Case study · PDMPublisher

From 35 minutes to under 3 per manufacturing package

A Pacific Northwest manufacturer was printing drawings one by one, typing quantities in Acrobat and merging PDFs by hand. PDMPublisher turned the whole job into one click from the top-level assembly.

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PDMPublisher Merge PDFs task publish settings in SOLIDWORKS PDM — The Merge PDFs task: output folder, file name and formats are set once, then every package follows the same rules.

19 to 35 minper package before, done by hand

< 3 minper package with PDMPublisher

1,000+ hoursof manual work a year before automation

The customer

High volume, and every package built by hand

A Pacific Northwest manufacturer keeps its SOLIDWORKS designs in SOLIDWORKS PDM. Every job goes to production as a package: the drawings for the assembly, merged into one PDF, with the quantity of each part marked on its sheet.

Between 2023 and 2024 they produced tens of thousands of PDFs and merged several thousand of these packages.

IndustryManufacturing

RegionPacific Northwest

PlatformSOLIDWORKS PDM

Volume, 2023 to 2024Tens of thousands of PDFs

The challenge

Four manual steps for every package

Each step was simple. Repeated thousands of times a year, they added up to a part-time job nobody wanted.

Find the drawings

Search the vault for every drawing in the assembly.

1 to 5 min

Filter documents

Pick the right drawings and leave out what the shop does not need.

5 to 10 min

Print and merge

Print each drawing to PDF, then combine them into one package.

10 to 15 min

Add BOM quantities

Open Acrobat and type the quantity onto each sheet.

3 to 5 min

Total per package, every package19 to 35 minutes

The solution

One click from the top-level assembly

We set up PDMPublisher in their vault so the whole package builds itself, the same way every time.

One click, whole assembly

Start from the top-level assembly and PDMPublisher collects every drawing it references.

Smart selection

Conditions decide which documents go in, so nobody filters by hand.

Automatic merging

Every PDF lands in a single package, in the right order.

Notes on every sheet

BOM quantities and other notes are stamped on each drawing. No more Acrobat.

The results

Before and after PDMPublisher

Times are per manufacturing package unless noted.

Step	Manual	With PDMPublisher
Finding drawings	1 to 5 min	Automated
Filtering documents	5 to 10 min	Automated
Printing and merging PDFs	10 to 15 min	Under 3 min
Adding BOM quantities	3 to 5 min	Automated
Total per package	19 to 35 min	Under 3 min
Time per year	1,000+ hours	About 250 hours
Cost per year	$50,000+ in labor	About $3,000 in software

Time-waste calculator

How much time is your team losing?

Move the sliders to match one typical project. The numbers update as you go.

Finding documents

Converting or printing

Adding notes or quantities

Merging PDFs

Projects per month

Loaded hourly cost

Estimated net savings per year$0

after the cost of PDMPublisher

Hours wasted per year today0

Hours given back per year0

Manual cost per year$0

Pays for itself in0

Manual, per project

PDMPublisher

Assumptions: finding takes about 1 minute once automated, converting about 10% of the manual time, and notes and merging about 1%. Software cost is estimated at $3,000 a year. Your results will vary.

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The full before-and-after breakdown
How the package is built from the top-level assembly
The return on investment in detail

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