Saving Files to PLM
- A PLM file, which is revision-controlled, and which specifies the location of the SolidWorks file, together with additional data about it. This PLM file (also known as a data set) has the same name as the SolidWorks file.
- A PLM document, which is also revision-controlled, and which contains attributes that describe the characteristics of the file. The file’s name is held in the document’s Description attribute.
If the active SolidWorks file is a model (component or assembly), an item can be created and linked to the document. This depends on your preference settings. If the file has children (components), the child objects are also saved in PLM. Files, documents and items are created for each component.
Document links are created representing the assembly-component relationships to the newly saved files as well as to the components that were previously saved in PLM.
When you perform the Save to PLM operation on a SolidWorks file, the document is saved with the status Draft. Each consecutive save updates the latest changes performed on the Draft revision of the document in PLM.
You can only save a file if its related PLM document has a status of Draft. If the document has the status UNDER CHANGE or RELEASED, the file cannot be saved to PLM.
To save your changes on the server (not only locally), first save the file locally, and then perform the PLM action, Save to PLM.
Saving an existing file to PLM also saves the file in SolidWorks. If you save the file only to SolidWorks, the file is saved only locally and the associated documents and/or items in PLM are not saved.
The assignment of attributes during the save is determined by the parameters set up for you by the administrator in your preference settings. If the Set Object Attribute During Save check box is selected in the preferences, you can define attributes for the files, documents, and items that you save to PLM.
If you are working with design variants, known as configurations in SolidWorks, you must capture the data of the design variants before you save the item to PLM. For more information, refer to Managing design variants/ configurations.