Join our MCAD Central community forums, the largest resource for MCAD (Mechanical Computer-Aided Design) professionals, including files, forums, jobs, articles, calendar, and more.
I am currently evaluating Smarteam, Pdmlink and Product Center. I have not established a preference anyone of these yet. What is your opinion of Smarteam? I like it, but feel the integration with smarteam is lacking.
SmartTeam is a Dasault product that does document management, CAD mananagement and a few other lifecycle related tasks. From a PTC products related functionality perspective it falls somewhere between Pro/INTRALINK and PDMLink.
Call me a pessimist, but if SmartTeam said they can manage Pro/ENGINEER files, I would ask for references to call. I don't listen to sales reps when they say Oh yeah, we integrate with that, no problem. I haven't heard gotten this statement from a SmartTeam rep, but I have heard it from others.
The only package I know that handles all these Pro/ENGINEER file types Pro/INTRALINK. My Windchill knowledge is a little dated but I don't believe PDMLink handles Manufacturing (Mold and Toolpath) files. PDMLink used to rely on Pro/INTRALINK to control manufacturing files and used the Pro/INTRALINK Gateway (Free product) to get metadata and viewables of Pro/INTRALINK content.
If you have to handle data from a whole lot of different cad software i.e.: UG Catia AutoCAD etc. Smart team may be the product to use. But if you are a proe only site and you are not required to integrate with a customers Cad environment Intralink will be your best choice.
We have been looking at Smart team as a replacement to Intralink because we are now required to manage data from UG Catia and Ideas as well as pro/e. From what I have seen so far it looks like a reasonable product, but we are still evaluating.
The MCAD developers of today seem to be developing one or two tiers of software solutions to compete in theProduct Data Management (PDM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) revolution taking place today. On the first tier you have software PDM solutions designed to essentially manage a concurrent engineering environment using a local area network. They control things like vaulting, versioning, work flow, release cycles, baselines, etc. Some of the solutions of this level are PTC's Pro/Intralink, SolidWorks' PDMWorks, CATIA's Enovia (IBM product), etc. On the second tier you have products like PTC's PDMLink, CATIA's SMARTEAM (IBM product), Unigraphics' TeamCenter, and so forth. Solutions on this level are web-based and intended to do the same as the first tier, but with much more functionality and interoperability between additional software solutions that make up ancomplete system. Solutions on this level,generally known as'Enterprise Solutions,' facilitate enterprise wide collaboration, i.e., engineering, manufacturing, planning, publications,marketing, etc.
Comparing Pro/IntraLink with SMARTEAM is comparing a 1st tier solution to a 2nd tier solution. If you need a 1st tier solution, I would recommend staying with the software that's native to the CAD package, i.e., Pro/Intralink with Pro/Engineer, or PDMWorks with SolidWorks. If you need a 2nd tier solution, I would assess the future needs of the company, in terms of what CAD packages will need to be supported, and then select the 2nd tier solution that performs reliably.
While having a PDM solution (1st tier) for each CAD package is not a bad idea, having more than one 2nd tier enterprise solution will usually be more than what's needed.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
