SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM Tasks

Two of our recent blog entries have caused quite a mail surge! We even recently expanded our mail room and hired two more part time mail clerks.  Many of the letters are complaining about Scott’s recent abuse of photo editing software, others are asking for more information about EPDM’s tasks.

Here is a recent example:

Dear Engineering Specialist Man,

Your latest blog entry really caught me by surprise, you mention EPDM tasks, they looked rather interesting to me so I went through all of your old blog entries and have learned you have never mentioned them before! As you know, I am soon to be married and now have many new responsibilities –I need to find ways to work more efficiently. Can you share any more information about them?

K.M.

Thanks Miss M…or should I now say Mrs. W? You’re right! How did I miss this topic?!

You can get the details of what a task is from the SOLIDWORKS help file, but here is the best way to think of tasks. Think of tasks as the ability to do batch type processes on your machine or anyone else’ that has EPDM installed.

Imagine wanting to print all the drawings of an assembly. This involves:

• Find all of the drawings
• Open each up one at a time
• Print the file
• Close the file

Tasks give you the ability to automate this, or even better automate it on another machine so you can continue working. You can quickly pick and choose machines to serve as a “task servers” so even if you don’t have the resources for a dedicated machine, you can always wait until Timmy takes another of his ten weeks of vacation, jump on his machine and set it as a server.

Out of the box, tasks also can convert files or run the design checker on them. They are very customizable and you can even write your own or modify an existing task to do what you want.