ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 New Features

ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 was released for General Availability (GA) in February, 2010.  Service Pack 1 was co-released, so effectively it can be considered part of “what’s new” in V5R20.  So what is new with Dassault Systemes’ most prevalent PDM platform?  New packaging (installation packaging, not the shipping boxes), new viewer capabilities, enhanced CAD support, specific module feature enhancements, and PLMDB support have all been introduced in this version.  All in all, there is nothing revolutionary in this release, but there are a lot of significant improvements. 

Packaging

If you’re tired of juggling the handful of installation CDs in each new ENOVIA SmarTeam release, you’ll be pleased to get your DVD in the mail.  That’s right, all of the SmarTeam installation media is included on a single DVD now (with the exception of service packs and other data external to the ENOVIA SmarTeam program itself).  There are still multiple installer menus, but they all cascade nicely and return you to the next higher menu at the end of an installation.  This may seem superfluous to some, but is a nice, and often-requested, improvement.

New Viewer

With the V5R20 release, ENOVIA SmarTeam has introduced a new embedded viewer, the 3DVIA Viewer.  The 3DVIA Viewer relies on Web Services for SmarTeam (which are also necessary for 3DLive and require installation of the SmarTeam Web server).  The client embedded viewer actually views CGR and CGM files created from the native files for the most popular multi-CAD formats that ENOVIA SmarTeam supports.  Those of you that are particularly fond of the embedded AutoVue Viewer should note that it is not installed by default any longer during a SmarTeam Editor client installation – it must be installed manually.  Also on the topic of AutoVue, the release notes for V5R20 SP1 indicate that AutoVue 19.3.4 is supported, however AutoVue 19.3.2 is shipped on the installation media.

CAD Support and Features

Most of the new CAD certifications for ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 were delivered as part of SP1 rather than as part of the GA package.  Some of these certifications are not entirely new since they were provided in a Service Pack of V5R19, but nonetheless, the newly supported CAD versions are:

• SolidWorks 2010 (32-bit)
• Solid Edge ST2 (32-bit)
• Inventor 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• AutoCAD and AutoCAD Mechanical (32-bit and 64-bit)
• CATIA V5R20 (32-bit and 64-bit)

For those of you that haven’t experienced SolidWorks 2009 support in V5R19, you’ll notice that the V5R20 SolidWorks Integration is different from V5R19 GA.  Apparently, a significant amount of work was done to the SolidWorks Integration in SP4 of V5R19 to support SolidWorks 2009, and a number of new features were added in the process.  Without going into too much detail, very granular support was added for managing suppressed components, hidden components, lightweight components, configurations, and display states.  These changes haven’t gotten much press yet, but they seem to provide tremendous new capabilities for large assembly support in the PDM system (something that most PDM systems don’t even attempt to do).  However, a number of customers have experienced problems with the updated integration (SP4, SP5, and SP6 of V5R19), so please be sure to test things thoroughly whether working in V5R19 or V5R20 with SolidWorks.

There are significant improvements in the CATIA Integration for V5R20 as well.  In particular, these areas were addressed:

• LACD (Large Assembly & Concurrent Design) support is further integrated into the CATIA Integration.
• Save as Type is introduced, allowing users to save alternate file types and optionally link them as objects to the original CATIA object.
• Key ENOVIA SmarTeam options have been moved from CATIA Environment Variables into the CAI Tools -> Options dialog.
• Additional options are available regarding how links are created between CATParts shown on an assembly drawing (of a CATProduct) and that CATDrawing.
• A new batch tool is available for exposing instance information of CATIA components for use in 3DLive.

As always, the latest information about ENOVIA SmarTeam CAD certification can be found on the Dassault Systemes website for customers under current maintenance, by following this link once you are logged in to the site (you can also navigate to the ENOVIA SmarTeam section in the Resource Library area of the support site).

3DLive Enhancements

3DLive is a pretty interesting visualization technology, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you should take a look at the videos on the Web.  V5R20 of ENOVIA SmarTeam adds capabilities for viewing different BOM Configuration Views in 3DLive (previously, 3DLive navigated on the Items Tree only).  The latest version also supports viewing 3D representations for Items with more than one SmarTeam Specification Link.

Debugging Tools

V5R20 introduces a new set of debugging tools to help system administrators monitor ENOVIA SmarTeam applications and to help streamline interactions and troubleshooting with Dassault Systemes support resources.  Windows service based agents are installed client-side and report data to a central Diagnostic Center for centralized monitoring of complex ENOVIA SmarTeam environments.  Unfortunately, there is no documentation available on this capability yet, so its not yet clear how comprehensive or valuable these tools are.  Nonetheless, it certainly is a step toward maintaining low cost of ownership.

BOM Enhancements

ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 introduces three huge improvements in the SmarTeam BOM module:

1.  Users can now Add and Update Items from BOM Editor.
2. The Copy Tool warns on specific objects that are missing data before performing the copy operation.
3. The SmarTeam BOM API is now published.

To those not using the SmarTeam BOM module, these may seem like small improvements.  For those working with the tools every day, the first and second improvements listed above are really significant.

Editor/Web Editor/Navigator Enhancements

The changes in Editor, Web Editor, and Navigator with V5R20 are not earth-shattering, particularly for those not using PLMDB.  The most significant change is the availability of a thumbnails presentation capability in Web Editor.  With this feature, search results can now be viewed in a thumbnails view, helping users more easily navigate to their desired SmarTeam object.

For those working with a PLMDB-based database (like those who have deployed CATIA PLM Express, SmarTeam Design Express, or SmarTeam Engineering Express), three important pieces of support were added to Web Editor and Navigator with this release:

• Upload Documents tool now works in Web Editor
• Attachment Folders are now fully supported in Web Editor and Navigator
• PLMDB Profile Cards for Web Editor and Navigator are now available out-of-the-box

PLMDB Support

With the V5R20 release of ENOVIA SmarTeam, PLMDB becomes the official standard database for the PDM software, replacing SmDemo once and for all.  This is very significant because the out-of-the-box data model and configuration of the system now reflects ENOVIA SmarTeam best practice for PDM.  Beyond this changeover, Dassault has also rounded out support for PLMDB in other modules of ENOVIA SmarTeam:

• Web Editor and Navigator are fully supported on PLMDB
• Multi-Site and Multi-Vault are fully supported on PLMDB
• Regulatory Compliance Framework (RCF) is fully supported on PLMDB

Summary

ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 should be a good stabilizing release for Dassault Systemes (you can read their release notes on ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 here).  A moderate amount of functionality has been added, but no major modules seem to have been rewritten or overhauled.  There are improvements across more than half of the available modules, and CAD certification catches up to some of the latest released versions of SmarTeam’s support multi-CAD platforms.  Please let us know if you have any questions about this release of ENOVIA SmarTeam, or leave us a comment below describing your experiences with it to date.

Tags: 3DLive, 3DVIA, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, AutoVue, CATIA, CATIA PLM Express, ENOVIA SmarTeam, ENOVIA SmarTeam best practice, ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20, PLMDB, Siemens Solid Edge, SmarTeam Design Express, SmarTeam Engineering Express, SmarTeam Specification Link, SmarTeam Viewer, SolidWorks