CAD users - Query IE Product Data Managment.

[snotrag]

Apologies - this will make no sense and be very boring to 99% of readers of PH but I hope someone can help or point me in the right direction.

I have recently started my first 'graduate' level job at a smallish lighting company as the junior designer/engineer.

The bread and butter is reselling other products, but the company are steadily increasing the amount of designing they do of their own products and ranges using CAD.

Part of the reason for them taking on a graduate is as a much younger member of staff with a better understanding of modern CAD use and its benefits.

My boss is asking me for advice on how they should go forward from a slightly 'amateur' use of CAD and all the things that go with it.
I have experience (placement year) of working in a larger manufacturing company that was much more dependent on CAD. They made full use of it regarding data management, and collaborative design work.

As such - what strikes me in my new role is they need to get a much better grasp on these things.

I'm going to try and take this on as a bit of a project - Setting up a much more organised structure regarding product data management.

Things such as -

Setting up proper parts registers
Collaborative design
Proper file structures (ie people saving things to network drives not their own PC's )
etc etc..

All the things to allow the data to be used efficiently and usefully by all members of the company - ie Procurement having read only rights to files that will bring up BOMs automatically, that sort of thing.


The problem is - I know what all this stuff is for and why its useful. I dont have a clue how to go about setting it up.

Anyone able to suggest some useful resources, anything to read? Anyone in charge of this themselves?

If I could get this company more organised and setup in this much more efficient way, that would be very favourable when it comes to pay review time after my first year

Edited by snotrag on Thursday 17th September 15:53

[pork n beef]

Hello Mate, what CAD system/s are you using?
ProjectWise is an all-singing, all-dancing Drawing Management system.

[gonzales]

I would dearly like to set something like this up in my current company and have been trying to get this up and running for the past 12-18 months. So if you find a way to get it sorted please let me know.

I am assuming you are using AutoCAD and as such will be looking into using Autodesk Data Management Server (ADMS). This works like a vault file store and you can save everything related to your products to it, pdf's, excel calcs, dwgs, etc. There are many Autodesk resellers around the country that will be able to give you some more advice on how to go about setting this kind of thing up. Many of which will come in to sort the initial installation out, for a pretty penny. If you think you are capable of setting it up yourself and working out how to network all the systems together then give it a shot. I am not sure if you can download the software from the Autodesk website or you will have to buy it though.

I have used this software along with Vault and AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop and Inventor at my previous job and found it to work well. The shop floor were only able to see read only drawings but able to take dims off the drawings if needed and start mechanical drawing inquiries if there was something on the drawing that didn't make sense. None of the drawings or files could be over written and a back up was always available if it was needed to roll back.

If you need any info on this email me and I will get back to you when I am back in work next week.