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Super features, collaboration tools head the list of new features.
SOLID EDGE V15 FROM UGS PLM Solutions picks up more from where v12 left off than v14. As you may recall, the company skipped v13. Last year, v14 made significant inroads into providing advanced surface modeling tools with the company's Rapid Blue technology (remember Blue Dots and Blue Surfs?). V11 introduced Insight technology, a free PDM (product data management) tool that provides vaulting, check-in, check-out, revision management, data searches and more.
Insight and SharePoint Enhancements
At the center of Solid Edge PDM technology is an application called Insight that integrates CAD, design management, and Web-based collaboration into a single tool. Insight is built around the information and document collaboration technology that's part of Microsoft's Windows Sharepoint Server. Solid Edge v15 now supports Sharepoint v2, included with Windows Server 2003.
Sharepoint v2 support is important for Solid Edge because of the significant number of enhancements that Microsoft has made. These affect not only how your browser accesses data but also how you can completely customize user roles within the enterprise.
With Solid Edge v15 Insight, you can customize how you want to view company data so that access to specific information relating to your role is faster and more understandable. You can also subscribe to a personal alert system that lets you know when project data is added, modified, and deleted. For example, you'll know when Joe signs off on a change order and when Bill is sitting on it and needs to be prodded with a few choice words.
Solid Edge v15 also improves its support for Windows SQL server with enhanced performance, new data types, attribute lookup tables, and administrative tools such as backups and virus scanning. You can now display graphical information from Insight in Solid Edge's pathfinder.
A significant enhancement is the ability to perform dry...