CAD Forum

Hi all!

We are arranging a free ~30min webinar on the subject of using SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard and how to complement/compensate some of its restricted features with our Certified Gold Product CUSTOMTOOLS for SOLIDWORKS. Topics will cover for instance, file naming using serial numbers, advanced property management, batch exporting files and generating reports.

Register here: GoTo Webinar Registration

The webinar host will be my favourite guru & colleague, our Product Director Tero Salonen, who has 20 years of hands-on experience with SOLIDWORKS CAD and PDM.

2am in my time zone, sadly.
Will there be an on-demand video available if I register @CT-Simo ?

Anyone using PDM should look into this, CustomTools is a powerful tool.

How is the integration with PDM professional?

Hi @berg_lauritz,
The webinar will be recorded and become publicly available for everyone, but if you register, you'll get a link to the recording via e-mail when it goes public.

This webinar focuses on CT + PDM Standard and we will probably have another webinar on CT + PDM Professional later. But to answer your question, CT does have build-in integration to SW PDM Professional, and features of that include:

• Using Serials from PDM in CustomProperties (and as part of CT's advanced filenaming)
• All reference data comes from PDM rather than CT's own database (so you can rename/move files within PDM Pro and CT is fine with that)
• Batch Conversion rules (e.g. Drawings to PDF) can map source model/drawing properties to exported document's (e.g. PDF) variables, and also add custom reference between the source document and the exported document. Also there are different check-in options for those documents (as new version, overwrite version, skip if exists).
• Smart local version checks and assistance when CT features like Batch Operations or Export are used (e.g., ensure latest version/as-built references of local files, depending on PDM user's settings)
• Our Model Property Wizard can read Data Card definitions from PDM Pro and so greatly assist in CT Profile creation so that it matches perfectly with PDM.
• Last but definitely not least, CT comes with CUSTOMTOOLS Task Add-in for SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, which allows using CT's Batch Operations and Export directly from PDM. Export can be used e.g., for integrations and Excel reporting also by non-SW users, and Batch Operations is basically a swiss army knife with its features compared to the Convert -task many PDM Pro users are probably familiar with already.
• Our upcoming CT 2023 release will introduce Drawing Automation and that too will be available as PDM Pro Task; as well as PDM Pro support for our Rebuild -task, Sheet Format updating tasks etc.
• And of course our tasks also support execution during workflow transition

So if you compare that to PDM Standard,

• You can use CT's Sequences for file naming since PDM Serials are not available.
• CT will have to keep its own reference database which is good because then you can use CT Search within SOLIDWORKS (PDM Search within SW is not available in Standard). But you also should avoid moving/renaming files within PDM as CT Database can't keep up with that.
• You'll have to be more careful that you have correct versions of local files before using features like Batch Operations and Export, but you should be totally fine if you e.g. always work with latest versions and just remember to get latest versions of the whole structure including drawings before opening the model.
• You need to check-in converted documents manually to PDM, however, for PDM Standard users I usually anyway recommend having the manufacturing documentation on a separate system, like SharePoint. So those conversion rules don't even have to target the PDM. PDM Standard is so restricted that I'd recommend designating if for SW Documents only, especially because of the database size limitation.
• Setting up the profile is a bit more painful, but luckily that's just one time deal.

In case you missed the webinar registration, here's the video: