Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I ran into the same difficulties when trying to find ADMS earlier this year. Eventually I found that the only place I could get it from was from the Inventor Pro Suite disk set that came in the 2011 KoP. If you can find it, there's an install CD for ADMS in the back of the set.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Can FRC Students use SolidWorks PDM?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Well, there is certainly no rule against it! SolidWorks is not an official sponsor of FRC, so FRC teams can't technically depend on getting a sponsorship with seats of the any software. If you do manage to get a sponsorship, it depends on what software package you get. One version of the student edition of SolidWorks, called "Student Design Kit" does not include the PDM client. The other, "Student Engineering Kit," does.

Keep in mind that SolidWorks and Inventor differ in their business models for version control software. I believe the Vault client comes more or less included in most versions of Inventor, but Vault Server costs extra. In regards to PDM, the server software is free, but each seat of the client costs extra.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I recommend PTC's Windchill. It is 'web-based'/'cloud based'/easy to set up and great technical support over the past year.

I am not sure how I set the account up now, but can tell you the link:
FIRST Robotics Windchill
EDIT: The person to contact at PTC about setting up a Windchill account for your FIRST Robotics Team is Cosmin Pana - cpana@ptc.com

The best part is that it can be used by any of the most popular modeling software plateforms (Inventor, SolidWorks, Pro/E - Creo, Catia, MathCAD, etc) with free plugins directly from PTC.

Also, this can be used for more than just CAD revision control. PTC also has direct plug-ins for windows and windows office suite. Now you can upload and control documents without ever leaving Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. There is also a plug-in for MS Project, but I haven't used that too much; I am sure it is great though.

Part of The RoboBees have been using Windchill for a year as a test bed, but I plan to launch it team wide in a few weeks. I have been using the direct plug-in for SolidWorks for sometime now, and have had zero issues.

Feel free to contact me through a PM, or on this thread so others can learn as well.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

We have had experience using Windchill, too. It has been pretty reliable over the years. I definitely reccomend it to other teams.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Does Windchill preserve the parent-child relationships in Inventor or SolidWorks the same way the "native" version control system would? As I understand it, the really powerful thing about any version control software is its ability to update dependent assemblies or drawings automatically and seamlessly. I suspect that using a third party version control system (like Windchill) for version control with, say, SolidWorks wouldn't be much better than using a program like Dropbox.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

DampRobot,

To my knowledge and understanding of your question, yes Windchill does preserve the parent-child relationship. I will give a few a few examples from SolidWorks: I am able to update the sizes of bolts on the fly through configurations and design tables (generic -->instances), update a part and the assembly changes based on those modifications, drawings remain linked to parts for autoupdating. These are also available for Windchill for Pro/E (now Creo). I use Winchill/Creo at work and Windchill/SolidWorks for robotics.

The other difference between a PDM software (like Windchill) and something like DropBox is easy revision control. With a few minutes of setup by the admin of the Windchill server, user permissions can be created such that only selected people can delete parts, roll back versions, etc. In order to make changes to a part, a user has to "checkout" the part/assembly/document from the Windchill server. This prevents other users from changing the part as someone else is. Windchill keeps track of every upload incase something is needed to be rolled back. Then the part can be "checked in" for others to use. Once a design is decided on, the part can be locked such that people can download and use the part, but not make changes to it. If the part is changed by an authorized user, it will updated in all places that it is being used.

EDIT: Take a look at this link for Windchill for SolidWorks. I have never used Windchill with any software packages other than Pro/E (Creo) and SolidWorks. I have Inventor 2012 on my computer, and I will give it a shot as well in the near future. I would assume it is very similar to the Pro/E and SolidWorks counterparts.
/EDIT

I can explain in more detail some "library" practices in further detail if needed.

*Note* One thing that most people view as a downfall for Windchill is the limitation of only having the same name on the server once. Meaning if you made a part called "arm.prt" in 2012, you could never name another part "arm.prt". I would recommend adapting sometype of numbering convention that includes the year to avoid these problems.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

In the SolidWorks 2012-2013 Sponsorship package this fall we will provide SolidWorks Workgroup PDM. This is an easy solution to revision control.

You can do it now in 2011-2012. We created a couple of videos to help on YouTube. Here are the instructions.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D664170B28FCCDF

You do need one computer to act as the server.

Always try a simple solution first. Marie

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I know it was only released recently but, has anyone used Google Drive? I am using Inventor.

We are trying it right now for our offseason robot. I will post whether is works or not.

If it doesn't work, we will go back to Dropbox.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Yes, DON'T USE DROPBOX FOR CAD.
I had to redo our drive base 3 times, the ball lifter 2 times and the main assembly even more times. This was when I used Inventor with just two users.
Vault seems good for Inventor.
What's the simplest and best syncing tool for Solidworks?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I use PTC Windchill. It is online based and doesn't require a server to be set up. See some of my other replies in this thread for more info.

It seems like SolidWorks is going to provide their version of this software this year. It does require a server though. I also have not tried this, so I can't really comment on it.

I really do recommend Windchill, it works great.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Interesting, we synced dropbox between 6 computers/users this year. We never had an issue with syncing. How we handled it was:

-We split up the robot for people to work on.
-If they were gonna work on a portion or save over everything we made sure all revisions were closed by sending out a text or tweet.
-We updated a google doc as a fake "checkout"
-Also tried decently hard to work on it only in the shop so that did make life easy.

We honestly never had a problem, our robot did have a lot of parts this year :P

-RC

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

At the PTC Booth in St. Louis I was introduced to Windchill, and my preliminary experiences with it have been good. Although, our team does use Inventor instead of Solidworks; does anyone know if Inventor integration is on par with the level of integration that Solidworks has with Windchill?

We've considered using Vault, but setting up a server was too much of a hassle for our tech department due to logistical reasons..

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I will look into this for you and get back to you on it.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I know this is a step back from where this thread seems to be going and rehashing something that's been said a few times but I'd really like to see more Vault access available to teams as well.

Autodesk offers a great suite of tools to first teams, but without vault you're forced to manage your design infrastructure in a (pretty archaic) fashion (flash drives/dropbox)

I have very extensive SVN experience and use it in work and with our team, but since SVN has no knowledge of the type of file being stored it doesn't offer the same potential that vault does.

For any teams considering trying to use vault (or any other software that requires either a linux or real windows server) you can run a windows instance on the Amazon EC2 cloud for extremely competitive, hourly and usage based rates (very affordable to leave on 24/7). Amazon EC2 also provides tools to assist in backup and management of servers and I highly recommend for anyone wishing to host their own SVN server, website, or any other thing you would like to have running on a computer permanently.