Razorleaf Corporation » What’s NEWS from Razorleaf’s Business Technology Newsletter

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 Announces Office2PDM Acquisition

Jonathan Scott — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:30:03 +0000

Razorleaf is proud to announce the acquisition of Office2PDM and EPDM Dashboard from Extensible CAD. Office2PDM offers a seamless integration between Microsoft Office products and SolidWorks Enterprise PDM (EPDM). EPDM Dashboard provides real-time access to Enterprise PDM vaults, right from Microsoft Outlook, for monitoring the status of documents and workflows. More details about these tools are available on Razorleaf's utilities page for Office2PDM and a separate dedicated microsite.

Razorleaf plans to extend and enhance EPDM Dashboard and Office2PDM, as we strive to deliver on its promise of making PLM tools work better for our clients. Office2PDM and EPDM Dashboard are SolidWorks Partner Products, offering one of the highest levels of integration for access to the Enterprise PDM system. The transition from Extensible CAD to Razorleaf should be transparent to existing customers, and a net benefit given Razorleaf’s long history with Enterprise PDM and its predecessor, Conisio. If you’re planning an EPDM deployment with heavy Microsoft Office users, or have existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint users that you'd like to bring into the PDM system, download a free trial of Office2PDM to experience a rich integration for Microsoft Office within Enterprise PDM. Office2PDM and EPDM Dashboard are available through a global network of resellers. Contact us today if you need more information.

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.

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...

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.

Join Us at DSCC 2010

Eric Doubell — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:12:22 +0000

Dassault Systemes’ annual North American customer conference, DSCC is coming up in November 2010. With Razorleaf’s large Dassault customer base, we plan to attend again this year and expect to see a number of our clients there as well. Please let us know if you’re planning to attend DSCC 2010, or aren’t able to attend but are interested in specific elements of the conference. You can follow us on Twitter during the event using @Razorleaf or by following the event hashtag #DSCC2010. For those unfamiliar with the event, it will be held in Orlando, FL November 9^th and 10^th, 2010 and brings together five out of the six Dassault brands in one place (3DVIA, CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, and SIMULIA).

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.

SolidWorks EPDM 2011 Launched

Jonathan Scott — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:24:19 +0000

For avid SolidWorks users, this certainly isn't the first announcement related to the launch of SolidWorks 2011. But as you might expect, this article is more focused on the latest release of Enterprise PDM than on the release of SolidWorks itself. It appears that EPDM 2011 will be another solid release of SolidWorks' flagship PDM solution, and that there are a handful of very interesting new capabilities. While the new features listed for EPDM 2011 don't seem revolutionary, there are a few worth noting that every administrator will love:

Updated Menus - there is now a series of pull-down menus at the top of the file view pane
File Reference Repair - this new command allows file references to be repaired with files inside or outside of the vault
3DVIA Composer Support - EPDM now recognizes .smg and .smgxml file types and can view them when the 3DVIA Composer Player is installed
New Functions for Data Card Input - string and numeric functions like LEN, MID, +, and - can be used in Data Card formulas
Design Checker Task - the SolidWorks Design Checker tool can now be run as an EPDM Task and leverage managed standards files (.swstd file types)

And for those of you that want to know more about what's interesting in SolidWorks 2011, here are a few tidbits that seem interesting for the Product Data Management and Design Automation crowds:

Defeature - ability to remove features from models for sharing externally (without fear of losing valuable intellectual property)
Equation-based Suppression - features and components can be suppressed based on the evaluation of equations
Global Variables - global variables can be defined in design tables

Please leave us a comment and let us know what Enterprise PDM 2011 features you're excited about.