Linking your revision table to Enterprise

I love simple elegant solutions. Especially when they help solve a problem that many people have – linking revision tables to your Enterprise PDM system.

<sarcasm>Imagine that you work for one of those companies that still puts a revision table on your drawings. If was good enough for engineers back in the 1930’s then it is good enough for you too right!?</sarcasm> (Where did this soapbox come from?)

Here is a cool little trick:

1. Write a little SOLIDWORKS addin that before a save [FileSaveAsNotify2] will read the last row of the revision table and write the needed fields into that file’s custom properties.
2. Connect those custom file properties to your datacard.

From a coding prospective, there is hardly any error handling required! Here is why:

• You don’t have to worry about ensuring the document is checked out, the user wouldn’t be hitting save otherwise
• You don’t even have to make a connection to the Enterprise object; you are simply writing information into the file’s properties -let Enterprise add the file property information into the database for you
  • You don’t even have to handle cases if a user is not logged into the vault

Short. Sweet. Simple.