Thanks Jose, that sounds almost too good and simple to be true! I’ll hold fire on the epicor image import and pursue this approach.
Makes it easier for us to maintain also, if Design changes a part we just need to update the thumbnail and drop it into the folder, which I think PDM can automate for us. 
(We’ll go with .png as I think its better for vector renderings.)
I’m interested to see how you go as we have a similar setup. Solidworks/ PDM (workgroup) / Cadlink / 170k parts. Currently the part images are pushed into Epicor db via Cadlink which means only parts processed with Cadlink have images. The images are available via a URL from a custom web app we have for time entry. This is useful for reports etc so I would recommend that.
In terms of storing image files may I suggest /images/parts/{partNum} so you can add /images/employees/{empId} later
Brett
How has Cadlink worked out for you? We are looking at it down the track as phase 2 of our Epicor implementation. Phase 1 is harder than expected…
CADlink has been ok. It is not a polished app eg if you start it without a running Solidworks session it gives a null reference error that is not at all helpful.
On the plus side you can get it customised for a reasonable cost and that way you can get it to do exactly what you want. That is how we got the images imported.
Brett
@Chrisw Sorry about the late reply, but looks like @josecgomez nailed it there.
As far as the image category from file, the help mentions if you have previously exported images with the image category and subcategory, then you can reimport it. It doesn’t give any format. But I suggest you could just do one image export it and then take a look at the category and subcategory. I have never needed to use subcategories.
Use the part DMT is to populate the imageid field to store the imageid of the picture, I’m sure you have worked that out already.
Earlier versions (E9, if I recall correctly) you only didn’t have the ability to store in the Db and you put in a file and path. Interestingly the DMT still has the ImageFileName field. There is some mention of image settings in the company configuration, but it looks like is only around image category and subcategory. Nothing to do with the file system, I am guessing you could use it to store the URL to the image file locally (File system or URL) or in the cloud (Blob storage or S3 bucket) then use that in the RDD for the report.
When you all are using URL’s to images saved on a file share (or separate web server, like our ecommerce platform), how are you adding them to Epicor? We were hoping to use them on Part Tracker, for fulfillment, and EKW for shipping and receiving.
Suggestions? Thanks!
We created a small web service that gets the images from a folder and are displaying them bia the website widget In the example below its doing a bit more, it is getting the thumbnail from Solidworks Pdm, and is accessed in the web widget via http:///thumbnails/ or similar, then caching it in a folder on the server for quick access next time. Buttons access the part in pdm.
Really annoys me having the wasted footer space below the website widget and for matter above it also, slightly mitigated by the “Solidworks” title there but that’s unnecessary anyway. Hopefully will figure out one day where to modify the css for this widget on the server to eliminate them.
Yeah, they mean the Epicor Web Server.
Yes, a relatively simple BPM could be made to retrieve the image on:
ERP → BO → Image → GetRows
If you want to assign it from there, you’re in for a more moderate level of customization.
I’m suggesting the same, just getting into the built in place.
I looked on our Epicor server (which is also the IIS host for Epicor) and couldn’t find these folders either, any pointers on where they are hiding?
We have a use case where storing part images in a folder would be a lot easier than Modding our web service.
I’ve only got a moderate level of photos, so mine are database blobs, I’ve never messed with
anything else. Now you got me thinking.
Until I read what he quoted from the docs, I didn’t know there was non-blob storage for images at all.
Now that I re-read it, I believe it is only referring to it for the purposes of DMT.
I bet it’s only for import to blobs.
I read somewhere that this was the old way they did images, but if still functioning would certainly be useful.
I don’t know if it’s that, or the just for dmt import thing, but a bpm could easily handle getting
it down.
Slight bit more work to get it uploaded (or assigned), but doable.
That’s from the Data Dictionary Viewer as the field description. I popped in EpiCare case CS0003874597. Let’s see if we get a useful response.
If we don’t, hit me back up, I’d be willing to write up a generic framework to get them downloaded from a generic location into the part attributes page the epicor way.
(IE, some assembly required.)
Here’s a post about getting the image for SSRS but it should do the trick.
Popped up some test code a few minutes ago. Works a treat.
