(Including SolidWorks Support For SLW)
Why Migrate Out of SmarTeam
- End of life for SmarTeam is on the horizon
- SmarTeam is built on older technology / not scalable
- Compatibility with SolidWorks new releases and service packs
- PLM Capabilities lacking / not keeping up
Note: Many customers are still using and expanding SmarTeam and receiving an ROI on it. Though companies should also be proactive and look into other systems as well
Things to Consider
How will V6 be implemented?
- Will it be based on or close to Enovia V6 OOTB data model?
- Will it be based on a custom data model as SmarTeam?
- Or do we want to rethink and reevaluate how best to deploy the new system?
What data is in scope for the migration?
- Documents, Folders, BOM, WF History
Data Mapping from SmarTeam to V6 & translation/conversion of data from Smarteam to V6?
- Handle unique names and serialization of migrated data in V6
- Merge multiple source SmarTeam attributes into a single target V6 attribute.
- Merge multiple SmarTeam classes into one V6 type or vice versa.
- Convert attribute types when moving to V6
- Revision schema adjustments
Cut Over Plan
- Are there any downtime restrictions for the migration?
- Will there be requirements to data access during the migration?
- Will users be trained and prepared to use the new system?
xLM's SmarTeam To V6 Migration Solution Objectives
Provide a solution/service offering based on proven methodology which facilitates the migration of data from SmarTeam to V6.
Handle the different data models between SmarTeam and V6 including inventing family and instance version objects for SLW.
Allows the customer to grow with new V6 functionality
- No migration data into a corner that cannot be expanded.
- Migrated data will appear in the same manner as if it were created new in V6.
Conduct large data migration over a reasonable time frame
- Goal is to be able to load any size database in reasonable time frame (normally a weekend timeframe or long weekend for large migration)
Migration Highlight Features
- Full history data migration (including links) of documents, items and other custom classes in SmarTeam.
- The ability to handle different data model methodologies between systems
- Mimic SmarTeam projects and folders’ objects to workspaces and folders objects in V6.
- Support Type, State and Attributes mapping (including Lookup tables to V6 Ranges and Reference to Class to V6 relations).
- SmarTeam Class to V6 type mapping.
- Support for SolidWorks integration in V6 (SLW) (creation of instance, family and version objects in V6).
- SmarTeam database is the master for source data. No files’ processing involved in the process which makes it faster to migrate large data sets.
- Support for SmarTeam WorkFlow objects’ history ( i.e ECO) migration as V6 document object.
- The ability to pre and post process data as necessary through services.
- Support Office and SolidWorks behaviors in V6 post migration
- The ability to conduct basic data validation, to verify the data load through services
Typical Migration Steps
Configuration of Toolset
- Pre-migration SmarTeam data analysis (verify file name uniqueness, data integrity, etc.)
- Migration solution configuration:
- Map SmarTeam classes to V6 Types
- Map SmarTeam fields to V6 attributes
- Map SmarTeam States to V6 Life Cycle States
- Map projects/products and documents folders to V6 workspaces and folders
- Implement other customer specific migration rules
- Export Data
- Import to V6
Customer Test Environment
- Install, configure and validate the migration tool/scripts in the V6 test environment at customer site
- Perform test runs, review logs, and fine tune settings, if needed
- Validate sample test results
Customer Production Environment
- Agree on cut over date
- Execute migration to production environment
SmarTeam to V6 Migration Challenges and Solutions
Requires a company with both SmarTeam and V6 programming capabilities, data model and database understanding, application understanding and business processes.
xLM has all of these capabilities.
SmarTeam data extraction techniques using API scan be slow when dealing with large data sets.
xLM has developed a methodology to extract SmarTeam data without using API which will avoid such issues.
With any database system there may be data integrity issues.
xLM will report any “bad data” before and during the process of data extraction.
SmarTeam data may need to be cleaned to avoid possible migration issues such as duplicate names corrupted data in the database , etc.
xLM can assist in both identifying the issue, recommend a solution and possibly implement a fix if it is a low level Smarteam corruption (result of bugs, bad customization, etc.).
Every SmarTeam and V6 customer will most likely have different data models.
xLM’s SmarTeam to V6 migration Solution can be configured to handle the different data models. The Solution will follow a 60/40 rule— it can handle 60% of the migration out of the box and the remaining 40% will involve configuration of the toolset for the specific customer implementation.
SolidWorks integration data model is completely different between SmarTeam and V6. No easy way to "nvent" missing V6 objects to support the SolidWorks Integration (SLW)
xLM develop and proprietary algorithm to migrate and create necessary data in V6 to support full history migration of SoldiWorks data as well as support for V6 SoldiWorks Integration (SLW).
Merging multiple SW classes in SmarTeam to Single type (assuming SLW OOTB)
xLM has developed the methodology to accomplish that as well as tools and DB queries to do that.
Migrate items as engineering parts in V6 and support future EBOM synch in V6
xLM has developed the methodology to accomplish that as well as tools and DB queries to do that.
Migration Down Time may be an issue for some customers
By using direct DB extraction from SmarTeam makes the migration tenfold faster than using smarTeam APIs to extract data.