Any Smarteam users here? (or reps) I have some questions.

Since there isnt any Smarteam group (that i know of, please post if
there is), here are some questions ill post here.

1. Why when you checkout a model, assy, or drawing it copies
everything, including EVERY drawing for every model and sub-assy in a
main assy.

2. Why when you checkin or release a drawing, it goes through the
entire assy(s) that are on the drawing. If you just change a note,
why does all this have to happen? VERY SLOW!!

3. If there are settings for the above, can we set them off?

4. Can we implement the automatic titleblock easily?

5. Why do I have to manually choose the designer and engineer fields
when creating a number in Smarteam? These should be defaulted to
whoever is logged into the current computer. (ex. my username, jblow,
can be used to automattically choose myself as the designer, and jdoe
as the Engineer).

6. Can we use "Lightweight" parts with the current Smarteam?

7. Can you have the most up-to-date assy ALWAYS have the most
up-to-date models linked to it, no matter if someone did or didnt
choose "Link to previous revision"? It doesn't make sense that
someone would want an old model in the most up-to-date assy. Please
explain if im wrong.

8. Can we have the most-up-to-date model/drawing linked to each other
ALWAYS? This doesnt make any sense why you wouldnt want the most
up-to-date model with the current drawing. Please explain if im
wrong.

9. Why is there a view and work dir? Can we only use 1 directory?
Sometimes when I view a assy, some files go into the view dir and some
go into the work. Also, if im working on a top level assy, and
someone else updates a sub-assy, and i want to update the sub-assy, i
would then suppress the sub-assy, then copy the updated sub-assy, then
unsuppress it. This works most of the time, but sometimes the copied
file goes into the view dir, whereas the other copy is in the work dir
(old copy). I then have to suppress the sub-assy, then delete both
files from work and view. then copy the updated sub-assy again. It
would be easier if you could right-click a part or assy, and choose
"Update to existing file" or something like that.

10. This doesn't happen often, but at least once a week. Sometimes
when I goto check-in a drawing, the Smarteam window pops up, but its
VERY small, about the size of the X box in the corner of the window.
I then have to drag the window and make it bigger. It doesn't seem
like Smarteam remembers the previous window size like most windows
based programs do. I've even seen cases where the Smarteam window
doesn't even show up on the screen, but its in the taskmanager has
being loaded. When I click around on the screen, I get a "Server
Busy" message. You also get this message when the window is very
small like described above, but it goes away when you resize the
window and click "OK".

11. How can you use Toolbox parts with Smarteam? Is it possible to
create a library outside of Smarteam for parts that never change, ie.
screws, spacers, etc? This would allow you to use Toolbox, but when
you checkin an assy that uses these parts, Smarteam would recognize it
as a toolbox part, and not check it in. You could also have the parts
in Smarteam, but Smarteam would have to know not try and save the
parts when checking an assy in.

 

Hi SW Monkey.

Will try to help you, but first things first. What versions and SP's
are you you using for both SWX and Smarteam.

Cheers

Brian

 

Smarteam V5R10 SP10
Solidworks 2003 SP5

 

In V5R10 this behavior is controled by the smasscls.ini file. You can
use this file to determine which types of files come along. In V5R11
and above, this is configured with a new configuration tool.

SmarTeam validates all the relationships and dependancies, to assure
that they are all captured, on any save.

There are MANY settings the SmarTeam administrator can make to
optimize performance for these lifecycle operations.

Any attribute tracked by SmarTeam can be mapped to a value in the
title block.

This can be done as well, but probably using scripting.

Not sure what you mean by this. If parts in an assembly are set to
light weight, this status will be maintained.

This is a bit complicated. When you save an assembly in SmarTeam it
captures the relationships as they exist in SolidWorks. If the
assembly, subassemblies and parts that have been changed are also used
elsewhere, SmarTeam does not, by default replace all usages. To do
this is risky because the changes made could remove or modify
references required for the dependant assemblies to regenerate
propperly. The way we recommend is for people to not "Link to previous
revision" but configure the system to always use the latest version by
default. This gives you the same result, but if the dependant
relationships are broken due to the changes, you can still retrieve
these assemblies as they were created. If you do "Link to previous
version" you have lost the precise state of these assemblies as they
existed when they were saved.

Yes, as I explained above, the system can be set to always retrive the
latest. The tricky part here is what do you mean by latest, the latest
released, or including current revisions in process. This may be an
easy choice in Engineering, but is it the same choice for the shop
floor?

I have to admit, this is confusing for me as well, but I can say it is
much easier to manange in later versions of SmarTeam. The Local Files
Explorer in R10 becomes the SmarTeam File Explorer in R11 and you can
simply double click on a file to edit it.

SmarTeam has had a problem with windows behind windows. You need to be
aware of this. The particular problem you describe was present in one
of the Service Packs of R10. Try running a more recient one, they are
up to SP10. It is important to have everyone update service packs
togehter for the most consisitant performance.

Yes. The behavior, check in or just track is dependant on how the
system is configured. To get the behavior you want, there will have to
be a separate class created for toolbox parts.

Hope this helps clarify things.

Rod Levin.
InFlow Technology
www.inflow-tech.com

 

Ah! Rod beat me to it. I did not post answers first as I have not
upgraded to R11 yet and I know there has been some major changes from
R10.

Anyway here's my tuppence worth on the subjects.

1. This is how we have the smasscls.ini file setup. Drawings are
dependant on both part and assembly files and are therefore reverse
dependencies of part or assembly files. If you want to manage
associations of mirrored, joined or base parts you will need to set up
the entries for [Solidworks Part} like so.

[SolidWorks Drawing]
ass1=SolidWorks Part
ass2=SolidWorks Assembly

[SolidWorks Part]
Ass1=SolidWorks Assembly
Ass2=SolidWorks Part

2/3. Just as Rod has said.
When we installed Smarteam in July 99 we had a 16MB Token Ring Network
setup with Novell (V4 I think). We only had 5 Smarteam users, but
there was another dozen or so people using the network. It was very
painful. We quickly installed a new Eithernet network (VERY
EXPENSIVE) running NT4 (now W2K) with 100MB link dedicated to each
user. Its very fast and reliable, (we now have 20 SWX/SMT users) maybe
you need to analyse your network spec/traffic.

4. Again just as Rod has pointed out. Did your Var not ask you what
customisation you wanted?

5. We opted not to write a script to do this instead we set-up Lookup
Tables, give us more flexibility when things/people in the department
change.

6. Never use them although I know that SMT recognises them.

7. Like Rod mentioned this one is a bit of a conundrum but I don't
necessarily agree on this one, all depends on how you want to handle
your revisions. If I read the question correctly I would say NO is the
answer. We have a rule set-up that when you check in/release a
revision the user always links to parents of previous revision. If a
user has a file out for change, only that user has access to that
revision, it is not available to the rest of the users until it is
checked in/released. By doing link to parents of previous revision on
check in/release you maintain an up to date structure. We found it
very confusing if we did not do this, you end up with a spider's web
of links that can be difficult to unravel. Also if you don't use link
to parent of previous revision I fail to see how any search
queries/where used queries would return the correct results.

8. See above.

9. I wondered about this to at the beginning but soon realised that
the View directory is invaluable when viewing previous revisions,
saving as iges, pdf ect. Say you want to view a previous revision of a
drawing and you only have the Work folder set up but you have the
latest revision in that directory, Haven't tried this but I can
envisage 2 things that may happen, i. It will fail to copy the file
ii. It will overwrite the latest revision. If you use the View folder
like a temp folder you soon realise what its there for.

10. Never had this particular problem, but I have SMT set-up to Auto
Maximise. In SMT go to View; Options; General to get to this setting.

11. We use Toolbox only to generate the hardware as needed and then
save as our own Part Number. Toolbox is not the most agreeable piece
of software to use at the best of times. I personally would not let it
near SMT.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Brian

All the best for the new year when it comes, I'm of to the pub (glug
glug glug).

 

There is a newsgroup now for Smarteam users, try
http://groups.msn.com/SMARTEAM/_memberprofile.msnw?user=SmarteamUser✓&pps=k
I am not using SmarTeam in my current job, so I din't go there at the
moment.

One of the problems we had at my last job, was that there was only one Vault
and we had 12000 files in it, so everything took an age to happen. When I
got control, I created a Vault for each project, which was much better.

We used Standard Parts instead of Toolbox and found that it worked very well
with SMT. Just make sure you have the correct information in each
configuration of parts with multiple configs. I used Visual Basic to create
my configs and to populate the Config Properties.

Regards
Tony O'Hara