and includes optional add-ins and plug-ins that support the native management of Microsoft Office documents, as well as other legacy and competitive CAD products too. PDM Professional is licensed separately to SOLIWORKS, so can be used with all editions of SOLIWORKS, including SOLIWORKS Standard. PDM Professional also includes an optional web interface, which offers an easy-to-navigate interface that can be used by shop floor and other non-CAD -using users of the vault via any web browser, including mobile devices. One of the biggest challenges when moving from an unmanaged SOLIWORKS environment to using SOLIWORKS with SOLIWORKS PDM would be the minor process changes and new terminology linked to the collaborative working environment that PDM promotes. This is also true when moving from one PDM platform, such as Workgroup PDM, to SOLIWORKS PDM. As with Workgroup PDM, when working with files within SOLIWORKS PDM, you're not working on those files directly within the vault. The files you are viewing or editing are stored on your PC in the cache of your vault view. This provides enormous benefits to performance on large assemblies or simply when creating drawings in that opening and saving is all done to the local disk until you want to commit those changes to the server and make them available to other users that you're collaborating with or who will be signing off that work for you. When using SOLIWORKS PDM, the default state of a file that you open from the vault is that it will be read-only. This is true for any references within a drawing or assembly too. In order to modify a file, you need to make it writable and that's done using the command checkout. This can be done when opening a file or from inside SOLIWORKS. Once checked out to you, it's locked to your name and the PC you checked it out on. You can then complete your work, save and check in to transfer those changes back to the vault, making them viewable to other authorised users. In this case, another member of the engineering team, since as the design is not yet approved, it's perhaps still hidden from the shop floor users. This doesn't override the file in the vault however, it creates by default a new version of that file and the previous version is maintained should you need to view it or even roll back to it later. In SOLIWORKS PDM, in order to help businesses refine their security model and manage storage, whilst encouraging collaboration and innovation, a standard check-in will create a new working version. In some cases, not creating a new version may be preferable. So, your vault can also be configured to allow a user to override the latest version during the check-in. If this was a new file, and in fact its first check-in, then when being added to the vault for the first time, it will also be added to the initial state of the configured workflow process. Dependent on whether you are moving to PDM Standard or PDM Professional, this could be a single workflow for all files, or discrete workflows with their own rules and behaviours. It's this workflow and workflow state which determines in this case that although engineer B can see the changed file, the viewer cannot. So, what is a workflow? A workflow is basically a collection of life cycle statuses that are joined to each other using transitions in order to allow you to capture your engineering approval process flow and automate common tasks. Whilst instrumental in defining your security model in PDM, the workflow is also where much of the automation takes place. Whether that be something as simple as updating the text in your drawing border when a drawing is approved, the conversion of 2D and 3D files to neutral formats, or the pushing of metadata in the bill of materials to your ERP system, these are all configurable dependent on the PDM edition you're moving to. So, after check-in, engineer A will have an option to change state and in this example would have selected submit for approval. In this case, that approval can be done by any other member of the engineering team who will check the file to approve or reject it. So, after transitioning the file to pending approval, engineer B receives a notification alerting them of this change. Based on the link clicked in the notification email, engineer B can choose to open read-only or view the document. Then, using another change state command, decide if they want to reject it and send back to work in progress, or instead approve it. After approving, the document is no longer classed as a working version and is instead stamped in the database as the first issue or revision of that document, the document is now in a workflow state that allows viewing by all relevant users of PDM. It's also read-only and can no longer be checked out to make any further alterations. To enable a modification to be made, we need to change its workflow state again back to work in progress, which will, in time, create a new revision of that file. So, to summarise, whilst in Workgroup PDM, a checkout was the act of getting a model that you want to interact with into your working folder. In SOLIDWORKS PDM, that's simply a GET and is often not something you need to manually trigger unless you are getting a specific version of that file. In SOLIDWORKS PDM, checkout is doing the same as taking ownership of that file, that is, getting right access to it, and preventing other users from modifying it until you eventually check in and create a new version of that file. Versions will be something that is a new concept to you as a Workgroup PDM user. Whilst in Workgroup PDM, each time you release ownership, you would have been prompted to create a new revision or update the existing Work-in-Progress revision in SOLIDWORKS PDM. In order to help businesses refine their security model and manage storage, whilst encouraging collaboration and innovation, a check-in is creating a new working version by default. As mentioned, PDM can be configured to allow the user to overwrite the last version during the check-in, the same, to behave similar to how Workgroup PDM did in that respect. However, you can now have multiple working versions in between those released files or revisions, that can be viewed, loaded, and rolled back to if required. Revisions, however, are created as a result of a specific action within the workflow, which is the equivalent of Lifecycle in Workgroup PDM, but does so much more. Lifecycle was optional in Workgroup PDM, so you may or may not have been using it currently. Reference links, as you will know from Workgroup PDM, are viewed more structurally in SOLIDWORKS PDM. So, dependent on how you want to see the links between files within the vault, you can look top-down, or what references the drawing or model contains, or look up to where that path is used. And finally, we will see that where Workgroup PDM had its own user interface called SOLIDWORKS EXPLORER, that since PDM uses Windows Explorer as its main interface to the vault, that SOLIDWORKS EXPLORER is no longer even a product in SOLIDWORKS 2021 and beyond. Workgroup PDM was a bespoke application with its own user interface, accessible through SOLIDWORKS EXPLORER or within SOLIDWORKS itself. SOLIDWORKS PDM, although also a bespoke application, is an overlay to standard Windows Explorer, meaning that the vault can be accessed from Windows Explorer or any application that has a standard Windows file open or file save dialog box. Both systems support user authentication via a login, but with SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, this login can be connected to your Windows login as well. One key difference is that PDM Standard and Professional both support the creation and hosting of multiple vaults within the same server environment. To access a SOLIDWORKS PDM vault, you therefore log in to a specific vault by browsing a special folder known as the Blueberry. Logging out can be done within the application window, but also as SOLIDWORKS PDM is licensed via the SOLIDWORKS Network License Manager, it means that logging out can also be triggered by a timeout. Both PDM products have SOLIDWORKS add-ins that add a tab to the task pane inside SOLIDWORKS. The icons are basically the same, but the behavior and capabilities are quite different. The icon is also used in Windows Explorer as a special folder icon that although being actually called the vault view, we colloquially refer to it as the Blueberry. The SOLIDWORKS add-in for Workgroup PDM is essentially a way to navigate the vault and interact with data within the vault. This vault view focus was pretty much a hangover from the time when it wasn't possible to directly browse the vault via file open and save. In SOLIDWORKS PDM however, where accessing the vault structure has always been possible directly within the standard file open and save interface, the PDM task pane is there essentially to provide feedback and to allow you to interact with the data you're working on and have open at that time. So when you open SOLIDWORKS with PDM added in, you will see a blank task pane until you open a file from the vault. That said, the toolbar within the add-in does include a search icon that allows you to launch a standalone search tool for PDM professional whilst inside SOLIDWORKS and provides direct access to any saved or favourite searches that you've been you have created or have been assigned to you. The SOLIDWORKS PDM client software creates an overlay to Windows Explorer that adds additional tools and capabilities to view your project folder structure. In Workgroup PDM, you would have set up a working folder for your checked out to newly created files or maybe even one for each project. If you change the location of your working folder or add additional folders for different projects which use common files, all the files for an assembly will be recached to that new folder, meaning you could actually end up with multiple writable copies of that file. Also, although rare, this type of setup could create reference issues. With SOLIDWORKS PDM, you stay in the one place. Your vault view is also your working folder. Those files you have not yet checked into the vault will be classed as private and will only be visible to you, but with all paths set up as you will see them after they're checked in. So, in fact, you're always working locally, meaning that it's wise and in fact encouraged to check in your new data and changed files frequently, which could simply be at the end of each day. You should note that in your workgroup PDM environment, you may have kept your libraries, toolbox, templates and settings outside of PDM, perhaps in a shared folder on your server. But with SOLIDWORKS PDM, the system is designed to have all related data within and managed by PDM. You may then have a cached version of those design libraries on your PC and the system will automatically alert you when a loaded reference in a model that you are working on has a newer version available. You can also configure PDM to update that file automatically, or you can choose to do it on demand. As previously mentioned, with workgroup PDM, the data that you've created or have been working on within the vault would have been stored locally in your working folder. And with SOLIDWORKS PDM, this is now your local views cache. Sending that data to or back to the server so that it will be visible to other users, backed up and so on, is done via a check-in, the equivalent of release ownership and check-in in workgroup terms. Moving to SOLIDWORKS PDM, the check-in dialogue boxes are slightly different, but essentially offer much of the same options. One of the big differences you will see is that unlike workgroup, a check-in will not be prompting you to change the revision value. Instead, it's creating a new version of the file and it is also not possible to change state during check-in either. These actions are now workflow driven and kept separate to the check-in process. Retain ownership, for example. In SOLIDWORKS PDM, this is keep checked out and when used will check in and immediately check out the identified file. The change note is now the comment. Delete local copy removes the local copy of check-in. To overwrite the previous version or revision in workgroup terms, tick overwrite latest version, an option that will only be available if the file state has actually been configured to allow that behavior. In PDM Pro, columns can be added and removed for different operations and you can sort by any column if you don't want to view it as a tree structure. With the shortcut menu, so a right mouse click over any of the files, you can enable or disable reference selection tools as shown in this image. This supports or provides a select all deselect option and by hovering over an icon in the type column, you can display the thumbnail. A single comment is going to be applied to all of the files being checked in. Workgroup PDM allowed users to manage revisions with or without an associated life cycle status, with the release status often only determined by the revision label being applied, whether that was a work in progress indicator or a change of revision counter from alpha to numeric, for example, or a combination thereof. When life cycle was enabled, this allowed you a bit more control over file access and how and when those different revision schemes could be used. Typically, a state change or change of revision was done during the check-in or release ownership process, but it was also possible to assign ownership to an approver, for example, automatically during a change state. SOLIDWORKS PDM extends the concept of life cycle status into a workflow, a workflow essentially being a collection of states connected to each other by one or more transitions. This means that the progress through the workflow can be controlled and automated based on rules. Let's take a look at an example workflow. This image is mostly as per the default workflow in our PDFDM professional fast start. All files when first checked in enter the initial work in progress state where any member of the editors or design group are able to check out those files and work on them. At the other end of the workflow, prior to obsolete, we have an approved state where these released files are read only to all but can be up revisioned and pushed back to work in progress for further editing. Sitting between these two required states and something that we discuss and implement according to your preferences are the optional peer checking and approval stages of the process. As you can see in the image, there can also be multiple routes a file can take, and with PDM Professional, it's even possible to have some transitions trigger automatically based on certain conditions. In this example, I have two routes from pending approval to approved. One, the red line, which is also the non-standard addition to the fast start, would be triggered automatically when a certain condition is met, such as a certain flag or value being set as metadata within that file. The other is as just a standard transition, which could be activated by any authorised approver. Transitions are where much of the automation in PDM happens. As I've already mentioned, transitions can be tied to specific conditions that allow you to verify that certain information exists or actions have been completed before you can proceed. They can send notifications in the form of an email that can alert you to something that has happened or of something you need to do, and they can update metadata in the files to record who carried out actions and when, for example, filling in your revision table. Plus, they can automate other tasks, such as converting drawings to PDF and in PDM Professional to other formats for both drawings and models, as well as exporting bill and material information as an XML file that could be imported into other business systems. In Workgroup PDM, to see the history of a file, the simplest thing to do is switch to SOLIDWORKS Explorer, where a history tab will display the lifecycle activities on that file. History is also viewable in Windows Explorer, the PDM Pro, but also within SOLIDWORKS through the history command. Here you can also see the details of the file's lifecycle, including version and state change comments. You can print the history, view or cache a selected version, and if you have permission, you can also access the rollback function to negate any changes made after a specific selected version. In SOLIDWORKS PDM, you can make the adding of those version and transition comments mandatory, but it's also worth noting here that you have suitable administration rights. Those comments can also be updated within that dialogue. We've already discussed how PDM and Workgroup PDM differ when it comes to revisions and how in PDM versions are our day-to-day currency, with workflow-created revisions being versions of files with special qualities that allow for further security considerations and different treatment when it comes to multi-site replication, and even managing disk space with something we call cold storage. Although we don't, in PDM Pro, have the option to overwrite a revision value on check-in, there is a set revision command available to authorised users in PDM standard. And above that, when adding legacy files to a PDM Pro vault that is based on either our FastArt or our Foundation template, we include a set revision workflow that processes all new files added to PDM, checking for a revision property to stamp against that file when it's processed after that first check-in. Workgroup PDM, you may have been adding metadata to your models in one of three different ways. Workgroup has its own properties which can be used for reporting in the vault. description and status being standard when you create the vault. You could have created other properties however, and when doing so, those may or may not have been mapped to SOLIDWORK's custom properties. Those custom properties could have been supplemented by standard custom or configuration-specific properties that you accessed via the properties button or even via a customized property tab, which allows for some rules to be set such as pre-defining options or values within a list. In PDM, you should no longer need to edit SOLIDWORK's properties direct or via a property tab. SOLIDWORK's PDM uses a data card, which is similar in behaviour to a property tab, in that you can configure fields to be text, dates, checkboxes, and radio buttons and lists. In the past, you can also configure the data card behaviour to automatically transfer the custom properties created in a model over to the drawing of that model when it's saved into PDM. Data cards actually cover a number of different types of interface in PDM, and for a file card, these can be file type, and even project, or folder specific. We can use folder cards to store information that will be inherited by the files added to that folder. We can create search cards with specific layouts for different types of users. And with PDM Pro, we can also create PDM templates, which via a template card can collect and then manipulate some metadata to determine how files are named and where they are stored in the vault. These properties are also visible in PDM via custom column sets that can be configured centrally to display them in Windows Explorer. In SOLIDWORK's Explorer with Workgroup PDM, it was possible to add one additional custom column to the display. In SOLIDWORK's PDM, there are no limitations like this, and you can switch column sets when required. So let's look at searching a little bit more. By default, searching in SOLIDWORK's PDM offers a lot more scope and options than Workgroup PDM. No need to choose between hitting next or generate report to find the version you want. By default, PDM searches a wildcard based on entering a string which will return all files that contain that string within the field or fields you are searching. And because PDM is integrated into Windows Explorer, you can access the search directly in any file open dialog box. When it comes to how you search, specific search forms can be configured to include just the options relevant to specific teams and display the results of the search with just the metadata that team is interested in. Plus, in PDM 2020 and later, we now have a quick search bar that can also be configured to search specific fields using standard operators such as AND, OR, AND NOT. With Workgroup PDM, the most common scenario for standard library items and toolbox usage was that they were not revision managed and stayed outside the vault. Whilst this is generally not a problem, there is risk that this could mean that as parts are overwritten in those libraries, that managed assemblies could break. There was also the risk that with users each having their own boxes and set up locally that parts or part sizes and part metadata could be missing when those assemblies were being accessed on other machines. With SOLIDWORKS PDM, all references and therefore all libraries reside within PDM. Where used uses the database to display the results and doesn't rely on users adding search paths within SOLIDWORKS Explorer. This means a where used query is instant and just as quick to filter based on where a specific revision or configuration of a component is used. In our PDM Pro templates, we also have a separate simple workflow for library items and in PDM standard, a simple admin or library state to support where you don't want to have the management of those library or template files. We now look at a few common scenarios within SOLIDWORKS file management to see how you could tackle them using the tools available within PDM. First, we will look at the issue of moving and renaming files, something which can often cause downstream issues if not done with care. As all references stored at the database level using a unique database ID and not the file name to anchor these references, it's very easy in PDM to move and rename files within PDM without breaking any references as that's quick demonstration shows. Initially, we just grabbed the whole assembly structure in one folder and moved it into a sub folder. It's unlikely to have broken those references anyway, but what if we grab a couple of those parts and move them using cut and paste to a completely different set of folders. As you can see, we view the references bottom up and top down. Those references all look good still. You can also see how we can navigate the vault easily via the reference views. The next thing we'll do, once we've just verified the structure and the updated paths within the contains tab is to rename a file. Simply overtype with the new name and again the where used shows us that the reference is maintained and at a higher level you can see that the contains view or the bill of materials reflects that change instantly. If we were to look at the history of that file, we could see how this is being recorded within the database. PDM Professional also provides a separate user interface for moving structures. The data set was initially copied into a legacy project folder so that any remedial work could be carried out to correct descriptions, etc. before checking in for the first time. Selecting the top level drawing and then clicking on move tree, I plan to move this into a project folder which will leave behind any files dragged in but not part of this required data set. As with the previous example though, not all of these files will move to the project folder with a couple of bought-in items being dropped into a library folder instead. Then within the same interface, I'm going to choose to rename the files, assigning a new PDM serial number to replace the existing file name. I don't need to assign a serial number to the drawing because I've already ticked the option to name the drawing after the model. Once happy that we've selected all the required options, we can then click move. Refreshing in this folder, you will see that one file has remained and I can clear that up later. But for now, let's just browse through to the project folder. Where I'll move those imported files from the initiated state through to work in progress, which will actually update the number variable to match the new file name at the same time. I should say that using a simple script that was triggered by the workflow change, something which I've done just for this demonstration. Finally, another option you may have seen when I was selecting move tree is copy tree. Copy tree is PDM's equivalent to pack and go, but offers a lot more than just zipping up or copying an assembly structure. In this final video, we'll use copy tree to duplicate and rename the existing flashlight assembly to a new project folder structure, leaving the standard parts as they were. First, we're going to add the new folder structure using a PDM professional template. This template creates top level folder and sub folders. Now selecting the existing top level drawing, we can instigate the copy tree. Noting that those items already in a library folder location are automatically excluded from the copy. They could, however, be selected if we wanted to create a zip file instead by choosing the compressed archive option. We can also add a initial checking comment before choosing to start the copy process. There's actually another variation of this tool called branch, which allows you to create multiple copies or branches of a design which can later be merged. which can later be merged back with the source model as a new version. It's great for engineering change processes, so be sure to ask your implementation engineer about branch and merge if you think it would be useful. With the data now finished copying, we can inspect the folder structure in the new folder, and there's everything ready to go and checked in based on the option we selected. So thank you for taking the time to watch this video primer for SOLIDWORKS PDM. We hope that your journey forward will be short and productive and you will soon be seeing the benefits of PDM.