Alternatives to Vault

[Anonymous]

Hi

Can anyone suggest alternatives to Vault for PDM?

Looking for:

-Rev history management

-ECO management

-General PDM

-Not overly complicated (small, 3-user environment that is not foreseen to increase significantly in the next 5 years or more)

-Not overly expensive

-(hopefully) Not requiring a separate computer as a dedicated server

Does something like this even exist?

Thanks

Mauricio

[msklein]

I guess the question needs to be asked what is wrong with Vault that makes you want an alternative?

MSK

[Anonymous]

Fair question.

I haven't used Vault. We're in the process of evaluating our options. I'd like to know what else is out there (if anything), that would fit our needs.

From what I've read, Vault seems to be either too little (the basic version that ships with IV), or too much (the top-of the line version). We want our PDM to have some sort of ECO tracking, and the in-between versions of Vault don't include that.

There's also the Vault requirements (a dedicated server), and its price tag, that can climb rather quickly.

Lastly, by reading some of the information on Autodesk's Vault pages, it really looks overly complicated to install and maintain. To be fair, though, all I'm saying is based on initial research, and not in using it.

It would be helpful, at this stage of our research, to know if there are any alternatives that could be suggested.

Thanks again,

Mauricio

[billco-mfg]

I recently took a look. I thought Windchill was the best of the others that are out there. I never got to the point where I did a demo with our model files loaded.

If Autodesk products are you primary drafting tools, then Vault is probably going to have a slight upper hand. There is generally going to be better integration between CAD and PLM when they both come from the same company.

Make sure you understand what bells and whistles aren't going to work in the other PLM tools when you are working with Autodesk files.

[Anonymous]

---

@msklein wrote:

I guess the question needs to be asked what is wrong with Vault that makes you want an alternative?

MSK

---

We use a system that was designed in-house instead of Vault. It works very well as it is tailored to our needs. But what is wrong with Vault that made us go with an alternative?

I personally found Vault to have a lot of small issues in my evaluation, many of which just fell into the PITA category. We found it difficult to accept that we had to change our way of doing things (and more importantly the way we wanted to change to do things) to accommodate Vault. But the biggest issue was that we wanted all of our Engineering data in one place and that includes files from other applications that have linked files, and there was no way to do this with Vault and not make a huge mess. In short it would have caused more issues than it fixed.

Our in-house solution is a better fit for us, mostly because we own it and make it what we want it to be. Of course, having in-house programmers that can make this happen is a big help.

[swalton]

We run Windchill/PDMlink for our ProE customers and Vault Collaboration for our IV customers. We have 4 people in Windchill and 4 in Vault.  We do run Vault and PDMlink on the same server.  I would not try to live without a dedicated server for any PDM package.

PDMlink is nice and will require a 64bit server.  We looked at using it with IV, but decided not to.  One area that we did not like was the 6 months to 1 year delay from the release of a new IV version to the release of the PDMlink support for the new version.  Also, IIRC the link between IV and PDMlink was extra$$ over the basic PDMLink package.  I suspect that this will be true for any package that is not Vault. 

Expect to spend lots of time planning your rollout of PDM software.  You need to plan and address the complications in implimentation.  If you don't, you get to live with the bad workflows that you made until you decide to re-work the entire install and loose all of the history that you have made up to now. 

I would use vault workgroup and some third party ECO solution if I could not justify the cost of Vault Manufacturing for the ECO process.  Look into Issueview or Parts&vendors.

[Dennis_Jeffrey]

Check out Autodesk Vault Workgroup and Professional. Those features are missing in the free Autodesk Vault.

[coreyparks]

We use Synergis Adept where I work.  I don't know it all that well even though I have used it for about 10 month's, no training. 

-Rev history management - Yes but a big pain to use in comparson to Vault, though not impossible by any means.

-ECO management - Not sure if it has this ability or not, but neither does vault without productstream.  You can assign work to users and markup prints and such though.

-Not overly complicated - No it not overly complicated it's just totally alien.  It does not use the basic windows environment with folders that same way as vault.  It like things as shallow as possible in structure and in as few folders as possible from what I,m told.  Vault mirrors the same directory stucture you have in your workspace.

-Not overly expensive - I think we pay somewhere around $1200-$1400 a full seat for each designer.  It's a lot more than free but of course free doesn't accomplish what you need in any case.  More than it worth in my opinion however.

-(hopefully) Not requiring a separate computer as a dedicated server - it does not require a seperate server to run.  On that note our new server dedicated to Adept will be up and running by mid next week.  We are hoping that this will give us way more speed and added stability that we don't have now. 

In a nut shell Adept was not originally designed to work with Autodesk products and it shows.  We get errors, lock ups, slow start times in Inventor and Adept and other unexplainable events, especially since the last adept upgrade.  It also has some odd work arounds to try and integrate with frame generator, content center and iParts.  I really miss vault though I didn't care for productstream that much either, it still worked better than where I am at now.  My opinion, find something other than Adept.

[msklein]

ECO tracking is not really the job of a PDM system but more a requirement of a PLM, I have said for years the cad industry tends to mix and confuse the definitions of both of these products, so that unless you have really spent time checking both out so that you have a good understanding of what each of the products are to do you're confused and dumbfounded. Ex. Agile is not a PDM it's a PLM, manager told me to zip IV files and attached to Agile, no understanding of what was needed.

MSK

PDM= product document management (design) (engineering  use)

PLM= product life management  (whole company use)

[skyngu]

totally agree. find sth else other than Adept. plus, their help desk can not help much even they did try.

[Anonymous]

Mauricio,

Are you still looking for something by chance? Have a look at www.xref.com. It has all the basics, and, is very low cost. You can have a 5 user account for $19.95/mo.  Free trial is available with no credit card necessary.

Thanks,

-Eric