Introduction

One of the key benefits of adopting the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is that individual parts, assemblies, and drawings can be made to be clearly identifiable by all stakeholders. Implementing the right naming methodology for SOLIDWORKS Design content is important to ensure that not only can a design team easily identify items, but also potentially other people within an organisation, and external collaborators too.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides a scalable set of capabilities that define how items are named, and these vary in complexity. It’s important to fully understand your company's requirements right from the start. While there are no set rules, single users typically prefer using descriptive titles and file names, small design teams will often use a simple counter-based file naming scheme, and larger organizations typically require a more complex rules-based numbering scheme that is used across the entire business.

The following three sections explain the item naming methodologies available to SOLIDWORKS Design users, and their recommended use cases.

Defining the Title Manually

Typical Use Case: Casual user

The simplest method of naming an item in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is manually defining the Title. This approach utilizes the default behaviour of each new customer Tenant. When saving a new SOLIDWORKS part or assembly to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the first time, the Title can be set by clicking in the Title field. If the file has not yet been saved locally, the file name will be set to match the Title.

After the save to 3DEXPERIENCE has completed, the Description field in the ENOVIA properties dialogue can be used to capture more detailed information related to the item.

In the image below, a SOLIDWORKS part called Bracket.sldprt is saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the first time.

The resulting Title is “Bracket”, and the ENOVIA Description field has been used to capture a detailed description of the part.

When creating a new drawing, the Title of the parent part or assembly can be used as the new drawing Title. This is the default behaviour, and provides a method of making a related drawing easily identifiable with its parent.

If you do not want the drawing title to match the title of its parent, the MySession option “Use part or assembly file as new drawing title” must be unchecked.

Once a Part, Assembly, or Drawing has been saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, its Title can be modified from either inside SOLIDWORKS or in one of the web apps. For SOLIDWORKS users new to 3DEXPERIENCE, the most logical place to change a Title is in SOLIDWORKS. This is done by right-mouse clicking on the component name at the top of the feature manager design tree and then selecting “Rename Title” from the menu.

After the Title of a file has been changed, it must be saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the modification to be fully applied. If a part or assembly being renamed has a related drawing, the next time that drawing is saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the Title of the drawing will always update to match its parent, unless the MySession option “Use part or assembly file as new drawing title” has been unchecked or set to “Only When First saved”.

Note: The “Rename Title” command does not change the file name on disk. Once a part, assembly, or drawing has been saved to 3DEXPERIENCE, its file name is fixed and cannot be changed. From this moment onwards, the Title is used as the primary identifier.

Defining the Title Manually – Summary

For a casual SOLIDWORKS Design user adopting the 3DEXPERIENCE platform who is already defining the name of each file and would like to continue working this way, manually defining each Title is an effective approach to help rapidly adopt the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. The workflow of managing Titles and Descriptions does not require any platform configuration, and follows a similar methodology to one they are already used to, with the added benefit that any references will be maintained if a Title is modified.

When choosing to adopt a manual naming strategy, by default, SOLIDWORKS Design does not block the saving of an item with a Title that is a duplicate of an existing item in the database. However, to ensure that every file saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform has a unique title, a SOLIDWORKS setting in the Collaborative Spaces Configuration Center called “Check File Title for uniqueness” can be enabled. This option can be set to either just warn a user if the Title is already in use (user can still save with a duplicate Title) or to block the save to 3DEXPERIENCE operation.

Avoiding duplicate names is often one of the fundamental reasons a company will adopt a PDM/PLM solution. If this is a requirement, the “Block Save” option should be enabled by the platform administrator or one of the alternative item naming methodologies adopted instead.

For companies needing to work in a multi-user environment, having each person create the Title of every item can also be very difficult to manage. Therefore, it is recommended that this naming methodology be considered only for implementations that involve a single or a very small number of users.

Automatic Naming

Typical Use Case: Both small and large design teams with multiple users

The majority of companies adopting the 3DEXPERIENCE platform will have multiple users creating new and modifying existing SOLIDWORKS Design content. As discussed in the previous methodology, having each user manually define the Title of each new part and assembly themselves could quickly and easily result in duplicate titles being created.

Therefore, to eliminate the risk and potential confusion of new files being saved with a Title that already exists, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides the ability to define an automated sequential naming scheme.

Working with sequential naming turned on, when a user saves new files to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform from SOLIDWORKS Design for the first time, each Title is automatically populated with the next sequential value generated by the CAD Family object “Content Naming Rule”, e.g. SW-00001, SW-00002, etc. A platform administrator defines the content naming rule using the Collaborative Spaces Configuration Center. The naming rule must always contain a counter in combination with one or all of the following: prefix, suffix, and interfix. Once the naming rule has been defined, the automatic naming behaviour for SOLIDWORKS can be enabled (or disabled) using the Auto-name option in the SOLIDWORKS settings panel.

To help users identify components after the Titles have been generated by the content naming rule, the ENOVIA Description field can be used to capture the descriptive name of the item.

The following example shows the process of saving a drawing and its referenced assembly to 3DEXPERIENCE for the first time with Auto-naming turned on.

1. A pre-existing drawing called Hook Race.slddrw, and its referenced assembly Hook Race.sldasm are saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for the first time.

2. The CAD Family Content Naming Rule generates new and unique Titles for each file.

3. After the save operation is complete, the new Titles are displayed in the MySession task pane and in the Feature Manager Design Tree.

4. For quick and easy identification, using the Tree Display setting for Component Name and Description, the information displayed in the Feature Manager for each component can be configured to show both Title and Description, or Description only.

Automatic Naming – Summary

Automatic naming provides a number of benefits for both small design teams and larger enterprise customers. Every SOLIDWORKS file saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is assigned a unique Title. This eliminates the risk of saving files with duplicate Titles and resulting confusion, which can potentially cause issues within a business.

The descriptive name of an item can be easily modified by editing the Description field on the ENOVIA properties dialogue, either in SOLIDWORKS Design or one of the dashboard web apps, e.g. Bookmarks Editor. This is a simple workflow to adopt and removes the need to use the Rename Title command in SOLIDWORKS Design.

Having users configure their feature manager display to show additional information, e.g. Description, is also highly recommended for quick and easy identification of individual components.

Enterprise Item Number

Typical Use Case: Both small and large organizations with complex part numbering requirements

For any company that has a requirement to capture additional information related to a design as part of a unique identifier, the Enterprise Item Number (EIN) is the recommended solution. The EIN is the primary part/Item numbering solution in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The EIN offers much greater scope for configuration over the Content Naming rule. For example, an EIN can be configured to contain attributes, including different counters linked to individual values.

An EIN can be assigned to parts and assemblies; this can be done either in SOLIDWORKS Design via the MySession Tools toolbar or by using the Engineering Release app (SOLIDWORKS PLM Standard or Product Release Engineer Role) in a web dashboard.

Once an EIN value has been assigned to a part or assembly, it can be viewed via ENOVIA Properties dialogue, and by adding the EIN column to SOLIDWORKS MySession, and web apps (for example, Bookmarks Editor and Product Explorer).

An EIN can only be assigned to a part or assembly once it has been saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and the resulting Physical Product has been created. Some organizations will not want to, or need to, assign item numbers until a design reaches a certain level of maturity. However, many companies want to ensure that each file being saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform has a unique Title. Therefore, in this scenario, automatic naming could be used to generate unique Titles for each file when they are saved to 3DEXPERIENCE for the first time. The EIN for each Physical Product could then be assigned later, when the design reaches a chosen level of maturity.

Tip: Once EIN’s have been assigned to components in an assembly structure, for greater clarity, a user can switch their SOLIDWORKS Feature Manager display to show only EIN and Description, instead of the automatically generated Titles.

To learn more about the setup and configuration of Enterprise Item Number, please refer to the following section in the online documentation located here.

Summary

Item naming strategy is an important topic to consider for every company adopting the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. For the casual user, the discussion can be as simple as explaining the basics of how a Title is created and how to modify it later. The requirements of both small design teams with multiple users and large organisations can vary in complexity, with no set rule. Therefore, implementing the right naming methodology for SOLIDWORKS Design content is important for ensuring that users in a design team can easily identify items, people in the wider organization, and external collaborators.

For a more in-depth overview of this topic, please refer to the SolidPractices guide titled Naming Strategies for Parts, Assemblies and Drawings.

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