(This is turning into the color series of EPDM blogs!  The last one was about the little green flag.)

 

If you are an Enterprise user then you’ve heard (or seen) the term local cache. It’s pronounced like ‘cash’ and it refers to the files from your vault that physically reside on your local hard drive.  What can be deceiving about Enterprise is that you see all of these files listed in Windows Explorer in a folder structure  on your root C: drive and so it seems like all of those files are actually there. But they may not be … but that’s OK!

The folder structure you see is just a representation – a way to look at the vault contents in a way that is familiar to you. You don’t need to have the files on your local computer to get a lot of information about them. You can see the information on the data card, determine the latest version, see where it is in the approval process, and see if anyone has it checked out. You will need to have a copy in your local cache if you are going to preview the file or if you are going to open it.

That’s interesting, but what does that have to do with the yellow triangle?

Where you can run into trouble is when you have an OLD version of the file.  This can happen when someone else has made new versions and you haven’t updated your vault view with the latest version.

 

If you open a file without checking it out, you will open the one that is in your cache.  This can include the components in an assembly.  Your local copy of the assembly may be the latest version but some of the components may not be.  So when you open the assembly, you may not see all the changes that have been made to the components.

 That could be confusing.  How can I prevent that?

Before previewing or opening a file, get in the habit of always doing a  If opening or previewing an assembly, Get Latest Version of the assembly file, and Enterprise will also check and get all of the referenced files.

Another option is to clear your local cache.  That will remove all local copies of files.  Enterprise will retrieve the latest version of everything needed when opening or doing a preview.

 I’m afraid I’ll lose something important if I clear the local cache.

Let me say this – no harm should come if you clear your cache on a regular basis. Enterprise will NOT remove files that you have checked out or are references in a file that is checked out so you don’t have to worry about losing your work. Probably the worst that can happen is that there may be a bit of a delay if you need to preview or checkout a file since Enterprise will have to download the file from the archive server.

 Are there any files in the cache that I shouldn’t clear?

You should not clear Toolbox files (by default you won’t.)  You also do not want to clear the cache of Design Library files that are in the vault.   If cleared, they won’t be visible in the Design Library Task Pane.

 Can anything happen if I don’t clear my cache?
Well, for one thing, you only have so much room on your hard drive.   You could also preview or open out of date files as was discussed earlier.

There may also be times that you will see a file that is grayed out and shown as <Local File>. This means that someone else has deleted or moved that file from the vault and if you did not clear your cache, you will still have a local copy on your hard drive.  All you need to do is delete it.

Stay tuned and we’ll see if I can come up with another color in Enterprise to write about!

 

The wind was heavy that day my friends, as I remember it, the date was April 12^th, 2012.   It seemed like just another day until over 100 customers and prospects attended Symmetry Solutions: Hook, Line, and SolidWorks Spring Conference event.

Many were baited to come see the likes of Dave Genz, Ice Fishing enthusiast, and Walleye Dan, professional fishing guide.   There weren’t many bobbers in the audience during Mark Pallansch’s discussion of Clam Corporations manual documentation process, as he shared how they utilized 3DVIA Composer to provide parametric-based set up and tear down animations of Ice Houses.  Dave Schluter from St. Croix Rods had his hooks into the audience during his discussion on their implementation of Enterprise Product Data Management.   St. Croix Rods was able to string up their workflows and provide a much more efficient product release process.

The biggest catch of the day was during the technical breakout sessions, as the new SolidWorks Plastics Product offering reeled in the largest audience of the technical breakout.   Other technical varieties included Application Programming Interface (program customization), Simulation (FEA, CFD analysis), Enterprise Product Data Management, and 3DVIA Composer for technical communications.

To close out the day, two lucky winners, Jesse Hahn from SportTech and Mark Bossart from Apnex Medical, bagged themselves a big fishing tale by each taking home a brand new ice fishing house from Clam Corporations. Congratulations!

There is a setting on the workflow states in EPDM that is easy to overlook but can drive you nuts while troubleshooting. That setting is “Ignore permissions in previous states.” In 2011, it is the green flag icon on the State Box. (Previously the icon was a hand.)

Why this setting can be troublesome.
If this flag is not set there will be circumstances where permissions set at a particular state are not followed.  This particularly happens when a permission was granted at an earlier state but removed at a later state.  Let’s go through an example. I’m going to use a simple workflow and explain what happens with “Read file contents” for two groups.

 

Scenario 1:
The “Ignore permissions in previous states” flag is NOT selected for any state.

Permission: Can “Read file contents”

 

 

With this setup someone in Sales should be able to see any file that is in the Released state but not in any other state.

 

 

 

A document was added to the vault and is currently in the Initiated State.

This is what an Engineering user sees:               This is what a Sales user sees:

 

 

 

 

So far everything is as expected.

Change State was initiated on the document and it was sent to the Released State.

This is what an Engineering user sees:                 This is what a Sales user sees:

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, this is what we planned with our workflow.

Now, though, let’s Change State on the document again and send it to the Under Editing State.

This is what an Engineering user sees:                 This is what a Sales user sees:

 

 

 

 

 

Wait a minute! The Sales user is NOT supposed to see files in Under Editing. So what’s going on?

It has to do with that little green flag. Because we did not set the “Ignore permissions in previous states”, the Sales user can see the file when it is Under Editing because they were able to see it in the previous Released state.

 

Scenario 2:

Let’s try this again with a new file but this time we’ll set the “Ignore permissions” flag in all states.

This is what an Engineering user sees:                 This is what a Sales user sees:

 

 

 

 

 

Change state to Released.
This is what an Engineering user sees:                  This is what a Sales user sees:

 

 

 

 

 

OK, so far, so good.

Change state to Under Editing.
This is what an Engineering user sees:                  This is what a Sales user sees:

 

 

 

 

 

This time, this is exactly what we wanted to happen.

By turning on the “Ignore permissions in previous states” flag, the permissions set for each state were followed exactly as we set them.  So don’t ignore that little green flag!

 

If you use the Complete Search as the basis for your search card, you may want to change the default value for some of the check boxes like “Display Folders” or “Search all versions.”  The method to do this is not clear in the Administration Guide for 2011 and isn’t explained in the Help.  It’s not hard, just hard to find!

1. Open the Card Editor and open the search card.
2. Go to the Card menu and select Default Values.
3. In the Default values window, select “Click here to add variable.”
   Scroll down and select the variable such as Find Files, Find Folders, or Search Previous Versions.
4. Click in the Value column and enter 0 to uncheck.
5. Repeat for any other variables.