Why Document Management Greatly Benefits Solid Modeling
 

Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks have brought advanced design and the ability to work with complex assemblies to a whole new class of engineers and manufacturers. However, the combination of ease-of-use and complex designs has caused the number of revisions, files, and accompanying documents to explode.

If you have not discovered it already, managing the relationships between assemblies, sub assemblies, parts and drawings can be a very time consuming and error prone process.  Without a system in place, it is very easy to make a change to a part or sub assembly within one assembly and inadvertently impact other assemblies that use the same part or subassembly resulting in costly design and manufacturing errors.

For organizations to enjoy the benefits of solid modeling, regaining control of their technical documentation and processes is crucial.

Hagerman & Company offers two systems, AutoManager Meridian and AutoManager Teamwork that will solve these problems and help engineers be more productive in their use of Inventor and Solidworks.  Our mission is to work with each of our customers in order to determine which of these solutions will provide the most features and benefits and highest ROI based on each customers specific needs.

EDM and PDM gives you the power to manage your data and documents

Our EDM/PDM solutions are designed to give Inventor and Solidworks users the tools to create, edit, view, control, and annotate 3D part assembly models, 2D drawings and office type documents. Users also have the ability to perform advanced searches, maintain revisions in an intuitive manner, and quickly preview documents without actually opening the application that created them. These systems are ideal for desktop and workgroup level applications, and provide a direct migration to departmental and enterprise level uses.

Your data is complex - managing it should be simple

The key to a successful EDM/PDM solution is its rapid implementation within your organization. Our systems come ready to run out-of-the-box. They are already set up to work with AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks and office documents, and come with a complete database structure in place. They are  Windows based applications, so your people already know how to use most of their basic functionality. In addition, Meridian and Teamwork are customizable, so that they can be easily adjusted to your companys specific requirements.

Overall System Benefits:

• Work from within the AutoCAD, Inventor, SolidWorks and Microsoft Office environment

• Save valuable search time while looking for documents

• Eliminate errors and re-keying of data

• Enhance design team collaboration

• Friendly GUI, intuitive, easy-to-learn and implement

• Scalable to multiple departments and enterprise usage

With Meridian and Teamwork  you can:

• Manage your documents and drawings in a predefined database structure that is ready to use out-of-the-box.

• Edit and revise your documents from within the CAD application desktop, without worrying where they reside on the company network. These systems seamlessly manage the files for you.

• Define queries so you can search and find any CAD design by any attribute, or combination of attributes, such as description, department, date and so on.

• Automatically synchronize file properties and EDM/PDM system profile cards between CAD and other applications and the EDM/PDM system database, by keying the information only once.

• Keep track of the revision life cycle of all your design documents. Previous revisions of CAD designs are maintained, ensuring accessibility to previous product versions. A log of the design modifications is also maintained automatically.

• View office documents and CAD designs, enabling you to browse and view search results before opening them.

• Track Where Used and Composed Of relationships automatically. The Where Used tab shows all the assemblies that contain the current design. The Composed Of tab shows all sub-assemblies and parts in the current assembly. Relationships are automatically maintained, allowing fast retrieval of all the items related data.

• Maintain links between CAD documents, and thereby maintain the links structural integrity in the EDM/PDM database.

• Automate your standard ECO and design project procedures via the workflow capabilities included in each of the solutions

• Pass bill of materials and other data to your company ERP system

Other Departments Can Benefit Too:

Maybe best of all, other departments in your computer can also benefit from these same systems.  For example:

• New product design releases can be made immediately available to purchasing, manufacturing and other plant locations

• Your quality and manufacturing departments can help achieve and maintain ISO, QS, OSHA and FDA certifications

• Your accounting department can use the workflow capabilities to automate accounts receivable and payable processes

• Your sales and marketing departments can use the web capabilities to make product information available to outside sales reps distributors and customers

• Your service department can use the system to make information available to customer service and field service reps

• Part, plant and machinery designs can be made available to appropriate personnel in order to maximize manufacturing uptime

• And much more

With these systems, the price and complexity of product data management have finally come down to the point that a full featured EDM/PDM solution is now in the reach of every manufacturing organization.

We urge you to begin immediately exploring what these systems can do for you.  We feel that they are a must in order to make the most of your investment in solid modeling.