About Saving in 3DEXPERIENCE platform

The Save function lets you save the design information into the 3DEXPERIENCE platform vault for sharing across the enterprise.

The design information consists of the physical files created in AutoCAD plus metadata or descriptive characteristics. You must save the designs often to keep the collaborative group informed of any changes. When saving AutoCAD objects to 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Connector for AutoCAD provides several options that affect the behavior of the Save process. The default settings for these parameters are specified in the Global preferences which is set by your Integration Administrator. See Setting Preferences section of X-CAD Design Management Administration Guide for details on setting global preferences. See Saving Designs to 3DEXPERIENCE platform for information of the settings that the users may modify while saving designs to 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

This page discusses:

See Also
Using Quick Save Active
Using Quick Save Active

Attribute Synchronize

Attribute synchronization ensures that the attributes in the design file on your computer match the attributes of the associated ENOVIA object.

During the design process, you can enter or change attributes or properties of the design. When you save the design, you want those attributes and properties to become part of the metadata for the ENOVIA object.

Your Integration Administrator specifies which attributes and properties can be synchronized.

Note: See X-CAD Design Management Administration Guide for details on attributes that are mapped, mapping attributes, and enforcing attribute synchronization.
Note: You can also synchronize attributes when you open a design from 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
Note: Synchronization of Block Attribute(s) does not happen when AutoCAD drawings are saved in ENOVIA.

Lock Status While Saving Designs

Locking designs in 3DEXPERIENCE platform ensures that no other user can modify the designs you are working on. Lock status of a design indicates whether the design that exists in 3DEXPERIENCE platform is locked by you or any other user. The designs in 3DEXPERIENCE Save dialog box can be selected for saving only if the designs are not locked by any other user or the design is locked by you.

Note: Lock status is valid only for designs that exist in ENOVIA vault. Lock status is not displayed when you save the designs the first time.

Connector for AutoCAD provides a Retain Lock option while saving designs. By selecting the Retain Lock option during a save, the lock is maintained so that subsequent edits and saves may be performed.

Applying a Lock indicates the intent to modify the design.

New Revision Stream

Revision is a controlled release of a design that replaces previous releases. Each release is usually identified by an associated letter code, termed the "revision level" or simply "revision". The purpose of revisioning is to maintain the history of a design to be able to return to a previous release at any point in time.

You can create new revision stream while saving designs using right-click on selected designs in the 3DEXPERIENCE dialog box. The new revision stream that is created is next in sequence to the current stream.

Obsolete Designs

Any design is considered Obsolete if a newer design exists in the ENOVIA database.

Your design is considered obsolete because it is based on an earlier design than the latest design in ENOVIA. To resolve obsolete designs and continue working with the previous version, you can update your designs in your local workspace using X-CAD Design Management Client.

For example, a design has been stored with multiple versions: 1 & 2 in ENOVIA database. User A opens version 1 wanting to ignore the modifications made in V2. When User A tries to save version 1, the design is displayed as obsolete in ENOVIA Save dialog box.

Part Association During Save

In an effort to expose the CAD designs to the engineering community as early as possible, Connector for AutoCAD provides an optional setting that will automatically create an Engineering BOM part and associate it to the CAD model during a Save operation. The engineering part created will have the same name as the CAD model.

Note: To enable this, settings must be made in Global Preferences by the Integration Administrator. See X-CAD Design Management Administration Guide for details on these settings.

EBOM Synch on Saving

EBOM Synchronization feature provides a tool to automatically generate the EBOM structure to match the CAD model/assembly structure. During this process all mapped attributes are also transferred to the engineering parts. In addition the CAD models are directly associated to the engineering parts as CAD specifications allowing engineers direct access to the supporting CAD model data.

Note: This must be configured by the Integration Administrator. For more details on the required settings, see "Configuring the EBOM Configuration Object" section in Connector for AutoCAD Administrator's Guide.

Read Only Behavior

This section lists the behavior changes in the Save feature when MCADInteg-FileReadOnlyBehavior is set as TRUE in the global configuration object by your Administrator.

The behavior changes in Save feature depends on the selection of Retain lock on checkin option during save in the ENOVIA Save dialog box.

  • If Retain lock on checkin option is selected, then the file is writable after save is successful.
  • If Retain lock on checkin option is not selected, then the file remains read-only after save.

About Object Auto Recognition

The objects that exist in ENOVIA are auto recognized and alerts are used to indicate the auto recognized node in the ENOVIA Save dialog box.

The objects are auto recognized based on its latest version, name, and types that are present in ENOVIA. The auto recognition is indicated visually, with an alert appearing for the auto recognized node in the Alert column. If you are using quick save, a warning message appears if you invoke quick save for an auto recognized object.

Auto recognition is based on the following rules:

  • If the object is stamped with TNR, the files are not auto recognized and the objects are modified.
  • If the object is not stamped with TNR and has working set entries, the object is auto recognized if there is conflict in the working set entry. The working set entries are:
    • Client computer name
    • Directory path
    • TNRV of design
  • If the file is not stamped with TNR, no working set entries are found, and only the NAME is available. In this case the design is always auto recognized.

If you check in an auto recognized node and can create a version, the previous objects data is overwritten with the auto recognized node. Auto recognition behavior is identical for instances.

Note: If the files are from different databases, the objects are recognized but there is no visual indicator displayed in the Alert column for the object.