Introduction

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

3DEXPERIENCE provides a scalable set of capabilities that define how items are named, and these vary in complexity, therefore it’s important to fully understand your customers’ requirements right at 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 users, and their recommended use cases.

Defining the Title Manually

Typical Use Case: Single user

The simplest method of naming an item in 3DEXPERIENCE is manually defining the Title. This approach utilizes the default behaviour of each new customer Tenant. When a saving new SOLIDWORKS part or assembly to 3DEXPERIENCE 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 3DEXPERIENCE for the first time.

 

 

EXPERIENCE 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.

 

EXPERIENCE 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”.

 

Defining the Title Manually – Summary

For a single SOLIDWORKS user adopting 3DEXPERIENCE who is already defining the name of each individual file and would like to continue working this way, manually defining each Title is an effective approach to help them to 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 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 3DEXPERIENCE 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.

 

 

Automatic Naming

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

The majority of customers adopting 3DEXPERIENCE will have multiple users creating new and modifying existing SOLIDWORKS content. As discussed in the previous methodology, having each user manually define the Tile 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, 3DEXPERIENCE provides the ability to define an automated sequential naming scheme.

Working with sequential naming turned on, when a user saves new files to 3DEXPERIENCE from SOLIDWORKS 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.

EXPERIENCE 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 3DEXPERIENCE for the first time.

 

EXPERIENCE is assigned a unique Title. This eliminates the risk of saving files to 3DEXPERIENCE with duplicate Titles and resulting confusion this can potentially cause 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 or one of the dashboard web apps e.g. Bookmarks Editor. This is a simple workflow for new users to adopt and removes the need to use the Rename Title command in SOLIDWORKS.

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 customer 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 3DEXPERIENCE. 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.

EXPERIENCE 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.

 

Summary

Iteming naming strategy is an important topic to discuss with every customer adopting 3DEXPERIENCE. For the single user, the discussion can be as simple as explaining the basics of how a Title is created and how to 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 content is important for ensuring users in a design team can easily identify items, people in the wider organization, and external collaborators.

 

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