Selecting or Customizing Variants in TactonWorks
There are two extremes when driving components in design automation systems: on one end of the spectrum, you can allow users to only select pre-defined components (Configure-to-Order) and on the other end of the spectrum, you can let users create their own parts by driving the dimensions and features of the parts with infinite flexibility (Engineer-to-Order). Which of these models is TactonWorks following with variants? Are we just selecting variants, or are we customizing them, or are we doing both? Continue Reading
As developers, we’re known to tweak things to get them just exactly like we want them. So here’s a quick tip on getting your own menu entry in Windows 7 context menus, and some sample code that makes a directory listing for a selected folder. With this sample code, you can choose any Windows folder and create a text file listing of all files and subfolders contained within the selected folder. 
For those of you running an Oracle database as your repository for SmarTeam, check out this helpful utility. The SmarTeam Database Oracle General Report tool is a collection of plain text files containing batch commands and SQL statements that can generate a detailed HTML report of key Oracle statuses and settings. The tool is available from 
Just this month (October 2010), Aras announced the release of Service Pack 2 for Innovator 9.2.0. The service pack resolved several issues identified by subscribers, provided some performance enhancements, and addressed some issues related to error handling and messaging. 
If you’re a 3D CAD user, you no doubt recognize the name PTC, or at the very least, Pro/ENGINEER. But with the recent announcement by PTC of their new product line, Creo, the Pro/E brand’s days have become numbered. Creo is a new line of products based on technology from PTC’s three main design and viewing brands, Pro/ENGINEER, ProductView, and CoCreate. Creo was introduced October 28th, 2010 (known up until the launch date as “Project Lightning”) and is slated to be delivered in 2011. Those are the basics, but what is this really all about and why is it important in the PLM industry? 
Regardless of whether you’re interested in EPDM Item BOMs or EPDM Document BOMs, it is important to know what you can and cannot do with Computed BOMs. Computed BOMs are the ones most closely tied to the source data in Enterprise PDM, but that doesn’t mean that they cannot be manipulated. So what is a Computed BOM, how is a Computed BOM different in Documents than it is in Items, and what can you do with a Computed BOM? 
