CSWA Certified

I was a full time solidworks designer for about 3 years (autocad, Unigraphics, and IDEAS before that), and an occasional user the last 6 years. I want to get the CSWP certification tackled, but since I'm the PDM Admin, and CAD Manager, I don't do CAD work, I thought I'd start with the CSWA.

I worked through Solid Professor for some refresher courses, and they did a good job of reminding of functionality and technique.

One of my employees, who is a CAD designer is working towards CSWE and also started along this route. I thought CSWA was not really a "big deal", but the test itself was a little more than I expected it to be. It was certainly not "killer", but it was enough to feel like I was tested. I did score 240/240 so maybe I'm not so far from the CSWP as I think I am.

1 more certification down, 1 to go!

~Corey Hinman, CEPA

Tasks Not Clearing in PDM Admin Task List

I've ran into this several times now where tasks will not cancel, or are stuck at "suspending". To clear this out, log into the sql server, and run a query according to this information:

The tasks displayed in the Task list are found in the database table "TaskInstances” where "TaskStatus" is one of the following values: 1 [Waiting for host]
2 [Starting up]
3 [In process]
4 [Retrying]
5 [Suspended]
6 [Cancelling]
7 [OK]
8 [Cancelled]
9 [Failed]
10 [Suspending]
11 [Resuming]
If there are tasks that are stuck in the "Cancelling" state for example, run the following query to correct it (i.e. update all tasks with status 6 [Cancelling] to status 8 [Cancelled]):
UPDATE TaskInstances
SET TaskStatus = 8
WHERE TaskStatus = 6
Close and reopen the task list to see the update.  Update the query wih appropriate values seen in list above



~Corey Hinman, CEPA

Enterprise PDM Task Consistency

I was getting very inconsistent, and frustrating results running tasks on the archive server. Things like PDF and STEP generation were failing quite frequently, and often chewing up a large portion of the CPU on the server, and would occasionally require a reboot. None of those are good things.

I set up a solidworks workstation to serve as a "task server" and moved all of those tasks to be run from there, and so far the results are much improved.

Do yourself a favor and enable remote access to the computer and you'll be much happier!

Saludos,
~Corey Hinman, CEPA

Excluding new documents from Workflow in PDM

You should have some kind of "Uncontrolled" workflow that all files that don't meet certain criteria fall into, that workflow should have no restrictions on files to be added. So if you add a misc file to the vault it goes to uncontrolled.

I had some Sub-workflows that new files will never go into, but could be passed back and forth between other workflows. I didn't put any incoming criteria and was getting STL files put into a state of ECO validation (as an example) because the workflow was wide open.

What I needed to do was find a way to exclude files easily...here was my solution:

~Corey Hinman, CEPA

Setting Folder Options

I found that on my machine I can't set the windows folder options to show details while browsing in the vault. I wanted to set all folders to details but wasn't able to Apply to all folders.

You have to do it outside of the vault.

~Corey Hinman, CEPA

I don't Heart Lebron

I don't think the Celtics can pull it off this year, so Miami will most likely be in the finals. I think OKC has a better chance to beat them, if they can themselves get past the Spurs.

I just hope either Western Conference team thumps Miami and Lebron again disappears when it matters most. When he was gloating in game 1 right in front of Garnett, Garnett should have asked him how many rings he's toting....

I hope Lebron wins not 8, not 7, not 6, not 5, not 4, not 3, not 2, not 1, ZERO titles.

~Corey Hinman, CEPA

Adding PDM Vault Folders to Windows 7 Fav's

If you want to add specific vault folders to your windows 7 favorites...do this.

Make a folder (desktop or elsewhere) and call it Vault Favorites.

Inside your new folder add a new folder for each favorite location you want to add:

Now drag your folders over to your windows 7 favorites.

Right click on properties of each folder, and copy/paste in the location from ePDM

Your vault locations will now work from Windows 7 Favorites, and you can drag, drop, etc:

Add caption

**You can also add a favorite PDM search by changing the "Look in location" to a specific folder and saving that as a Favorite


~Corey Hinman, CEPA