Put catalogs to SQL server

[zhngmm]

Does anyone know how to put catalogs to SQL Sever? Is this possible in SpecGen?
Thanks,
Maggie

[awerning]

I heard rumors that they were going to add this functionality but not sure they ever did. But, we are on the end days of AutoPLANT's (Specgen's) life anyway, soon you will need to decide whether you're going their new product (OpenPLANT) or some other AutoCAD based solution (Plant 3D and CadWORX are the 2 I know of). Are you sure you want to involve yourself in a change of direction on your specs when it won't apply for much longer?

[PartRidge]

Are you sure CadWORX is going to be around? Didn't Intergraph buy them? Why would Intergraph continue supporting a software solution when they are attempting to assimulate everyone to SmartPlant? When Intergraph did their dog n pony show in Calgary they didn't even mention CadWORX.

You can put Specs for a project on SQL as part of the project database, but I'm not sure if the Catalogs also go to SQL. There were a couple of quirks with it too(like we all didn't expect that) as I recall from others that did some testing with it.

[awerning]

I agree...CadWORX is on its way out too (just didn't want to say it...but you did :D). That leaves Plant 3D...an excelent choice in my opinion...in a few more months...

[zhngmm]

Thanks Aaron and PartRidge. My supervisor mentioned Plant 3D is the way to go too, but my company is using AutoPLANT right now.

We experienced slowness and file locking when we were trying to put 2 persons to update spec in a same time. It looks like SQL server is not a solution now. We may find another walk around. :)

[awerning]

Here is a suggestion...store your specs/cats on the network but only "work" them from your c:\ drive. It definitely takes a bit more coordination if you have multiple folks editing specs at the same time, but you can always come up with a procedure that will work well. The benefit...well...we find that working the specs locally speeds up the catalog work and spec building by 4-5 times. When we hit the "build" function on our EXTREMELY large specs (what we call our "offspec" specs that contain one of everything from all the individual client specs), it can take 4-5 hours when connected to network specs/cats. But if we copy them local it only takes an hour. We all know how slow Specgen is. Any speed increase is WELL worth it.

[Aplant Monkey]

Aaron,

It is not so much a question of speed in the case that Maggie is stating. It is more an issue of being able to access the catalogs at the same time as someone else who is working on a different spec. YES you can move them to your C: drive to work on them. The benefit is that you will see an increased speed. problem is that if you have different people doing this, you will now have different Revisions of the same catalogs. Obviously this is not acceptable. Coordination can be accomplished however it is no small feat. A separate program also needs to be developed so that the two 'different' catalogs can be merged into one using the 'delta' difference between the Three... One being on User 1 machine, 2 being on User 2 machine and the third is the Original from the Network. You would still have to be very careful not to duplicate new items to the Catalog from the two users as each of their items would have a different SYSID even though they were the same item. When merging you would have to "NOT" use SYSID as a validator to determine uniqueness.

[awerning]

Yea, thats exactly why I said you can come up with a procedure. It works, we have been doing it for years. Have had as many as 3 people working from the same catalogs...