Razorleaf Corporation » Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Articles

Aras EPLM for SolidWorks EPDM

Jonathan Scott — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:00:41 +0000

Aras EPLM, a new commercial offering from Aras, is available now for managing SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Inventor, Solid Edge, and Pro/Engineer data in an enterprise PLM solution. The EPLM tool provides pre-configured PLM functionality on top of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM (EPDM) to give new and existing EPDM users an ability to scale up to PLM quickly while retaining best-in-class CAD data management. Interesting things to note about Aras EPLM for SolidWorks Enterprise PDM:

Web-based for globally distributed access across locations, and out to the extended enterprise (suppliers and vendors)
Enabled on the Microsoft technology stack just like Enterprise PDM
Item-based, process-oriented, and scalable with a variety of Aras Innovator domain-specific PLM solutions

Aras EPLM offers PLM functionality such as:

Engineering BOM Management
Enterprise Change Management
Integrated Project Management
Effectivity & Baselines
Item Classification
Alternate & Substitute Items
Item Lifecycle

You can read more about Aras EPLM on the Aras website, and learn more about deploying the solution by reaching out to us. Please contact us if you’re interested in Aras EPLM and would like to extend your SolidWorks Enterprise PDM capabilities – we’d be happy to help.

Razorleaf at ACE 2011

Jonathan Scott — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:53:59 +0000

Razorleaf will be attending the Aras Community Event 2011 in late April 2011 as part of our ongoing involvement in the PLM software community. The event, being hosted at The Henry Hotel, will be held in Dearborn, MI and focus on Aras Innovator and solutions built around the product. Razorleaf is anxious to be part of the growing Aras community and to learn what others are doing with the solution. Razorleaf will be presenting multiple times during ACE 2011, including during the Solution Showcase, and will also exhibit at the event. Follow us on Twitter at the event using @Razorleaf or the #ArasACE hashtag.

Rand Worldwide Partners with Razorleaf

Jonathan Scott — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:00:19 +0000

Razorleaf is pleased to announce our recent relationship with Rand Worldwide, a global provider of technology solutions to organizations with engineering design and information technology requirements. Rand Worldwide selected Razorleaf to provide Rand’s Dassault Systèmes customers with ongoing phone support for ENOVIA SmarTeam, CATIA, and other Dassault products. Rand’s customers began transitioning to Razorleaf’s support processes late in 2010. Rand Worldwide customers are experiencing a seamless transition for their phone, email, and ProductivityNOW support contracts. Eric Doubell, president of Razorleaf, noted, “We’re excited to offer Rand Worldwide customers access to our comprehensive support team. Since we’re focused on providing support and services, and don’t sell product, we’re able to continue to offer the unbiased advice and very high level of expertise that Rand Worldwide customers expect.” For further information, you can read the full press release, or contact us directly. You can also review Razorleaf's comprehensive support offerings here.

Service Pack 3 for Aras Innovator 9.2.0

Eric Smith — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:45:31 +0000

On January 3, 2011 Aras release Service Pack 3 for Aras Innovator 9.2.0. In this service pack, Aras added some features and events to enhance administration capabilities. They also addressed a number of issues. Some of the highlights include:

System events were added to allow code to be run on login and logout. These events could be helpful in maintaining user metric information as well as potential environmental actions based on entry and exit from the system.
Aras enhanced core functionality for versioning Items to help improve performance in large operations such as ECNs with a lot of affected Items. This is a good enhancement for system efficiency and user satisfaction.
Support was added for Password Authentication on Workflow Map Transitions with Windows Authenticated Users. Previously this was only able to be done using E-signature Authentication.
Aras enhanced the ability to encrypt configuration file passwords in several configuration files. In today’s regulatory environment, open text storage of this type of information is problematic for some companies. Adding encryption capabilities increases Innovator’s ability to comply with the regulatory needs of their customers.
A few issues were addressed pertaining to the Vault Replication functionality, further stabilizing the solution.

For a full listing of the enhancements and fixes, the Aras Innovator 9.2.0 SP3 release notes are worth reading. The service pack is available for download by Aras Subscribers from the Aras website. Subscribers wishing to go to SP3 can have their database upgraded by Aras at no additional charge to support the effort. If you would like more information about how to get Service Pack 3 or how to work with Aras Innovator, please let us know.

Electronic Signatures and Aras Authentication

Dennis Lindinger — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:05:02 +0000

The Aras Innovator workflow engine has many options and features that enable the modeling of robust business processes in PLM. One of the options available is Read More...

Inforbix Gets Started

Jonathan Scott — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:24:00 +0000

For those of you familiar with the key players at Dassault, ENOVIA, and SmarTeam over the years, you probably know Oleg Shilovitsky. Oleg is the former Read More...

Oracle Database Report for SmarTeam

Steve Dunn — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:15:05 +0000

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 Dassault’s support site by searching for QA00000002533. The output report from the tool includes information on:

Current server connections
Versions of installed Oracle components
Database file names, locations, and sizes
Database object counts by type and owner
Invalid code objects and indices
Scheduled jobs
General database parameters
NLS parameters
SmarTeam-specific information (DB version and last upgrade date)

In our case, the tool was particularly helpful in troubleshooting an ENOVIA SmarTeam Multi-Site issue. The system was generating “Error No. 23325 – Database contains invalid database objects. Please perform necessary steps to fix them” while trying to initiate the primary site.

Although the error message was accurate, locating the problematic database object was tricky. However, running the SmarTeam Database Oracle General Report was helpful in honing in on the Oracle package that was causing the issue. Please contact us if you need help with or have questions about your SmarTeam Oracle environment, or have questions about this tool. Leave us a comment if you have other techniques to share related to Oracle setup, configuration, or troubleshooting for ENOVIA SmarTeam or other PLM systems.

SP2 for Aras Innovator 9.2.0 Available

Dennis Lindinger — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:53:27 +0000

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. Like all Innovator service packs, 9.2.0 SP2 is a free upgrade for subscribers. Contact Aras or work through your Aras business partner to schedule your upgrade. For those subscribers who want to upgrade on their own, Aras publishes a document that outlines the basic procedure for upgrading Innovator 9.2.0 to 9.2.0 SP2. This document can be found in the Documentation directory of the downloaded 9.2.0 SP2 package. Please let us know if you have any questions about Service Pack 2, the changes it introduced, or about upgrading your Innovator environment.

ENOVIA SmarTeam .NET Problems

Jonathan Scott — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:52:56 +0000

Multiple ENOVIA SmarTeam versions are currently experiencing problems as a result of a series of Microsoft Windows Updates published earlier this year. Specifically, the problems are related to several SmarTeam executables, including SmarTeam Editor, the SmarTeam Workflow Service, and other SmarTeam executables. The core problem is that Microsoft appears to have changed their implementation of some garbage collection code in all versions of the .NET Framework, and this code is fundamental to a number of applications like SmarTeam. Therefore, users (of SmarTeam as well as of other software packages) are experiencing errors and abnormal termination of programs after applying the problematic Windows Updates. The current resolution is not to deploy these Windows Updates while Dassault issues service packs and hot fixes to address the problem.

Identifying the Problem

These problems can be experienced on ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R18, V5R19, and V5R20. It is possible that V5R17 and earlier are impacted, but since those versions are no longer actively supported by Dassault, information on these versions is not tracked/available on the Dassault Systemes support website. The following Windows Update packages (at a minimum) are known to cause the problem:

KB976576 for .NET 2.0
KB977354 for .NET 3.0
KB953595 for .NET 3.5

.NET Framework 4.0 also contains the problem, but 4.0 is not officially certified by Dassault for ENOVIA SmarTeam yet anyway. Although these specific KBs are known to cause the problem, a number of other KBs have been reported as problematic as well. It seems that some later KBs reference the aforementioned KBs as prerequisites, and that other KBs may include the same .NET changes that cause the problem, but just rolled up into a different Windows Update. These KBs are also believed to cause the problem:

KB2418241
KB982524
KB2416473

You can recognize that you are experiencing this problem if you receive this error message: "DDE server Window: SmarTeam.exe Application error"

Tracking the Problem

It appears that responsibility for resolving the problem will rest with application vendors like Dassault, and that Microsoft will not be adjusting/recalling any of these updates. A number of software packages were impacted by these changes (like Intuit's QuickBooks, DocuWare's DocuWare, and Sage's Timberline Office), and none indicate a resolution pending that involves Microsoft. So, the only tracking available for resolutions to this SmarTeam problem is via Dassault, and the following tracking numbers should be helpful in staying abreast of the situation:

QA00000006227
BR10000094968
BR10000096194
APAR HD97824
APAR HD98941

Resolving the Problem

The only confirmed comprehensive solution to the problem currently is to avoid installing Windows Updates that make the problematic changes to the .NET Framework. For many customers, it has been possible to remove the offending Windows Updates to resolve the problem, but this has not been shown to be effective in all cases. Dassault indicates that they have partially resolved the problem in V5R20 Service Pack 4, but that a hotfix on top of this service pack will be required to fully resolve the problem for all customers. Dassault is also working on generic hotfixes for V5R19 SP4 and higher and V5R20 SP2 and higher. Customer-specific hotfixes will be required for those customers using other hotfixes in their environment. Please let us know if you know of other ways to identify problematic Windows Update packages, or have found additional ways to resolve this problem. We recognize that such a fundamental and universal change by Microsoft will take significant time and energy for Dassault to resolve, so please watch out for this problem if it has not impacted you yet - it may be several more weeks before Dassault has permanent solutions for all active customers.

SmarTeam SolidWorks 2011 Certification

Jonathan Scott — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 21:41:00 +0000

Wow. For those of you in the SolidWorks – SmarTeam communities, be prepared to be pleasantly surprised if you haven’t read about this elsewhere already. With the release of SolidWorks 2011 early last week, ENOVIA SmarTeam provided the fastest certification they have ever provided for a new version of SolidWorks. In less than one week, SmarTeam had certified SolidWorks 2011 SP0 with ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 SP4 (it certainly took more than a week to certify the new version, but this is some impressive scheduling on Dassault’s part). There are some details, and a few caveats, but in general it seems like the SolidWorks and ENOVIA brands are working closer together than ever inside of Dassault Systemes.

Details

SolidWorks 2011 SP0 was officially released on October 18, 2010 and immediately available for download from SolidWorks’ Customer Portal. Service Pack 4 for ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20 was officially published October 22, 2010 and immediately available for download from Dassault’s support website. Ironically, the version of SmarTeam supporting this latest version of SolidWorks was available one business day ahead of Enterprise PDM 2011 (the new version of EPDM for SW2011). Perhaps Dassault Systemes is trying to send a message about the closeness of brands.

Caveats

There are a couple of important things to note about SmarTeam’s support for SolidWorks 2011, however. Namely, certification is provided on 32-bit SolidWorks for Windows XP only, and on 64-bit SolidWorks for Windows 7 only. Frankly, those seem like the most common operating systems for the two platforms, so it isn’t surprising that Dassault would lead support with these two OSes. The other caveat to note is that this article is hot off the (figurative) presses – there is very little information available yet regarding the performance of SP4 for V5R20. For more information on SolidWorks 2011, take a look SolidWorks’ launch website and for more information on ENOVIA SmarTeam V5R20, please review our article here.