Introduction & concepts:

ENOVIA Classification Manager Role (CCM) offers powerful, flexible, library classification schemes and features to organize and retrieve Intellectual Property (IP). 

Using the Classification Manager Role, librarians can define libraries and classes for their organizations to organize and classify their intellectual property (IP) such as documents, engineering items and other content to be reused across the entire organization.

Librarians can associate sets of classification attributes with class hierarchy. Any IP classified in the hierarchy inherits the class attributes. A specific value is set on each classification attribute for each classified item. As a result, searching is consistent and IP is reused with confidence, reducing development time, cost and risk.

As of R2024x FD02, ENOVIA enables you to distinguish between essential and non-essential classification attributes:

• Essential Attributes:

An attribute is essential when it defines the object.
It has a direct impact on the object. Changing its value means changing the object. Therefore, the object must be modifiable.

Example: 
A screw is defined by its length, diameter and head type. A 10mm screw is not the same as a 20mm screw. So length is considered an essential attribute of a screw. 
 

• Non-Essential Attributes:

An attribute is non-essential when it helps to describe the object.
A non-essential attribute has no direct impact on the definition of the object. 
Its value can vary over time without affecting the definition of the object itself. 
The object can be fully defined, released and not modifiable anymore, yet, you can still add some information to it with non-essential attributes.

Example: 
A screw can be declared with a reliability of 90% when it is bought from a supplier, however, after a while, the reliability can be set down to 80% because of some crash tests. It is yet the same screw.

Note:

The definition of essential/non-essential attribute is automatically established once the librarian creates the library and defines the attributes of this library.

See below,

Definition & Categorization Libraries in ENOVIA:

In ENOVIA, same classification attribute can be reused between different classes. 
Sometimes the attribute can be considered as essential in the context of one class and non-essential in the context of another class.

In addition, ENOVIA supports multiple classifications for the same object, by having it classified in several different classes, some with essential attributes and some with non-essential attributes.

As such, the notion of essential and non-essential attributes can only be considered in the context of a specific usage, therefore two usages of libraries are now available in ENOVIA:

• Definition Library:

  Until R2024x FD02, ENOVIA had one usage of Library called 'General Library', which is now called 'Definition Library'. The behavior of this library remained the same. 

  This library is composed of classes that contain only essential attributes.
  Objects classified in the 'Definition Library' contain essential attributes, which are used to enrich their definition.

  As such, once the object is no longer modifiable, its definition is frozen and it is no longer possible to set or modify the values of the classification attributes (the essential ones). 

  When revising or duplicating or branching an item, which is classified in a 'Definition Library', the new revision or the duplicated item is automatically classified in the same class with same attributes values.

   

  

• Categorization Library:

  To support the notion of non-essential attributes, in R2024x FD02, ENOVIA introduced a new usage of Library, called 'Categorization Library'. 

  This library is composed of classes that contain only non-essential attributes.
  Objects classified in the categorization library contain non-essential attributes, which are used to add semantic information on top of the object's definition.

  As such, you can classify a non-modifiable item in the Categorization library and then set or modify its classification attributes (the non-essential ones) without affecting its definition.

  When revising, duplicating or branching an item, which is classified in a categorization library, the new revision or the duplicated item is NOT automatically classified in the same class. It is up to the user to determine if the new object qualifies to the same class and what should be the attributes values once classified. 
  
   

  

  The below table summarizes the differences between the libraries:

  Note: the table refers to any object that be classified

The below video illustrates this concept in more detail: