Throughout the many years I have been involved with Solid Edge, one of the things I enjoy most is interacting with customers and listening to what they are trying to achieve in their design process and what they need out of their software.

One hurdle often encountered is the need to find design information as quickly as possible. Also very important when making changes to an existing design – which parts, assemblies and drawings are affected by those changes. Of course, Solid Edge has some ‘out of the box’ tools that allow you to search for information and find where parts are used. The problem with these tools however is that they tend to be cumbersome and slow when running in an unmanaged environment.

When customers are faced with these data management issues, we always discuss the benefits of using an appropriate data management or PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solution. This technology brings many high level benefits (beyond the scope of this article) as well as some excellent side benefits such as fast searching and where used. This is down to the fact that the information is stored in a database.

Solid Edge and Siemens have two data management solutions available, these are Insight and Teamcenter. Whilst these are great solutions in their own right, depending on the circumstances of the customer, they are not always the right fit. They are sometimes just ‘too heavy’ and over complicated. Like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut! In addition to this some companies just don’t have the budget or IT infrastructure available to invest in and support Teamcenter or Insight.

We recently surveyed the Solid Edge community in an attempt to find out what users really needed from a data management solution. What were the big ticket items that were slowing them down when working with Solid Edge? Looking at the results it was clear that users wanted a solution that provided some of the tools that Teamcenter or Insight deliver (such as instant search and where used) but without the overheads associated with those solutions. They need something that is quick and easy to install, configure and maintain, as well as being good value for money.

This valuable feedback has driven us to develop an elegant solution that fits these requirements.

Introducing File Control for Solid Edge

File Control is a Solid Edge application that provides simple, efficient and effective management of all your Solid Edge data. Most importantly it does this with virtually zero customisation. File control will automatically build a live database enabling almost instant search queries on any property, instant where used reports, instant where drawn reports and much more. File Control gives many of the benefits that are a result of implementing Solutions like Insight or Teamcenter but at a fraction of the cost.

Some File Control Benefits and Features are:

• Instant search on any Solid Edge file property
• Instant ‘where used’ results
• Instant ‘where drawn’ results
• Reporting of interpart links
• Batch editing of property data
• Reporting and BOM capabilities
• Built in viewer
• Installs in seconds with virtually zero configuration

File Control is available to buy from the IngeneaSoft website where you can also find more information about it.

In addition to being able to purchase File Control as a stand alone product, you may also be interested to know that it is available for free as part of a Solid Mastermind membership. Gold and Platinum members have free use of the application as part of their monthly subscription. This is a very cost effective way of using file control with the added benefit of all the other training material you have access to as a Solid Mastermind member.

Solid Mastermind not only provides the very best Solid Edge video tutorial resource available today, it now also provides some excellent utilities that deliver real world benefits. Together these resources will help you become more profitable, efficient and productive with Solid Edge.

The video below shows File Control in use.

Top Edging
Jon Sutcliffe