SOLIDWORKS PDM 2017: 5 New Features You’ll Want to Use

SOLIDWORKS PDM 2017: 5 New Features You’ll Want to Use

Table of Contents


Are you looking to upgrade to
SOLIDWORKS PDM 2017? Wondering what new features it has? Well, look no further. We’re going to
cover what I think are the top 5 new features that were added to SOLIDWORKS
PDM* for the 2017 release. Here we go:

  1. Latest Version Overwrite
  1. Have you ever released a drawing with a typo and don’t want to rollback the
    file? Perhaps you just want to update a small typo or missing dimension on a
    drawing without creating a new version. Or maybe you create many iterations
    of a file before final release and the 17 versions you created are
    irrelevant and are just taking up space. Is there a way to avoid this? Now
    there is a new feature in SOLIDWORKS PDM called Latest Version Overwrite
    which does just that. You can quickly update a file without creating a new
    version of the file.

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  1.  
  2. You can even use the overwrite feature during a transition in a workflow if
    you are trying to eliminate superfluous versions during a transition.

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  1. PDF Task Add-in
  1. We’ve all used the PDF task add-in to create PDFs of drawings or neutral
    files of our parts. What if you want to create a 3D PDF for SOLIDWORKS MBD
    or create a PDF of a Word document? Or create a PDF of your DXF or DWG file?
    In 2017, you can. With SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional 2017, a new task add-in
    that includes 3D PDF generation based on your templates from SOLIDWORKS MBD,

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  1. an Office2PDF add-in that creates PDFs from your Word, Excel and PowerPoint
    documents,

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  1. and an add-in that connects to DraftSight Professional to create a PDF of
    DXF and DWG files.

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  1. Rollback with References
  1. If you’ve used the rollback feature before, you might have wished you could
    rollback a top-level assembly and all its children together rather than each
    file individually. With the powerful Rollback with References capability in
    2017, you can now rollback your entire assembly in one fell swoop.

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  1. Client Service-Pack Compatibility
  1. If you or your IT department needs to update PDM between service packs and
    have a lot of users including document control, manufacturing, and other
    groups, then updating clients can be a large undertaking. With SOLIDWORKS
    PDM 2017, you will only need to upgrade the server to the latest service
    pack of the major release rather than the server and the clients all
    together. That means if you install SOLIDWORKS PDM 2017 SP3 and need to
    upgrade to SP4, the clients can remain on SP3 and only the server needs to
    be upgraded to SP4. This allows you to take full advantage of new features
    and bug fixes in newer service packs with minimal interruption to day-to-day
    operations. This will not apply to major version upgrades so if you’re
    looking to upgrade to SOLIDWORKS PDM 2018 from 2017, the clients will need
    to be upgraded as well.

 

  1. Database Replication
  1. My favorite new feature in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional 2017 is definitely
    support for SQL Database Replication.

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  1. What does this mean? Faster PDM performance. So how does it work? If your
    company has licenses of SQL Enterprise, you will be able to replicate your
    database server or load-balance SQL server. This means if you have users in
    remote locations with high-latency like China, Europe, or somewhere else,
    you will be able to replicate a read-only copy of the database to those
    locations so that actions like browsing the vault, searching, viewing data
    cards, and other actions that don’t change the database can be significantly
    improved.

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  1. This also has implications for single-site installations of SOLIDWORKS PDM
    because the replication feature of SQL Enterprise can be used to put all
    read-only actions, like browsing and searching on one server and
    write-operations, on another server. Because those functions are dedicated
    to different servers, both check-in performance as well as browsing can be
    improved.

 

March is data management month at
Hawk Ridge Systems. Join Jordan and the rest of our team to learn about new and improved data
management software and services from Hawk Ridge Systems and SOLIDWORKS in our
3D Solutions Spotlight Webinars:

3D Solutions Spotlight: Making the Switch from Workgroup PDM to SOLIDWORKS
PDM

Friday, March 10, 2017, 11:00 AM PDT

Are you currently using Workgroup PDM to control and manage your SOLIDWORKS
data? Did you know that SOLIDWORKS 2017 is the last release to include
Workgroup PDM? Are you wondering how to move that data to SQL database-driven
SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard or Professional before SOLIDWORKS 2018 is released and
Workgroup PDM is no longer available? Attend our webinar to learn how to
migrate data from Workgroup PDM to a SOLIDWORKS PDM system, and how to plan
your SOLIDWORKS data management strategy moving forward.

3D Solutions Spotlight: SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard and Professional – Data
Management for Every Organization

Friday, March 17, 2017, 11:00 AM PDT

SOLIDWORKS has two robust data management solutions to help manage your
critical engineering data – SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard (included with every
license of SOLIDWORKS Professional and Premium) and SOLIDWORKS PDM
Professional (formerly Enterprise PDM). Attend this webinar to learn about the
features and benefits of each solution so you can decide which system is the
right fit for you, and see how SOLIDWORKS data management tools can save you
time and money by streamlining your engineering workflows.

3D Solutions Spotlight: Sync or Swim: Synchronizing Your Files with
SOLIDWORKS PDM and Custom Properties

Friday, March 24, 2017, 11:00 AM PDT

Wouldn’t it be nice to update drawing watermarks or other SOLIDWORKS
properties automatically when you finish your design? What if you could
automate some of your documentation processes with Engineering Change Orders
or Specifications documents? Join us for this webinar where we’ll show you how
to do just that. Whether it’s Custom Properties for SOLIDWORKS files or
Microsoft Office documents, we’ll teach you how to make those connections so
you can spend less time documenting and more time designing.

3D Solutions Spotlight: Take Your SOLIDWORKS PDM Experience to the Next
Level

Friday, March 24, 2017, 11:00 AM PDT

Have you recently implemented SOLIDWORKS PDM? Have you been using SOLIDWORKS
PDM Professional (formerly Enterprise PDM) for a few years? Do you feel unsure
about whether you are using SOLIDWORKS PDM to its fullest potential? If so,
attend this webinar to hear more about how you can take full advantage of
SOLIDWORKS PDM whether it’s understanding the administration tool better,
optimizing your SQL server for faster performance, or automating repetitive
data entry.

*All functionality mentioned is included in both SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard
and Professional unless otherwise specified.

Picture of Jordan Lemley

Jordan Lemley

Jordan Lemley has 5 years of experience implementing, supporting, and customizing SOLIDWORKS PDM for customers. He has provided PDM consulting services to customers across a wide variety of industries from small engineering shops looking to keep revisions under control to large global companies looking to standardize and improve their collaboration and engineering change process across their enterprise. So whether it’s tuning SQL Servers for optimal performance, advising companies on industry best-practices for change management, or performing complex data migrations, Jordan has seen it all.
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