A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Why versioning is complicated in PDM?

Why versioning is complicated in PDM?
Oleg
Oleg
7 March, 2013 | 3 min for reading

After 20+ years of CAD and PDM development, the issue of versioning is not solved. How about that? I hope, I’ve got your attention :). Versions, revisions, changes, CAD models, drawings, parts… My experience is that as soon as it comes to engineers, revisions are getting messy. I touched it in my previous posts few times. If you want to refresh your memories navigate to Revisions in CAD, PLM, ERP: old problems or new challenges? A bit old (from 2010), but still very relevant post – Future CAD-PLM and Assembly Version Management. As a confirmation that topic is alive and not solved, I just read Minerva blog – Versioning, different meaning from one activity to another by Yoann Maingon. It is short a sweet, so take few minutes and have a read. Yoann is speaking about “difference in intentions”. Here is the main point of the writeup:

…it is sometimes hard for people to have a common way to think about versioning. For the software development oriented person, versionning means saving or tagging. It means that the actual work has to be saved because we want to keep a state of the actual work. “I want to keep a state, I make a version, this version is stored”. In my view, related to main PLM concepts, versioning is creating something new. “I want to start a new work or I want to change a document, I version it. my new version is my working copy”.

If I speak about CAD/PLM software, here is the root of the problem. PDM systems create too many options in the mechanism of versions by implying “creation of something new” in place where it is absolutely unnecessarily. It was done by so many PDM systems in so many different ways with one common mistake – try to capture the intent of change and related dependent changes. The right answer to me is different. Versioning (and PDM is not different from software development and just Microsoft Word) is only about making “change” in the content (3D model, drawing, source code, assembly, configuration, etc). The role of PDM software is to capture the change and make it available for history tracking. You can ask me what about Parts, Revisions and other configuration management aspects? In my view, the answer on this question in the context of PDM/PLM is straightforward – use Parts, Part Numbers and Part Revisions (if needed).

What is my conclusion? Versioning is a mechanism that helps people to capture a change. Not the intent of change, but the change. It must be flexible and configurable, but at the end of the days, simple and reliable. I don’t want to miss my changes and I don’t want to run as a dog in order to find a right change.  Most of PDM/PLM software created a complicated versioning systems. I don’t see much difference between PDM and software. With the amount of software code we have in products, these two options will come together sooner than later. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
5 January, 2016

Almost hundred years ago Henry Ford started to build River Rouge factory. That was a giant plant that literally took...

26 July, 2019

Standards are like toothbrushes, a good idea but no one wants to use anyone elses. The history of engineering and...

5 June, 2022

Earlier last week, I shared my perspective on how I see the future of post-monolithic PLM systems. If you missed...

17 July, 2013

Excel is one of the most widely accepted PLM systems. PLM vendors and consultants may disagree with this strong statement....

9 April, 2025

You ever read something and immediately think, “Yep… been there”? That’s exactly what happened when I saw Brion Carroll II’s...

4 September, 2012

I’m about to start my journey back from Israel to Boston after a short family vacation break. Below is probably...

18 December, 2011

As usual, at the end of the year, there is a time for blog posts with predictions, opinions and future...

14 April, 2015

PLM sales is not an easy job. PLM is usually “sold” to companies… or actually sold to people running product...

23 September, 2010

I want to talk about licenses. The topic I’d normally prefer to avoid. Deelip Menezes made a good post about...

Blogroll

To the top