PDM and Vault Implementation

[craigboez]

A few years back we installed an Inventor Vault on a remote server at a mentor's house and were able to connect to it remotely from the school, home, work, etc. From an availability standpoint it was great, but the speed was a bit slow, and I don't think the students ever really grasped the concept of the Vault and how to use it (remembering to check in was the big one)

For the past few years we've been using Dropbox to sync all our files in the background. We run into occasional file conflicts, but it seems to work better because a) nobody has to remember to do anything, and b) the speed is less of an issue because it happens in the background.

However, eventually the file conflicts pile up, and by the end of the season the master CAD file is a big mess. I really feel like this is holding us back from a design standpoint.

I'd like to hear from teams that have successfully implemented a PDM or Vault. How did it go, how long did it take to get over the learning curve, what kind of training did you do? Also, do you have any rules or workflows that the students adhere to, or general advice for a team looking to take the plunge?

[otherguy]

Grabcad is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else we've tried, and it was quickly adopted by the mentors and students. We've used it all season, everyone loves it.

https://grabcad.com/workbench

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by otherguy

Grabcad is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else we've tried, and it was quickly adopted by the mentors and students. We've used it all season, everyone loves it.

https://grabcad.com/workbench

Does this work with any CAD program?

[craigboez]

Originally Posted by otherguy

Grabcad is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else we've tried, and it was quickly adopted by the mentors and students. We've used it all season, everyone loves it.

https://grabcad.com/workbench

How is it better than say Workgroup PDM? From what I could tell it was some sort of hybrid between revision control and Dropbox syncing.

[dawonn]

It works with many CAD programs. It's similar to git, but for CAD files.

Before starting work for the day, you use the GrabCAD software to get the latest copy of your project.

You do some stuff and use the software to commit your changes.

I only ever used it as a single user, but it tracks every change you make to every file and who made those changes. The best part is the online dashboard which lets you view and comment on 3D CAD files online even when you don't have any cad software installed on the computer.