Welcome to SW.tips!
This website is dedicated to SolidWorks Tips and Tricks and is also home of miniPDM.
Sorry Internet Explorer users, the rendering of the site can be broken in certain circumstances due to the usage of Flexboxes. If you really want to use a Microsoft browser, you should use Edge instead.
Excel Add-in Setup
For easy deployment and update, the miniPDM Excel Add-in is a VSTO application deployed with ClickOnce. Because of the nature of this application you might receive several warnings from Windows Defender and/or your antivirus.
Continue readingChangelog
This section lists the changes to the miniPDM add-in of each released version.
- 0.5.4.4 (Next version)
- 0.5.4.3 (Current Version)
- A routine was added to remove and old database key (miniPDMaddinSettings.DBaddinVersion) that could cause issues
- Optimized quantities in the Excel Add-in are now detailed properly in the Computed tab
miniPDM Troubleshooting
If you encounter some issues with miniPDM during the installation or while using the add-in, you can find in this article different fixes and workarounds.
The C Handler
I have always been a bit OCD when it comes to door handles. When possible I try to avoid contacts with things that other people touch. If there is no way I can avoid it, as soon as I can, I wash my hands because I am pretty bad at not touching my face…
But now with these strange times upon us, more than ever, I try to limit these contacts. I came up with a tool design that works pretty good and I wanted to share it as my modest participation to COVID-19, and more generally non-hygienic, contacts mitigation.
Continue readingDemo Files
In this article you will find a raw Bill Of Materials like the one that could be exported from SolidWorks to test the capabilities of miniPDM by yourself. Some additional files are also available to load some Price Conditions to test the possibilities of that feature on the BOM, and some to generate the source BOM by yourself with an already made project structure.
Continue readingSolidWorks Add-in Features
miniPDM SolidWorks Add-in is primarily designed to enhance SolidWorks properties filling capabilities. This add-in can help to make the components compliant with the requirements of the miniPDM Excel Add-in and create Bill of Materials that can be used by different actors in the workflow. It also provided extended properties trough a database.
Continue readingExcel Add-in Features
miniPDM Excel Add-in is primarily designed to read SolidWorks Bill Of Materials exported as Excel files but can potentially work with any other software capable of exporting an indexed BOM. It is capable of computing the information from the BOM’s columns but also combine it with the extra information stored in the associated database.
Continue readingScope of Supply
With the Bill of Materials, there is an underlining concept of level of details you want. Depending of whom is going to use the BOM, you need to adjust the zoom level. To each line in a BOM corresponds something that you need to get with one way or another. Buying it or manufacturing it yourself won’t be done with the same level of details. This is the concept of the Scope of Supply: the more you zoom, the more lines you have in your BOM, the more components you have to source yourself.
Definition of the Word Component
A component is a generic name that you can give to anything in SolidWorks. It can be an assembly or a part, having a geometry or be empty, being a virtual file or an external file, having or not having a related drawing and a related Bill Of Materials. This term is used a lot on this website when the subject applies to any classes of SolidWorks or real world entity.
Continue readingComponents Identification
The most important properties of a component are the ones that permit to define it unequivocally. This should be accomplished with the minimum information for clarity and simplicity. In your Bill Of Material you want to have the minimum number of columns that display information to identify a component.
Continue reading
