Best practices

To change or update design variants in the CAD application, do not manually update the SolidWorks Design Table (the internal Excel table). The reason is, that the Design Table includes details that are also stored in the PLM items associated with the design variants.

Such updates must be performed in PLM. For example, to remove a design variant, you must unlink the variant item from the related document. When the variant is next opened in SolidWorks from PLM, you are prompted about the changes.

To modify any SolidWorks configuration, including the Default name, use the SolidWorks Configuration Manager tab. When you save to PLM after modifying the configuration, the related item's CAD instance name attribute will be updated.
Note: Configuration name modifications to the Default name must never be performed using the SolidWorks Design Table (the internal Excel file). Using the SolidWorks Design Table for this purpose results in the creation of an additional, redundant configuration.