Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Hi.  I'm looking for some recommendations on ERP software for our medium-sized engineering/manufacturing company.  It would need to have Inventor to ERP BOM capabilities.

We currently have engineer-to-order software in place, but the developer is not interested in fixing its bugs or updating it to work better with it's own Inventor add-on software.

So, if anyone has some comments, good or bad, I'd like to hear them.

Thanks in advance!

Bob

[#2]

It depends on your ERP System mostly I would say.

If I understand you correctly you´re looking for an interface directly from Inventor to your ERP-System.

Most companies use another program inbetween data transition from CAD to ERP which is a PDM-System.

From my background there are a lot more companies using a PDM-System before they transmit the data to ERP.

There is a plethora of PDM-Systems available for Inventor, Vault to be named first because it has a very high level CAD-Integration for Autodesk Products. But there are others which not only have an interface for Inventor but other major CAD-Systems as well like CATIA, Solidworks, Creo (ProE), NX, Solid Edge.

For example Pro.File has a wide support of CAD-Systems.

But in my experience third party PDM Systems mostly are using the Inventor API for their CAD-Integration and that´s where functionality sometimes lacks.

So it really depends on your needs and by no means can this question be answered in a forum thread.

In your position I would contact companies that either implement ERP/PDM-Integrations or even create them.

The topic is complex and someone experienced in this field will help you a lot.

Best regards

[#3]

We use "Syspro" for our ERP system. There is a 3rd party plug-in to interface with Inventor. We have implemented this 3rd party plug-in due to the nature of our manufacturing process. A great number of our products are weldments and we don't need part numbers for these individual components that make up the weldment. Since we burn/cut the items in-house our selves.

These components are not used in other units and would never be sold by them selves, so we need to make decisions at each component as to whither it requires a Part Number in our ERP system of not. If one of the components in the weldment is used in other weldments, then it would get a Part Number in our ERP system. The items that don't get a Part Number, are cut/burned from steel plate, so our ERP system would list the required amount of steel plate and the pattern number to use with the quantity to be cut.

We've been on different versions of this software since 1994, don't know how we could function without it.

[#4]

@falkmassmann

We're actually looking for a replacement ERP system that has the ability to interface with Inventor's Bill of Material.  Our current ERP does it, but it's not functioning as it should.  The developer's not interested in fixing the issues.

@blair

I'll check out Syspro and see if it has what we're looking for.

Thanks for your comments.

A colleague was talking to Caleb Funk from Imaginit last week.  He asked him what others are using.  His response was AS/400 and something called Syteline.  Does anybody know or use Syteline?  If so, how is it working for you?

TIA

Bob

[#5]

May I ask what ERP system your company is using?

Right now I can only come up with one Software that has a direct integration from Inventor to ERP and that is CAD-Desktop for SAP. There might be other Systems that are capable of this.

Here is a PDF for a quick overview of the Inventor Integration.

http://www.cideon-software.com/backstage_09/documentpool/software/flyer-eng-cad-integration-/SAP%20P...

I´m not trying to promote SAP in any way, it´s just the only direct ERP integration I know of at this point.

PDM to ERP interfaces are a complete different matter and most likely are available for the major ERP Systems.

All the best

[#6]

We're currently using Questica SE.

And thanks for the pdf link.