Does anyone know if there has been an add-in for git that integrates with Solidworks PDM?
What are you trying to accomplish?
Well, Its more of a question of having all your design data in one place and also still having some of the good functionality GIT provides, like Jenkins integrations and other tests. or do you build the rules that make sense for a programmer and call it a day?
1 Like
So you’re looking to add functions like:
- checkout -b (PDM for branch)
- Merge
- Pull (PDM for get_latest)
- Push (PDM for check-in)
to the command line?
We have an internal command line tool at Blue Byte Systems, Inc. that does that.
Let me know if I’m not understanding you correctly. Thanks!
It was more of a question of somehow communicating between the GIT repo and the PDM repo. so say it lives kind of linked between the two so your dev team and your engineering team can have a cohesive current release of the software and current release and of hardware and if you had to go back to look at things as snap shot you would have V1.32 of the software looks like this and it was shipped with Rev11 of the device? or is it better to just build a workflow that operates similarly to Git for the developers.
Git is good for text data (you should not really keep any binaries in Git - it defeats the purpose). Although you can store SOLIDWORKS files in Git, this just not going to gain any benefits and it actually going to bring more troubles you will constantly run into merge conflicts and will always need to use local or remote versions. I would recommend looking at other storage options.
2 Likes
It was more of a question of somehow communicating between the GIT repo and the PDM repo. so say it lives kind of linked between the two so your dev team and your engineering team can have a cohesive current release of the software and current release and of hardware and if you had to go back to look at things as snap shot you would have V1.32 of the software looks like this and it was shipped with Rev11 of the device? or is it better to just build a workflow that operates similarly to Git for the developers.
So you’re not asking to use Git for CAD files, you want some kind of link or relationship between Git and PDM? More of a peer relationship than parent/child?
We are new to PDM where I work so take this with a grain of salt. Keep in mind PDM is primarily “File” Management. Similarly Git is “File” Management. They keep track of metadata and versions, permissions and status. PDM provides work flows which are really just a GUI and rules/automation to another file attribute that’s an enum type, right?
What you’re looking for is a larger scope, you want product lifecycle management. You could possibly make Git or PDM do it but you’ll be trying to get them to do something they are not intended to do.
PLM tracks the life of a product so it still relies on file management systems (Git and/or PDM or whatever) it builds on top of them adding more relations and data about those relations.
That’s my take on it, but maybe I’m misunderstanding your question.
1 Like
Exactly,
I was just curious if there was an add-on out there that anyone has heard of that lets them communicate a bit so, they have references to eachothers versioning etc. I wasn’t necessarily hoping to store the data all in one place more that they are linked properly with each other. Or I could be over complicating it and just have a virtual document in PDM that has all the references that would be collected from Git.
PLM tracks the life of a product so it still relies on file management systems (Git and/or PDM or whatever) it builds on top of them adding more relations and data about those relations.
I totally didn’t think of using the PLM as the link between the two that makes more sense honestly. I am aware of them both as tools and how well they work in each of their domains hense why I asked if there was some sort of crossover between Git and PDM.
2 Likes
I asked if there was some sort of crossover between Git and PDM.
I’m not aware of anything that does that, out of the box at least, off the top of my head, but I haven’t had the need to look, yet.
I think that is where API programmers are really important. I think the term is “systems integration”, I used to call it “glue logic” but that’s not right usage of that term. Point is, many PLM systems could probably do this as long as they allow a 3rd party enough access to write the code that keeps the two systems synchronized. The trick is learning the truth and dirty details about that ability, sales and marketing will likely not make it clear. PDM has enough API access, I think, for most stuff. Git is certainly able; you could write your own client if you wanted for some reason.
When we were looking at Solidworks, one of the people we visited with strongly discouraged letting your CAD/PDM solution be tied to the ERP or other systems in the company. Reason was updating. CAD should be less than every ~3 years; ERP systems, who knows. So don’t get tied into, " I cannot update CAD because I cannot updated PDM because it’s tied to X which won’t be updated for another five years. That’s the cool thing with some API code doing the data exchange, that libraries that talk to one side can be updated while leaving the libraries of the other side alone, and the user company owns that code so they have control.
I’m digressing…
1 Like
Oh for sure, if I looked into integrating to PLM here it would be an one way update to publish to the PLM not to write to PDM, PDM is the owner/bible.