What PDM software are people thinking of using for the 2018-2019 season.
I have been using GrabCAD for the past few years but since its support for SolidWorks 2018-2019 has not been updated, I am loking for other possible solutions.
Question about GrabCAD, how do you like make your stuff available to public. Trying to share stuff with my team but I don’t know how to make the link to do so.
I normally add the files I want to share to a partner space, then create a share link with permissions based on what the project is.
We’ve used GrabCAD for years without its SolidWorks integration. The client alone is simple to use and convenient enough to be satisfactory.
I agree with this. I never used the integration, it didnt exactly seem useful to me anyways, there was many more options in the workbench. I think grabcad is still the best option availible.
My team recently moved to GrabCAD and it was been amazing for us. I can’t believe how relatively easy it is to use and I’ve been kicking myself for not trying it sooner. We’ve just been using the Windows app not the SolidWorks plugin and have no issues so far.
Question for those who have more experience with it: For something like the Spectrum Partner space, is there a way for me to add that partner space to my workbench, either as like a linked partner space or in file? It would be nice to grab any part we need without needing to download them separately, and unzip each time. I know can download the whole partner space in one go and reupload it in any folder I like, but it’s massive so I’d prefer a work around if one exists. Thanks in advance!
Locking is the big thing. Not being able to Lock files from within SolidWorks has me worried. Really wish you could do that from the Workbench.
Our team used GrabCAD and Inventor for years. GrabCAD has become *much *too slow to be useful for us anymore.
After last year’s season we looked as using Solidworks PDM but the complexity and licencing reduced efficiency. The ability to access our files from home is very important to us.
This year we have more on our CAD team than ever before. We are currently testing out Fusion360 and will probably use it throughout this season. It is not as feature rich as Solidworks or Inventor and the organization is worse. However, it is lightweight, everyone can download it at home, and it is very easy to access files from within the program.
We did Autodesk Fusion 360 in 2018 and we will stay the course for 2019. We have more students using CAD because it is easy to install and access from home.
In 2018, my team used GrabCAD. It was great for like a group of like 5 people, but with the whole team using it and not locking the files they were editing made the files override each other. This caused a real hassle to solidify design decisions.
This being said GrabCAD is still the best for Solidworks unless you want to move to different CAD softwares like Onshape(Which would be my second choice).
Our team has really slow internet at our shop, so what we do is take advantage of the peer-to-peer capabilities of GrabCAD. We have one computer that is pretty much dedicated to being a local GrabCAD server at this point. Enabling GrabCAD server allows the computer to sync files automatically for chosen projects. This way, while at our shop, the files will sync with each other (and the local server) through the peer-to-peer capabilities (using our much faster internal network), and then after we leave, the local server will eventually sync with the GrabCAD cloud servers.
Before I begin my post I would like to notify that I work for a SolidWorks reseller and thus have quite some experience on this:
My current guess is that GrabCAD is your best option right now if I am honnest. SolidWorks PDM is way to complex for FIRST teams as well as that it requires you to always have a connection to a network on which a server is attached.
In order to make it work you need a experienced admin who most likely needs training from a local SolidWorks reseller which is not in the cards for most FIRST teams.
However I can tell you that SolidWorks is working on a cloud based solution simular to GrabCAD but with more applications. At this point however this is not yet available but I assume it will be in the near future.
I expect that this application (the 3D experience platform) will be an amazing addition for FIRST teams as it provides the collaboration within teams that SolidWorks is currently lacking.
Conclusion: GrabCAD is you best bet for now but improvement is comming!
As mentioned in my detailed https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1732661&postcount=20, we use Onshape for FRC 2090. If you have any questions, it seems many on CD are using it (or at least talk about it) and I am happy to share more.
Fusion 360 is very well integrated into a360. Might be worth looking switching into.