We are setting up QBuild CADLink to integrate our Solidworks data to Epicor and i am looking to connect with anyone out there that is using it and doesn’t mind sharing some tips and tricks.
Brett
We are using it. It works pretty well for us. We have BPM’s set up to set up new parts (we have a smart number system so we can key off of characters in the part number). It took some customization to set up CADLink and they were relatively easy to work with. Your requirements for what you are asking from them need to be very detailed and explicit, but you can’t really expect them to understand your business process, so it seems pretty normal. There are still a couple of buggy things that we have workarounds that we could probably get fixed if we wanted to pay them, but they are minor so we just live with them for now.
As far as how we use it, we structure everything in E10 almost exactly the same way as it’s structured in Solidworks. That helps with trying to translate what’s in E10 with what’s on the print. There are probably ways to reduce the size and complexity of jobs, but we would lose the ease of matching structures.
What other questions do you have?
Do you use weldments? and are you able to get them to push into Epicor with the profile material as the material in Epicor. Eg a weldment that uses a profile of 40x40 SHS pushes to Epicor as a sub assemble with a material requirement of SHS 40 x 40.
I would also like to set the part type (Purchased / manufactured) from a SW property. It seems QBuild sets a value but i cant edit it…
Brett
We do not use weldments, (all of our “weldments” are solidworks assemblies). We had to change a couple of our practices to make sure parts didn’t go through as weldments. It is capable of picking up the parts in the weldments. I think as long as the profile material matches the part numbers in E-10 it should come through just fine.
Purchased/manufactured on a part level is figured out based on whether the material property is set or not. No material, purchased. Material, manufactured. If you go and remove the material, it will change over to purchased. Once it’s sent to E-10, you have to change it in E-10, you can’t switch it in CAD link. There is a setting/property for purchased assembly that you can add as a property, and it will ignore the parts below an assembly and bring it in as one purchased part.
One thing to keep in mind is, CAD link with respect any BPM’s that you put in place on part creation. So you can set some of your own rules. We do that with our part number system to set the part class. I don’t bother setting them in CAD link, and I didn’t want to pay them to customize setting the part classes (although they are more than capable of doing so), so I just set them when the parts are created in E-10 with a BPM. Then I refresh the BOM in CAD link and it reads it from E-10. I should just get it taken out of CAD link altogether, because I don’t need those properties in Solidworks, but it’s not really hurting anything so I haven’t messed with it.
Did you have them do the remote training with you? I figured out a lot myself before I did that, but it did help explain a few things.
Did you get your implementation working?
thanks for the tips, I have been on holidays so only getting back into this now.
I have a conference call with Qbuild next week. I can see a few customization will be needed.
Have you noticed the preview images are not all there? I am testing an assembly now and about 75% of the preview images are missing. Makes it difficult to know what the part is if I cant see it…
Cheers
Brett
Yeah, we couldn’t get enough information from the preview to do any good either. The materials are already set from us from the design engineers in PDM so we use that to set the material. We don’t do any of the methods in CADLink because of the fact that you can’t look at the part other than the crappy preview, and because the interface to bring in the methods is very inefficient. So we bring the parts into E-10 and leave them checked out so we can go into engineering workbench and work through the methods there because I have a customization that pulls up the print as you move through the tree. It makes it a lot easier to do methods.
When you say print do you mean drawing? If so how do you get it into Epicor?
Can you edit the operations etc for the whole tree in Engineering Workbench? I can only edit the top level.
Brett
Yes, I mean drawing. We have them saved as PDF’s in a network folder. I have a dashboard that uses the URL viewer to look at them. I customized the engineering workbench to put that dashboard in there and it subscribes to the PartRev.Part field (I think that’s what it is without looking) so it will change whenever you select a different part revision in the tree. We usually pull that tab out of the screen and plop in on our second screen.
As for the rest of the tree, if you select, view as assembly, you can work your way down the tree. We make pretty much everything for a job on one job since we are engineer to order. So very few stock parts. So we use plan and view as assembly and the tree goes the whole way down. If you set CAD link to leave the parts checked out though, you will still have the list of evrything that CADLink pulled in, so if you go through methods on those, you will have set everything up.
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