Research on the application of the hottest Intrali

Research on the application of Intralink in an aerospace project

Abstract: This paper introduces the pilot and popularization of the PDM solution launched by PTC company - intralink3.2 in a Research Institute of Shanghai Academy of aerospace technology, as well as the results achieved. This paper analyzes the technical and management improvements brought by the implementation of Intralink system, and summarizes the experience and lessons

Keywords: PDM; PTC； INTRALINK； The Chinese government has always regarded the aerospace industry as an important part of the country's overall development strategy. Since its establishment in 1956, China's aerospace industry has experienced several important periods, such as hard work, supporting development, reform and revitalization, and going global. So far, it has reached a considerable scale and level: a complete supporting research, design, production, and experimental system has been formed; A spacecraft launch center capable of launching all kinds of satellites and manned spacecraft and a measurement and control system consisting of domestic ground stations and long-range tracking and measurement ships have been established; A variety of satellite application systems have been established, and remarkable social and economic benefits have been achieved; A space science research system with a certain level has been established and a number of innovative achievements have been made; A number of Aerospace Science and technology teams with good quality and high technical level have been cultivated

2 enterprise background

A Research Institute of Shanghai Academy of aerospace technology has undertaken and participated in the research work of many models since the 1980s, and has achieved success. Through the implementation of various models for more than 20 years, the Institute has accumulated rich model development experience, summarized and accumulated a set of model development management experience, and cultivated a model development team with rich experience. These are important foundations for further development

the Institute introduced pro/engineer software earlier, which played a key role in the design and modeling, assembly, performance analysis and other work of almost all models of parts, and made great achievements. Moreover, it has a very good local environment, which basically covers all applications of the Institute, such as scientific research, design, management, production, experiment, etc., and lays a good foundation for realizing information sharing and improving management efficiency

3 current situation of CAD drawing file management

the CAD tools currently used by the Institute mainly include pro/engineer and AutoCAD. The problems in management mainly include: design data is scattered and cannot be shared; It is difficult to find and borrow data; There is no unified data management, and the data security is poor; Unable to ensure the consistency between archived drawings and electronic versions; There is no unified standard parts library, and designers repeatedly design standard parts; Without concurrent design environment, designers cannot carry out concurrent design; Unable to achieve project status control

4 project objective

at the end of 2002, we began to investigate the solution of CAD drawing file management. Finally, when making the choice, we decided to adopt the working group PDM product of PTC company - intralink3.2, combined with the current use of CAD tools and the future development trend. The goal is to take this system as the basis: take a specific model as the implementation project, establish a collaborative working environment and a unified product knowledge base; Formulate and establish standards for drawing and document data management; Formulate and optimize the design process; Standardize file permission settings; Improve the design efficiency and shorten the design cycle; Optimize relevant management systems

5 implementation process

5.1 preliminary preparation

(1) establish a project team. The members of the project team include the consultants of PTC company, the project technicians of the information center and the project team of a certain model of the design department

(2) establish a design environment. The establishment of standard design environment includes the standard environment of modeling and drawing, the standard frame of 0-a4 drawing, assembly details, and the method of establishing standard parts library. At the same time, understand the original design process and suggest new design process, including the data flow from design to archiving and design change

(3) system installation training of Intralink

(4) install the file server, data server and client of Intralink

(5) Intralink data management software training. It includes Intralink user operation training and Intralink system administrator training: design process, product structure tree, determine the permission settings of designers in the design process, approval procedures, and set up a parallel design environment

5.2 pilot project

5.2.1 pilot project team

the initial implementation team of the Intralink project is mainly composed of personnel from two departments: one is the system technical support force composed of professionals from the Institute's Information Center; In addition, the design department has selected a project team as the pilot of the Intralink project. Considering that it is very important to select a suitable project team as the first user of Intralink during the project pilot, it can be said that it is the key to the success or failure of the project pilot and subsequent promotion and implementation. The reason for choosing this type of project group is that this group contacted pro/engineer earlier, has a good foundation, and has taken into account the urgency of CAD drawing file standard management, so it is very supportive of the implementation of interlink. In this way, an active pilot team, project team members and division of labor are first established, as shown in Table 1. Clarifying the division of labor of the project has greatly promoted our later work

5.2.2 project environment construction

take a model task project as a pilot, and build the system environment of this project on the temporary server. The content is shown in Table 2

while building these environments, a series of customizations were carried out according to the actual situation of the Institute:

(1) set up users and groups. The members who play certain roles in the design process are divided into a group. When assigning permissions, only the permissions are assigned to the group, so that all members in the same group have the same permissions. This setting is because the designers of the Institute are highly mobile. If the design permission is allocated according to the user's permission in the system, once the personnel flow, the design work will stop; By assigning permissions to the group, other members of the group can take over the work. In addition, if a new member is added, you can directly add it to the group to obtain the corresponding permissions. The advantage is that the work is more flexible and it is easier to allocate permissions

(2) establish the project folder structure. First, set the structure tree of each project relatively independent, then set the folder structure according to the situation of the project, build the folder directory tree corresponding to the specific architecture of the project, and allocate exclusive folders to each designer at the bottom of each project directory tree. Such a directory structure is clear and convenient to query

(3) assign user permissions to folders. At the root directory level of the project, all roles and permissions (except designers) in the design process are assigned here

according to the situation of the Institute, the design process of a specific project is certain, the members participating in the design process are fixed except the designer, and their permissions in the process are also certain, so their permissions are directly assigned to the project root directory level, and the designer's permissions are set on its exclusive folder. In this way, the method of assigning permissions and roles is very clear and easy to operate

(4) project manager authority. When setting the permissions of the project manager, considering various reasons, we finally assigned all permissions at the project level to the project manager, including building the directory structure of all files under the root directory of the project, assigning the distribution program of the folder, assigning the user permissions of the folder, deleting the folder, deleting the files under the folder, etc. The advantage is that the project management is fully realized, and various experimental machines that are constantly overcoming or carrying out the above shortcomings dismantle the safety valve conditioning screw. The improver's complete control of the project also makes the system administrator of Intralink no longer intervene in the project too much

(5) CAD drawing file coding. The standardization department wrote the "coding system of CAD drawings and files" to ensure the unique number of warehousing drawings

5.2.3 pilot project launch

after all the preliminary work is completed, the designers of the pilot group begin to sort out the accumulated CAD electronic documents, including: according to the model development characteristics of the pilot project group, select the design drawings for warehousing management, and check whether the paper blueprint and electronic version are unified

after finishing the sorting, the design process can be formally started in the system according to the pre-set of the system: "electronic drawings and files check in → input relevant attributes → submit for warehousing → approver for warehousing approval → warehousing controlled". In the process of going through the process, the pilot group encountered various problems: on the one hand, due to a familiar process of the functions of various parts of the system, it also needs to have an in-depth understanding of various concepts in the system; On the other hand, after all, this is a universal system, which is still different from the actual situation of the Institute. We need to adjust our work to the system adaptively. After about two months of experiments, the pilot group has been improved in technology and management, explored a set of management methods, and explored and practiced the concepts of Engineering Collaborative Design and modular design on the Intralink platform

5.2.4 summary of the pilot

(1) the pilot group successfully completed the pilot task within two months. The application of the system can be said to have been technically feasible and accumulated a lot of experience. The next step is to summarize these experience methods and lay a foundation for further promotion. The summary work includes: Based on the experience accumulated in the experiment, further optimize the system environment settings, including attributes, role permission settings, user permission allocation, etc

(2) considering that the relevant manuals provided by PTC company are too technical and too professional and comprehensive for users in specific roles, for example, the reviewers do not need to understand the work of designers; And the work of a certain position actually corresponds to a certain operation in the system. It is best to locate the position and standardize these jobs through the instructions. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare user manuals for different users of the system. Based on the pilot experience, the pilot team specially organized personnel to prepare Intralink manuals for each role: Intralink user manual - Designer volume, Intralink user manual - reviewer volume, Intralink user manual - Project Manager volume, Intralink user manual - system administrator volume, and Intralink user manual - documenter volume

(3) a great achievement of the pilot project is the improvement of relevant management methods, which may become in the work in the future