DriveWorks 7: Chock Full of New Architectural Goodness

To say that DriveWorks 7 is a radical leap forward for this Design Automation tool is not a stretch in any way. The DriveWorks development team has poured an immense amount of effort into the newest version of their flagship product, but you may not even notice the most significant changes. Two major architectural changes to the product have moved this DriveWorks update from being an automated SolidWorks model generator into the sales configurator market space. 

The first major change relates to DriveWorks’ rules engine.  Microsoft Excel has long been the engine driving DriveWorks (no pun intended). However, as everyone knows, Excel has its own problems and issues. DriveWorks recognized this and has built its own rules calculation engine, codenamed “Titan.” As you can imagine, this dramatically changes how DriveWorks functions under the hood. The main place that you will notice this is in the speed with which variables, constants and other aspects of your implementation run. All lists throughout the product now include pervasive searching that helps you find what you’re looking for at lightning speeds.

The second primary architectural change is the move from simply adding new functionality (like output to Word and Excel files, or email notifications) to a truly modular plug-in strategy. As an end user, you probably won’t notice too much of a difference, except for having more choices at key places within the product. But from a programmer’s perspective, DriveWorks is now wide-open. The fully extensible .NET API is documented with samples in a complete SDK available for free. I know that the Razorleaf staff is anxious to create our own plug-ins to add new output document types, new release actions, and even integrations. (If you can think of any new functionality that you wish DriveWorks had, let us know, and we may now be able to create it for you a bit more easily.)

No, it doesn’t end there. The final major introduction is the idea of Specification Flow. How many people know the difference between what Finish and Release do? (If you were in Razorleaf training, you should…but we’ll let it slide this time.) The problem is that these terms don’t really mean a lot in terms of your process, and there are only two of them, where your process is more complex. Enter “Specification Flow.” You can now customize the buttons that you have come to know and love to create your own process with DriveWorks. When the user reaches the final form, you can configure it so that they click the GENERATE QUOTE button to calculate and build a Word document, or they can click SEND FOR APPROVAL which will generate a preliminary SolidWorks model and drawing and send an email notification to the appropriate sales manager. The point is that the button, its name, its action, and its accessibility are all up to you. The DETAILED DESIGN button that you create, for example, can be made available only to engineers and only if the “MX-Series” is selected. You control who can do what, and when. Set as many design states and actions as you need to accurately automate your ideal process.

And of course, as with any update in functionality, there was also a corresponding change in product names. With the introduction of the SolidWorks-integrated DriveWorks Solo, DriveWorks Engineer is now DriveWorks Pro. The DriveWorks Model Generation Server is now DriveWorks AuotPilot and DriveWorks Live is now going to be known as DriveWorks Live.

And no, they didn’t stop there, but this article has to. If you are interested in learning more, consider attending our online DriveWorks 7 Update Training sessions. These sessions will go well beyond the “What’s New” aspects of DriveWorks 7 and into the details of what these architectural changes mean to you, the existing DriveWorks administrator. We will cover what you will need to do to move your existing projects onto the new platform and how you can leverage the new functionalities in the product.  Contact us for more information about DriveWorks 7 or to sign-up for our update training.

Tags: Design Automation, DriveWorks, DriveWorks 7, DriveWorks AutoPilot, DriveWorks Pro, DriveWorks Solo, DriveWorks Update, Microsoft Excel, SolidWorks