Introduction
To guarantee successful adoption of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, it’s important that SOLIDWORKS Design users can easily save, find and open their designs from day one. Most, if not all, will be currently using a folder structure to organize, their content, whether it be in a Windows file system or another PDM solution. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform's approach to organizing and consuming content is different. Instead of relying on folders, it’s based on leveraging the metadata related to items, and then using a variety of different apps to interact with the SOLIDWORKS Design content.
To simplify the transition to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform's app-based approach for navigating content, it’s recommended that a simple two-step approach to building knowledge and confidence be adopted.
Step one; use the familiar SOLIDWORKS save, find, and open workflow. Get confident with saving and opening designs using the familiar menus and icons in SOLIDWORKS before moving to the MySession task pane. When interacting with designs outside of SOLIDWORKS Design using the web interface, utilize the SOLIDWORKS Design role-based dashboard. This dashboard presents a small subset of apps in a preconfigured layout, and they are all that a new SOLIDWORKS Design user will require on day one.
Step two: focus on increasing efficiency by learning 3DEXPERIENCE platform-specific concepts for content management, like tagging and searching. These will help build your confidence in app navigation.
Basic SOLIDWORKS File Management
When saving a brand new or a pre-existing design to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the first time, it’s important to understand that you can follow the same workflow that you have used when saving to the file system. All the basic tools required for saving, opening, and interacting with design information are available within the SOLIDWORKS Design user interface.
It’s recommended that users get familiar with using these commands first, before the MySession Task widget is introduced.
Saving to 3DEXPERIENCE for the first time
When a user is ready to save their design to 3DEXPERIENCE for the first time, use the “Save to 3DEXPERIENCE” command located on the SOLIDWORKS Design File menu. Although the process of saving to 3DEXPERIENCE is different to saving to the Windows file system, it has many similarities, and can be summarized in a few simple steps.
1. Select the “Save to 3DEXPERIENCE” command from the file menu
2. Select the desired collaborative space. This will set the security context and control who has visibility of the file.
3. Set the Title of the item by clicking in the Title field. If the file has not yet been saved locally, setting the Title will also change the file name to match.
4. Choose a Bookmark folder to save the file to. Bookmark folders are a folder-like method of organizing content, and choosing a Bookmark folder to save to is just like choosing a folder in the file system.
5. Select “Save, and the file will be saved locally, uploaded to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, assigned to a collaborative space, and placed in the selected Bookmark for quick access.
It is important to understand that every new file saved is automatically assigned a revision, and when using the out-of-the-box settings, the default revision will be A. For more information related to working with revisions, refer to the adoption guide section titled Revision and Lifecycle.
When saving to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the very first time, keep things simple. Start with saving a single part before moving on to a small assembly. Use Bookmark folders to organize SOLIDWORKS design content in a structured hierarchy. This will provide continuity through a familiar way of working, aiding adoption in the early stages.
Finding and Opening Files Saved in 3DEXPERIENCE
When opening a design from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the first time, it's recommended that the Open command from the SOLIDWORKS Design File menu is used. The SOLIDWORKS Design Open dialogue provides quick access to recent documents and Bookmark folders, and will provide a familiar user experience for existing SOLIDWORKS Design users. It’s important to be aware of the shortcuts to recently used Bookmark folders and the ability to easily browse and open content from Bookmark folders.
When a file has been opened from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the SOLIDWORKS Feature Manager Design Tree can be expanded to display important information, for example: revision, lock status, and modification status. To be able to save any local changes back to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the file will need to be locked by the user. Its recommended practice that you get in the habit of locking files ahead of making any changes to them. Locking a file prevents other users from modifying the same file; only the user who has locked a file can save their changes back to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. In a multi-user environment, this will also ensure that conflicting changes won’t be made to the file at the same time.
A file is locked by simply clicking the open padlock icon in the FeatureManager flyout.
Saving a locked file will overwrite the current revision of the file. If the intention is to keep the previous revision, users can choose to either create a new revision of the file before they make any changes and then lock and modify that new revision, or create a new revision during the save to 3DEXPERIENCE after they have made their changes.
For detailed recommendations on how multiple users should work together concurrently on the same design, please refer to the Adoption Guide section titled Concurrent Assembly Design.
Important Topics to Learn
To avoid any confusion, you must understand what is happening to your SOLIDWORKS Design files in the local file system. When saving a file to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform that has not previously been saved to a local folder first, the file will be automatically saved in the 3DEXPERIENCE Local Working Folder.
If you are saving a pre-existing part or assembly to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform that has already been saved in a local folder, after saving to 3DEXPERIENCE, the files will remain located in that local folder. It’s recommended that once a pre-existing design has been saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the first time, the local files are deleted from the file system and reopened the next time from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. During open from 3DEXPERIENCE, the files will be downloaded to the Local Working Folder instead of their original folder location. Working totally within the Local Working Folder will avoid any potential conflicts with other local copies and will keep all live design data in one single location.
The 3DEXPERIENCE Files on This PC task pane tab in the SOLIDWORKS Design user interface is the recommended method for deleting the local copies of files that have been saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
Note: deleting the files via the task pane will only delete the local copies and not the files stored on the cloud.
When opening a file from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform (e.g. Bookmark folder or 3DSearch results), users must understand that if the file already exists in the user's local working folder, the local version of the file will be opened. This is true even if a later modified version or later revision of the file exists on the cloud. The intention is that status indicators are used in SOLIDWORKS Design to manually check, and the Reload from Server or Update Revisions commands are used to manually update the local files to the latest. Note, the MySession option Refresh On Open should be enabled so that the status indicator of the files being opened is automatically updated. The SOLIDWORKS integration with 3DEXPERIENCE has been designed to work this way to maximize open performance, avoiding the need to download files from the cloud during every open operation. In the future, the intention is to provide the user with automated notifications when local files are out of date.
SOLIDWORKS File Management – Increasing Efficiency and Adding More Value
Once you are comfortable with saving, opening, and navigating your content using Bookmark folders its time to start increasing your efficiency by introducing some of the additional 3DEXPERIENCE platform-specific methods of organizing content which utilize metadata. The 3DSearch and 6WTagging capabilities enable users to quickly and easily locate design content without needing to know which folder the content is saved in.
Adopting the 3DEXPERIENCE platform approach to organizing content will require some configuration of your company's 3DEXPERIENCE platform. To get the most value from 3DSearch and 6WTagging, it’s important to define a number of key attributes that users can filter on. These attributes will typically relate to design process information, for example, Project, Material, Supplier, Make or Buy. The number of attributes required will vary for each company, and many existing SOLIDWORKS Design users will be familiar with capturing this type of information already in the form of SOLIDWORKS file properties. For detailed best practices on how to set up attributes, link attributes to 6W Tags, and map values to and from SOLIDWORKS, please refer to the 3DEXPERIENCE SolidPractices guide, Attribute Mapping for SOLIDWORKS.
Recommended User Adoption Activities
Understanding the 3DEXPERIENCE platform approach to organizing content can be broken down into a few simple adoption activities.
Filtering using a combination of MyContent search and 6WTags
When learning any new methodology, it’s important to start from a familiar point of reference. The SOLIDWORKS Design Open command provides the ability to search and filter using tagging. This provides users with a natural progression from browsing Bookmark folders to locate content, and it’s recommended that this be used to introduce the 3DSearch capabilities.
The SOLIDWORKS Design Open command provides two methods of accessing 3DSearch: the “My Content” quick link and the 3DSearch icon. The My Content search is a preconfigured search that only displays an individual user’s content, whereas selecting the 3DSearch icon will display all content that the user has access to, including content created by other team members.
After selecting either the My Content shortcut or 3DSearch, the results are displayed in the Open dialogue box. The 6W tags can now be used to narrow down the results based on attribute values, e.g. Project, Supplier, etc. Note that the SOLIDWORKS quick filter can also be used here to filter the search results based on SOLIDWORKS file type.
Opening content in SOLIDWORKS Design using a combination of 3DSearch and 6W Tag filtering makes finding specific design content quick and easy, no matter where it’s located in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and will meet the needs of the majority of users. However, for customers who are heavily project-focused, the 3DSearch and tagging capabilities can be utilized further to offer additional value.
Using 3DSearch to build an overview of key project information
For customers who are project-focused, 3DSearch can be used in combination with the role dashboards to build an overview of key project information. Adding a project-related dashboard tab incorporating “live” search results can add a lot of value by providing design teams and other members of the business with instant access to project-related SOLIDWORKS Design content, which is always up to date at all times.
The image below shows an example of a dashboard tab containing two filtered searches. Both searches have been pinned as widgets. The widget on the top left has been filtered to show parts and assemblies related to the Clutch design project, and the bottom left widget displays the drawings. A pinned 3DSearch result acts as a “live” query on the dashboard tab, and will update each time either the widget or the web browser is refreshed.
As a design project progresses, typically, different revisions of the content will be created. In most cases, users will only be concerned with seeing the latest revision. If this is the preferred behaviour, then each pinned search can be configured to only show the latest revision of each item.
When designing in SOLIDWORKS, users can utilize any of the pinned project-related searches for opening content, providing instant access to project-specific content. First, each search needs to be saved as a Favorite; this is done via the drop-down menu of each pinned search widget.
Once saved, Favorite Searches can be accessed in the SOLIDWORKS Open dialogue box by selecting 3DSearch, followed by the Favorite Search option in the search pull-down menu.
Double-clicking on a search will activate it and display the results inside the Open dialogue.
Using saved Favorite Searches in SOLIDWORKS Design offers a fast and efficient method of accessing project-specific content without needing to know exactly where another person has stored it. Quick access to project-specific content is just one example of using pinned and saved searches. Don’t forget there are many other criteria available via 6WTags to explore.
When using Favorite Searches, it’s important to understand that each search is saved as an item and stored in a Collaborative Space. Each newly saved Favorite Search is placed in a “Private” maturity state and is only visible to the person who created it. To make a Favorite Search available to other team members, the Favorite Search must be promoted to the “Shared” maturity state. This can be done using the Collaborative Lifecycle app.
Getting familiar with the capabilities of 3DSearch and its advantages over a traditional folder browsing approach is an important step for user adoption. It is recommended that every SOLIDWORKS Design user is comfortable with searching for content via SOLIDWORKS Design Open dialogue box and familiar with the concept of 6WTag filtering. Even if you don't need to go to the extent of creating project-specific dashboard tabs, you can still take advantage of the same concepts for other types of criteria (e.g. Ownership, Maturity State, Revision, Dates, and many more).
Basic SOLIDWORKS Design File Management Summary
Using the two-step approach will help you to make the transition to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Likely, you are already familiar with using a folder structure to organize your content, whether it be in a Windows file system or another PDM solution. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is an environment built around managing 3D CAD data that allows users to find, filter, and organize their designs based on a flexible combination of their design and project parameters.
At the beginning, it’s important to adopt the familiar workflow for saving, organizing, and opening your content from within the SOLIDWORKS Design user interface. If you are only interested in a simple store and revise workflow, this may be enough. However, once you are familiar with the basics of saving and opening in SOLIDWORKS Design, you can start to introduce the 3DSearch techniques discussed in this guide. These techniques will help you realize the value of using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to manage your SOLIDWORKS design projects, over and above using a folder-based approach.
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