CAD Forum

Is there a way the user and select to show drawing nodes in the contains and where used tabs. Also and perhaps more importantly is when a user double clicks a file or gets a file with the drawing nodes can cause big delays.

The drawing nodes I'm talking about show up in blue text. It's nice some of the time but if a model is referenced by a hundred drawings they kind of spam the RFD or contains/where used lists. Example, if there are say 25 models in the tope level in the contains tab, there may be 40 drawing nodes shown. It makes the list a bit tricky to navigate at times.

Further more, depending on how the file open is triggered, the silent get will take several minutes or more. It appears this happens when the user double clicks a part file that is used in many top level drawings. The get process builds a list of references and the drawing nodes are like going UP a level in the ref tree. If those several dozen drawings are top level drawings and PDM wants to get the drawing, then it will also get every single file in all of the assemblies for that drawing. That process can take 5 to 10 minutes when all the user wanted to do was open a model of a bracket.

I'm not sure what settings are different between your vault and my vault, but the only silent "get" that occurs with my files are when the user has the preview tab active when browsing around the vault. If I have any of the other 5 tabs active, the information displayed requires only SQL to show data and I don't even need a local version so PDM doesn't try to get anything.

For my Administration setup of sldprt, sldasm, and slddrw file types, I have checked the "Preview does not need referenced files" and "View file does not need referenced files"

In addition to this, I've selected the PDM Explorer display option to show the "Show bitmap for..." both solidworks and drawing files. This way, it doesn't try to load into e-drawings as I browse around with the preview tab active.

Additionally, here's the PDM settings for my reference "get" dialog. Our "get" dialog can take some time to load for large assemblies. We don't have any parts with many drawing nodes so it's difficult to replicate your specific issue. I don't know if any of this helps at all but hopefully starts a discussion.

Thank you Alex

AlexB wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:29 am I'm not sure what settings are different between your vault and my vault, but the only silent "get" that occurs with my files are when the user has the preview tab active when browsing around the vault. If I have any of the other 5 tabs active, the information displayed requires only SQL to show data and I don't even need a local version so PDM doesn't try to get anything.

There's a bunch of ways users open a file that's in PDM. Of course double clicking, and right click Open or View. Open and View will get the file and depending on file type settings in Admin also the referenced files. I don't know for sure how double click behaves. Either way, there is no Reference File Dialog when the file and refs are fetched. I don't really know what to call it other than a silent get as the local pdm service is getting files from the archive server and doesn't involve the user. If it did the user would still need to manually uncheck all the excess drawing nodes for the topic at hand.

AlexB wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:29 am For my Administration setup of sldprt, sldasm, and slddrw file types, I have checked the "Preview does not need referenced files" and "View file does not need referenced files"

yep, same here. It seems that it doesn't matter in this case though, as the operation is Open even though I'm not opening all those drawing nodes it still gets them and their file references it appears.

AlexB wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:29 am In addition to this, I've selected the PDM Explorer display option to show the "Show bitmap for..." both solidworks and drawing files. This way, it doesn't try to load into e-drawings as I browse around with the preview tab active.

Same here and that is nice. Problem is we migrated our SE files into PDM, and the "Show bitmap for" setting inthe PDM Explorer display settings seems to have no effect on SE files. That might be because SE files saved in 2019 are not recognized by eDrawings 2019, I don't know, but that's a separate topic.

AlexB wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:29 am Additionally, here's the PDM settings for my reference "get" dialog. Our "get" dialog can take some time to load for large assemblies. We don't have any parts with many drawing nodes so it's difficult to replicate your specific issue.
image.png

Yes the RFD can commonly take half a minute or more to load. I blame much of this on drawing nodes being displayed, especially when the root file in the RFD is a top level and a couple bottom level parts go to ~100 top level drawings.

It's hard to explain to users what's going on when they just want to take a quick look at a top level drawing in Solidworks but we're on the Getting Files wait for ten minutes and they can see file names going past that have nothing to do with the drawing or any part in it's reference tree. Only thing I can think of is pdm is getting the references of those other drawing nodes.