About Adding Attribute Links

Attribute link text is a text which associatively reflects a value. Texts can have attribute links with PLM attributes as well as with other attributes that are not exposed as PLM entities (for example dimension from 3D data).

Important: If the text annotation and its associative parameter (attribute link) are both in the same location and in the same representation, they are updated synchronously.

See Also
Adding an Attribute Link

You can create an attribute link to a PLM attribute so that the text associatively reflects the value of the PLM attribute.

If a view contains not up-to-date text attribute links, it needs an update. Consequently, the Update command becomes available. Therefore, when you click Update, it updates its views as well as the text attribute links in the view.

However, if you want to update only the text attribute links quickly, you can do so by right-clicking the attribute link and selecting Update Selection. If the link is up-to-date, the Update Selection command is not available in its context menu.

The following types of PLM attributes are supported:

  • PLM attributes of a reference (PLM Reference or PLM Representation Reference)
  • PLM attributes of an instance (PLM Instance or PLM Representation Instance)
  • PLM attributes of a port (PLM Port)
  • PLM attributes of a connection (PLM Connection)
  • PLM attributes of an extension (PLM Extension) are supported with the reference (PLM Reference) it extends

Important: All types of PLM attributes are supported. However string and binary types are supported under the following conditions:
  • The attribute max length must be defined.
  • The max length must be less than 256 characters.
If these conditions are not satisfied, a non-associative attribute link is created.

Attribute link texts are associative to these PLM attributes. That is, attribute link texts associatively reflect the value of a PLM attribute. As a result, the links created by the attribute link texts associative to PLM attributes of the containing representation are taken into account by the PLM update.

In this case, if a PLM attribute contained in an attribute link is modified, the display of the link is synchronously visualized. However, note that, synchronous visualization is not automatic update. It does not modify the model nor updates the data. It only updates the visualization of the text synchronously.

After modification of the pointed PLM Attribute, the attribute link text display is altered due to synchronous visualization.

After you click Update, the associative position of the pointed text is recalculated and the 3D shape becomes up-to-date.

The dialog box has the capability of sorting the contents based on any column.

The columns that are empty are hidden automatically. To manage the columns, right-click a column and select Hide column, Show all columns, or Show column. These preferences are saved for next time usages.

When you isolate an annotation, all the links present on it including the global attributes are replaced by resolved string values.