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Edit item attributes of a configuration item

Item attributes are an item's metadata that describe the item in detail. This may include its physical properties, cost, supplier or manufacturer information, or other properties synced from your CAD or PDM systems.

Item attributes stay with the item regardless of where that item is used throughout Upchain. These should not be confused with eBOM attributes that describe the item's use in a particular eBOM. eBOM attributes are saved to the item's parent item, not the item itself. You may edit the eBOM attributes of each configuration item separately, since they do contain their own individual eBOMs.

Upchain comes with many default attibutes. However, your Tenant Administrator may have configured additional custom attributes. Regardless, you can find an item's attributes in the Item View or the lower pane of the cBOM/eBOM/Project BOM views when you select a specific item.

Requirements

To edit an item's attributes, it must have a status of Development.

Edit an item's attributes

  1. With the model open in your CAD system, set the desired configuration to be the active one.

  2. Open the Item View.

  3. Check out the item, if it is not already checked out to you.

  4. Make any desired changes to the item's attributes.

    The Recent Attribute Changes window appears to list all recent changes to the item attributes. Changes are first shown in green text to indicate the value has not yet been saved into Upchain. As soon as the text changes to black, the item attributes have been committed to the item and visible to other users. You do not need to wait for the text to turn black before moving onto another item to edit its attributes.

Once the attributes have been committed into Upchain, you may continue working on the item or cancel the check out on the item.

Important: If any attributes have a CAD mapping set to 'Write', you must save or check in the item to write these attributes as custom properties to the CAD file.

View CAD mapping settings in the CAD Plugin Settings > CAD attribute mapping section. If a property is set to 'Read', the attribute is read from the CAD file and the corresponding attribute in Upchain is filled in. This means the attribute box is not editable in the plugin. If a property is set to 'Write', the attribute is set in Upchain and written to the CAD file. This only happens during check out, save, and check in processes.

Custom properties

Once a file is registered, Upchain writes a number of attributes to the CAD and drawing files as custom properties.

The Custom tab contains the custom properties for the configuration that was active at the time of registration.

The next tab named Configuration Specific contains custom properties for each configuration saved in the CAD file. This enables you to define separate attributes for each configuration item. This tab contains a drop-down list where you can select the specific configuration to view its custom properties.

When a configuration is registered to a new item in Upchain, the item attributes are written to the Configuration Specific tab. All CAD mappings set to Write are written to this tab. All CAD mappings set to Read are read from this tab as well. This is what enables you to associate the same CAD file to separate items for each configuration in Upchain, all with their own separate attributes.

Note: For the configuration that was active at the time of registration, attributes set to Read may be read from the Custom tab only if there is nothing entered in the Configuration Specific tab.
Note: You may edit an item's attributes in the web app. However, this does not update the custom properties of the CAD file. This is only done by the CAD plugin during a check out, save, or check in.
Parent page: SOLIDWORKS configurations in Upchain

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