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MechworksPDM can manage the whole life-cycle of a product designed with the 3D CAD or of any other related document, including notes, pictures, Excel sheets and so on so that the procedure is the same for every type of document.
In order to understand the life-cycle of a product, we offer two separate approaches:
•An analytic approach that offers a schematic overview of the process
•A simple example that accompanies you along the steps from the moment of creation to the moment where the item is out of production and becomes obsolete.
•A complete reference of the states during the revision process is also provided for in-depth information.
Unless you are familiar with the subject we advice that you read both, in any order, as both the theory and the MechworksPDM actual implementation and set of commands must be clear in your mind before you get to work with it.
Before you proceed with this broad topic, we remind you that in order to handle revisions for configurations of the same document you need to set options accordingly. For further information please read the configurations topic.
It is a common question to ask how MechworksPDM handles cases like 'assembly released, one of its parts in checkin' or vice versa.
The question is simple, but the answer is not trivial. Here you can find a description of the MechworksPDM policy towards these relationships in the revision process and a brief explanation of the reasons for the choices we made.
MechworksPDM introduces only a few optional rules:
Don't release an assembly if all its components are in released state
Avoid previous revisions approval
For the rest, MechworksPDM does not, for instance, approve automatically the revision of all the parents each time a part is approved. This, because using such constraint you would have an enormous amount of versions for almost every important assembly which implies disk space, slowing the designing process and not being able to understand which where the real important released version of an assembly that has 2500 previous versions.
MechworksPDM, instead, allows the user to have a clear view of the situation before approving, both for children and parents, and eventually allows the Administrator to roll back to a previous version or possibly write over the previous released version if something was wrong.
This choice is based mostly on common sense and on the input we receive every day from our customers, you all.
If you prefer to introduce stricter rules and set up a system that implemets automatic procedures, we leave the door open and allow through scripting the customization of MechworksPDM behaviour to fit the way you want to work.
Revisions in MechworksPDM are stored as compressed files. By default they are stored near the related document, but you may decide to keep archived revisions on a separate drive. For more information, read the Revisions Options of MechworksPDM.
You can find information on the rights granted to administrators and users in the topic Revisions security issues.
Many available options can tune MechworksPDM to match the way your company works. For further information please read the revisions options.