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3DEXPERIENCE Project Management (FAQ)

SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner empowers teams to streamline project execution through a web-based solution. This guide explores its functionalities, equipping you to harness its potential for collaborative project management.

1. what is project planner?

SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner simplifies project planning by offering a browser-based solution. Teams can define, share, and complete tasks and deliverables through continuous project planning and execution. This collaborative and secure environment, powered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, keeps teams on track and within budget, ultimately accelerating time to market.

2. Who needs a project planner?

3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner empowers teams and organizations to manage complex engineering and product development projects. It proves valuable for various professionals, including:

Engineers and Designers:  Plan and manage the development of 3D models, CAD designs, and other engineering-related tasks.

Product Managers: Plan and track new product development, including defining project timelines, assigning tasks, and monitoring progress.

Project Managers: Oversee and coordinate various project aspects, ensuring adherence to schedules and budgets.

Manufacturing and Production Teams:  Align the production process with the product design and development schedule.

Collaborative Teams: Facilitate collaboration among team members, including cross-functional teams, suppliers, and partners.

Large Organizations: Manage complex projects involving multiple teams and departments with a unified platform.

3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner is ideal for anyone working on projects involving 3D modeling, CAD design, and engineering, especially when collaboration and task management are crucial.

3. The usage of a project planner?

SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner offers a range of functionalities to streamline project management:

Project Planning: You can create and define projects within the software,

Task Management: Create and define projects within the software.

Resource Allocation: Create tasks and sub-tasks, assign them to team members.

Gantt Charts:Allocate resources like team members, equipment, and materials to tasks or projects for efficient utilization.

Collaboration: Utilize Gantt charts to visualize project timelines, dependencies, and critical paths.

Document Management: Store and manage project-related documents, CAD files, designs, and other resources within the system for easy access and version control.

Project Tracking: Monitor the progress of your projects and tasks in real-time. Real-time tracking lets you identify tasks on schedule and those at risk of delay, allowing for swift corrective actions.

Risk Management: Proactively identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies.

Reporting and Analytics: Generate reports to assess project performance, resource allocation, and other key metrics.

Integration:  Integrate with other SolidWorks software and tools for a holistic product design and engineering process.

4. Who needs a project planner?

SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner significantly enhances productivity for teams involved in engineering, design, and product development. Here's how:

  • Centralized Information: A central platform stores project information, tasks, documents, and communication, eliminating scattered information and saving time.
  • Streamlined Task Management: Break down projects into tasks, assign responsibilities, and set deadlines for improved efficiency and accountability.
  • Real-Time Collaboration: Real-time communication and data sharing among team members and external partners lead to faster decision-making and problem-solving.
  • Visual Project Planning: Understand project structure and dependencies with Gantt charts and visual timelines, enabling efficient resource allocation and work planning.
  • Resource Optimization: Allocate resources effectively to avoid overloading individuals or underutilizing resources, leading to better resource management and improved productivity.
  • Reduced Errors: Version control and central document management minimize errors and rework. Teams can access the latest design documents and CAD files, improving quality and reducing correction time.
  • Proactive Project Monitoring: Real-time project tracking allows for early identification of potential delays or issues. This proactive approach enables teams to take corrective actions swiftly, preventing small problems from becoming major setbacks.
  • Data-Driven Improvement: By analyzing project performance, resource utilization, and other key metrics data, you can identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement in future projects.
  • Integration Benefits: Integration with other SolidWorks tools and third-party software streamlines workflows and reduces manual data transfer, enhancing productivity by eliminating redundant tasks.
  • Risk Mitigation: Identify and manage project risks to avoid costly delays and disruptions.

In summary, SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner improves productivity by streamlining project management processes, enhancing communication and collaboration, reducing errors, and providing insights into project performance. It helps teams work more efficiently and effectively, ultimately leading to faster project completion, cost savings, and higher-quality outcomes.

5.Is it possible for me to make manual edits to the project? Or Certainly, here's the rewritten version?

Yes, you can make manual edits within your SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner. The software typically provides user-friendly interfaces for creating, modifying, and updating project details, tasks, timelines, and resources. You can edit project plans, adjust task assignments, update deadlines, and make other changes as needed to keep your project information accurate and up-to-date. These manual edits are an essential part of actively managing your projects and adapting to changing circumstances.

6. it is only for internal purposes or it has any external community can use it?

SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner empowers you to manage internal projects and collaborate with external partners or communities. The software facilitates communication and collaboration among all project stakeholders, including internal team members, external collaborators, suppliers, customers, and partners.. This flexibility allows for a broader and more inclusive approach to project planning and management, enhancing transparency and coordination across the entire project ecosystem.

7. Is it only for any specific project or we can do anything?

SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner targets engineering, design, and product development projects. It specifically tailors its features to support tasks and activities commonly found in these fields. While it is highly versatile within this context, it may not be the most suitable tool for managing projects in unrelated fields, such as construction or event planning.

In summary, SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE Project Planner is most effective when used for projects in the engineering, design, and product development domains. It may not be as well-suited for managing projects outside of these areas.

Task Scheduler:

Focus: Task Scheduler is primarily focused on managing and automating individual tasks or processes within a project.

Scope: It deals with the execution and scheduling of specific tasks, often related to routine or repetitive activities
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Automation: Task Scheduler is commonly used to automate tasks like backups, data imports, script executions, and system maintenance. It's more about automating technical or operational processes.

Granularity: It can manage tasks at a granular level, often focusing on individual actions rather than the overall project.

Project Planner:

Focus: Project Planner is designed for comprehensive project management, from planning and resource allocation to execution and monitoring of the entire project.

Scope: It deals with the entire project lifecycle, including defining project objectives, creating task dependencies, assigning resources, tracking progress, and generating reports.

Project Management: Project Planner is a tool for managing projects of varying complexities, such as product development, construction, event planning, and more. It encompasses all aspects of project management.

Granularity: Project Planner offers a broader perspective and can handle tasks at various levels, from high-level project phases down to detailed task management.

A screenshot of a computer

Description automatically generated

Task Scheduler excels at automating and managing specific, recurring tasks or processes, often technical or operational in nature. In contrast, Project Planner tackles comprehensive project management. It handles the entire project lifecycle and is well-suited for complex projects with diverse tasks and dependencies. The choice between them depends on your specific needs and the scale of the project you are managing.

3D Product Architect (PAU)

3D Product Architect enables users to create or modify multi-CAD product structures without the use of design tools. Being able to digitally mockup proposed reduces design iterations and makes reviews available to the product development process.

  1. Connect everyone with the product development process using a browser-based application.
  2. Enable non-CAD users to mock-up new products or product changes prior to the detailed design.
  3. Create multi-CAD mock-ups of a product.
  4. Optimize the product definition for configurable products into a single definition that satisfies the intent of product variations and maximizes IP reuse.

Capability:

  1. CAD Visualization
  2. 3D Visualization
  3. Product Development
  4. Work Under Change
  5. Digital Mock-up
  6. Derivative Product Development
  7. Measurement and Sectioning
  8. Related Products and Specifications
  9. Product Structure Filtering

1. CAD Visualization:

Multi-CAD design mock-up provides a single context from multiple design sources, so products appear in their entirety to better understand how changes impact the product.

  • Product Structure Editor enables you to navigate and Author structures with a shared experience between a structure widget and a 3D widget.
  • Create and manage product created from multi-discipline tools.

Visualize, explore, and edit multi-CAD product structures within a web-browser.

Products with a common structure that were created in multiple CAD systems.

2. 3D Visualization:

3D Compose permits you to visualize and navigate the product in 3D to understand the effect of changes in the product structure.

  • Interactive exploded views of a structure
  • Drill down to specific components of the product

Expand different areas of a product structure for review while retaining context.

Easily navigate product structures to visualize designs and related changes.

  • Cross-highlighting between the structure and the 3D model
  • Locate and query sub-components from either application.

3. Product Development:

The browser-based Product Structure Editor enables users to modify an existing product, derive a new product from an existing one, or create a new product from scratch with available templates for each supported CAD solution.

  • Position components without CAD tools.
  • Use free-form tools to drag & drop components into place
  • Position parts relative to each other with tools that intuitively mate faces, edges, and cylinders of components for accurate placement.

4. Work Under Change:

The Product Structure Editor supports the ability to work under an existing change action to fully capture and audit changes made within the structure.

  • “Work Under” functionality allows the designer to activate an assigned Change Action
  • Capture all subsequent changes to the design in the Change Action

5. Digital Mock-up:

Build mockup sessions that can be loaded into CAD directly from a browser.

  • Quickly build a product structure with simple positioning tools
  • Persistent repositioning or product structures
  • Build large product structures beyond the scope of individual CAD system representations.

Drag & drop coordinate systems on any face to drag components along specific vectors and rotations.

6. Derivative Product Development:

Product duplication generates derived structures based wholly or partially on existing designs to create derivative product designs.

  • Duplicate existing products to derive new products.
  • Selective reuse existing products or create new ones.
  • Exclude products not required in the new design.
  • Duplicate existing products with new names:
    • Prefix
    • Suffix
    • Manual naming

Decide what to do with products either individually or in preselected groups.

Rename or add text to any selected product or preselected group.

7. Measurement and Sectioning:

Measure, section, and find the related objects of specific product features.

  • Section in any plane for design clarity
  • On-demand measurement of filtered primitives for accurate selection
  • Measure areas, and distances (orthogonal and minimum distances)

8. Related Products and Specifications:

Navigate through the relationships between products and other specifications.

  • Start from any component in the product structure.
  • Move freely up and down the structure and related objects such as Change Actions and Markups, etc.

9. Product Structure Filtering:

Select specific areas of the product structure with cube and sphere shapes in 3D Compose using volume queries to partially load or visualize areas of complex product structures. Save and reuse the resulting filtered structures.

  • Filter the product structure by volumes, attributes, and configurations

Save filtered definitions for reuse.

Sheet Metal Costing

The SOLIDWORKS costing tool helps you calculate how much it costs to manufacture sheet metal, machined, multibody parts, and assembles as well as plastic molded , cast, 3D printed parts, and multtibody weldments by automating the cost estimation and quotation process.

Evaluating the Cost of a Sheet Metal part with the material weight option:

The software depends on the un suppressing of flat patterns in sheet metal parts to determine the cut paths. If you apply Costing to a sheet metal part for which the flat pattern cannot be unsuppressed, the Costing results might be incorrect.

  • In a sheet metal part, click Costing (Tools toolbar or the Evaluate tab on the Command Manager) or Tools > SOLIDWORKS Applications > Costing.
  • If there is enough information in the sheet metal template, and if the part has a material assigned to it that matches the template, a cost estimate is performed and the Costing Task Pane displays the Estimated Cost Per Part.
  • If there is not enough information in the template, or if you want to edit the Costing input values, follow the steps below.
     Costing Task Pane
  • Under Costing Template, select a template. Default templates are available or you can create templates to use custom manufacturing data. See Creating a New Sheet Metal Template.
  • Under Material, make selections for Class, Name, and Thickness from template if they are not populated. The Class, Name, and Thickness from template are populated if the material in the part matches a class, name, and thickness in the sheet metal template.
  • The Material cost is the cost in the template for the selected Class, Name, and Thickness from template combination. You can override Material cost without editing the template. Overrides affect only the part that is open, not the template. If you override Material cost, the field appears in yellow.
Blank Size
  • Under Stock Type from Template, select Material Weight.
  • Under Area to cost select an item to define the material usage.
  • Under Quantity, set the Total number of parts and Lot size.
  • Optionally, under Markup/Discount, adjust the material cost or the total cost using a percentage factor.
  • The software extracts material information from the material set in the part and performs a cost estimate. The CostingManager displays manufacturing features such as cut paths and bends that were recognized in the part. The Costing Task Pane displays the Estimated Cost Per Part.
  • Click Begin Cost Estimation.
  • The cost Estimation of the solidworks Sheetmetal part will be shown.
ESTIMATED COST PER PART

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