I saw this question posted in the Workgroup PDM board, and I thought I'd repost it here.

It seems like the answer is "no", but I bet there are some creative folks out there with a work-around in mind.

Can you map configuration-specific properties to variables in PDM?  My company makes use of configurations in a way that really helps reduce the effort required to maintain documentation on our parts.  We have a lot of components where the geometry is identical, but the material is different because we offer our product in several different finishes.  (I go into more detail in the discussion on the Workgroup PDM posting)

The configuration tabs often pose a weird challenge in that your data cards end up looking a little scatterbrained and unfocused.  It'd be nice to be able to (a) for all variables that are constant between the different finishes, to be able to propagate variables from the Custom tab to the Configuration tabs and (b) to be able to capture configuration-specific data individually, so that we can have accurate information in our configuration tabs to account for variables that vary from one finish to another (such as, for example, stock extrusion part numbers).

Is there anyone with ideas on that topic?  Because I'm all out of 'em.